Post your Gaming Setups

[The Cobra]

So, it is HDTV then, marcus.

Just use the VGA input.

[RLench]

Just been tidying things up in preparation for the inevitable HDTV purchase next month.

I've spent hours tidying things up, re-organising stuff, and it looks great. Just about to wire up my Digibox and...****!! I forgot about my GC There's no room for the GC now

Looks like the GC is going in the cupboard and only coming out when I want to use it

[The Cobra]

What TV you getting Rlench?

[RLench]

Samsung LE32R41

But I'm being really stupid and thinking about saving up a bit more for the 40" version

But then again I'm tempted to wait a while and see what's available by next March. There'll probably be a decent 32" LCD then with two HDMI inputs (or HDMI and DVI), two component, VGA, and probably for the same price as a typical 32" LCD now (?1500 or so)

[SubparMario]

I'd wouldn't say bigger is always better when it comes to TVs. Not keen on anything larger than 32" myself.

I just can't decide whether to go with the Samsung LCD HDTV or wait and see what else is released, ngggghhh.

[RLench]

I think 32" would be plenty in my room but IMO a bigger screen just means you can see fine detail more clearly. I'm upgrading from a 28" 4:3 TV so I'll be happy with anything

[marcus]

HDMI...HDTV...pfft I lose track of it all tbh!

The model is 50phw5, a lack of HDMI and DVI inputs could mean its not too future proof now, unless a board is available for it, which I dont know.

[andrewfee]

I think 32" would be plenty in my room but IMO a bigger screen just means you can see fine detail more clearly. I'm upgrading from a 28" 4:3 TV so I'll be happy with anything

With fixed-pixel displays, you do not want to go too big. SD content will look awful. If you're only watching HD, then a 40" might be ok at 8ft or so, but 8ft is about ideal for a 32" LCD with SD content.

On a CRT it doesn't matter as much though. I had no problems sitting far too close to my old 28" CRT

[RLench]

40" would be too big for me...unless I wall mounted it. But I'm not going to think about that. I need to convince myself that I will NOT buy anything bigger than 32"

On a CRT it doesn't matter as much though. I had no problems sitting far too close to my old 28" CRT

Really? I'm the opposite. I can't sit closer than 3' to a CRT without noticing interlacing problems I sit about 6' away and it's the right distance. Anything further and it's too small for me

[The Cobra]

Calibrated my projector, and the xbox is looking pretty breathtaking now. Just need to finish calibrating the DVD player.

For some reason my projector is playing my DVDs at 625p.

[Lyris]

625p is PAL Progressive scan, more commonly known as 576p. It's calling it 625p because that's the total number of lines with no overscanned ones.

That looks really damn good. How does the GameCube look on that? I've always been really disappointed by how soft the Xbox graphics are on my HDTV using a $6.99 cable from Play-Asia. Would the official Advanced AV Pack help at all?

[The Cobra]

I thought it was 576p, wondered why that was, thanks for that dude.

Only got Killer 7 and Metroid Prime 1, but i'll stick K7 on tomorrow and take some pictures for you. Haven't tested it much, as i've had nothing to play on it..

I'm using the advanced pack, have you messed around with the settings? What mode are you using? Cinema? Dynamic etc?

[andrewfee]

Calibrated my projector, and the xbox is looking pretty breathtaking now. Just need to finish calibrating the DVD player.

Looks great. How are you calibrating this? Just DVE/Avia etc and doing it by eye, or something else?

That looks really damn good. How does the GameCube look on that? I've always been really disappointed by how soft the Xbox graphics are on my HDTV using a $6.99 cable from Play-Asia. Would the official Advanced AV Pack help at all?

I think the advanced pack might help; I'm using cheap cables from GAME with mine, and while it's ok for 480p, you can see that better quality cables would help, especially with higher res modes.

The reason it looks so much softer though, is because the Xbox already overscans just about everything before it's sent to your tv, meaning it's getting overscanned twice.

New addition to my setup:



I can't believe the image quality from this DVD player; no aliasing, shimmering, colour saturation etc is perfect, motion looks great. No macroblocking that I've seen so far. The deinterlacer does a fantastic job, even with awful dvds. (such as the Moby one I bought for the "18: B-Sides" CD that came with it)

I also recieved my new Surge protector (with the re-arranging of everything, I needed one with more sockets) and it's insane.

Decided to go for their best model again, and they've made a lot of great improvements over the last one. (pictured on the left)



Sorry for the blurry pic, but I can't be bothered to pull everything out again to get a good photo.

Aluminium casing, eight sockets instead of seven, RF protection, Cable/Satellite protection, phone protection and splitter. I miss it not having ethernet though, but I'm still going to be using the old one. Came with gold-plated cables for all of them.

I really like the cable management though; the cable can clip into the grooves around the side to keep it tidy, which is a godsend. The high end ones come with 3m cables, and I don't even need half of it. It's a shame the sockets can't rotate anymore, that came in quite handy for "wall warts"

Something I really like is that it splits the sockets up into four "levels" and stops them from causing interference with each other. So now I don't have to worry about having something "noisy" plugged into the strip.

Doesn't seem to filter outside noise very well though; when someone uses the blender, freeview still goes out. (interference screws with the signal booster)
I'll have to splash out on a line conditioner some time, but can't really justify it yet.

[The Cobra]

Calibrated the xbox by eye, but using DVE for the DVD player, hopefully the disc will here today, had to do the DVD player for now by eye, but i've got such a great picture, i'm not sure if i'll even change much of it.

I was thinking about that Oppo, how much are they going for at the moment? I've heard very good things about it.

Does it come recomended? I've got a denon 1910, which is putting out a great picture over component at the moment. Thinking about getting the HDMI version (1920) or maybe the oppo.

[demon9k]

Calibrated my projector, and the xbox is looking pretty breathtaking now. Just need to finish calibrating the DVD player.

For some reason my projector is playing my DVDs at 625p.

What speakers are in that picture?