Wednesday, July 21, 2004
Here's The Latest -- My HDHD (High Definition Harley Davidson)
As I mentioned in the previous post, one of the major hold-ups was the TV/Monitor/Display and my problem of fitting it into my existing piece of furniture. You may ask "What's the problem" --- and the answer to that requires a little background information.
Ideal screen size for HDTV is generally determined by the distance from your viewing position to the center of the display screen. Ideally, seating position is 2 - 3 times the screen width. The calculation is actually a little more precise than that, but for this discussion that will suffice. There are 3 to 5 seating positions in our living (viewing) room and they vary from 11 to 12 feet from the TV, roughly 138 inches. Based on that viewing distance, the screen width should be between 46 and 69 inches. The standard measure of TV size is the diagonal screen size, and 46 and 69 inch widths translate to 50 and 73 inch diagonal sizes.
Wow, this is much larger than I have been planning on, and certainly would not fit into the existing cabinet (42" opening) even with major modification. That seems to leave me only one alternative which I had really been trying to avoid. Replace the existing cabinet - that bullet has been bitten, and the new cabinet build is in the works. I am hopefully looking a little further ahead this time and the cabinet will allow for expansion with some modification. The cabinet is being designed and built by B.J. Paravesh of A Wooden Masterpiece, Inc. You can check out their work at their website http://www.awoodenmasterpiece.com/ .
So, the cabinet is 4-5 weeks out, and now I can order the TV. I've decided on the 56" Samsung DLP model and in fact entered the order for it yesterday. It also is probably 4 to 5 weeks out although I do not have that confirmed.
The next significant piece that need to be in place to have HDTV working is a HD DirecTV receiver and a new 3 LNB DirecTV dish. I expect to make some decisions on that in the next week.
Once all of that is in place, I can get back to the HTPC and be able to test various pieces of software in an HD environment.
About this time you're probably saying "Man, this dude is spending a lot of money - He must have more green than he knows what to do with!"
Well, the truth is: I recently sold my Harley Davidson Dresser and am using the proceeds to fund this project ---- Thus, I refer to it as MY HDHD
Ideal screen size for HDTV is generally determined by the distance from your viewing position to the center of the display screen. Ideally, seating position is 2 - 3 times the screen width. The calculation is actually a little more precise than that, but for this discussion that will suffice. There are 3 to 5 seating positions in our living (viewing) room and they vary from 11 to 12 feet from the TV, roughly 138 inches. Based on that viewing distance, the screen width should be between 46 and 69 inches. The standard measure of TV size is the diagonal screen size, and 46 and 69 inch widths translate to 50 and 73 inch diagonal sizes.
Wow, this is much larger than I have been planning on, and certainly would not fit into the existing cabinet (42" opening) even with major modification. That seems to leave me only one alternative which I had really been trying to avoid. Replace the existing cabinet - that bullet has been bitten, and the new cabinet build is in the works. I am hopefully looking a little further ahead this time and the cabinet will allow for expansion with some modification. The cabinet is being designed and built by B.J. Paravesh of A Wooden Masterpiece, Inc. You can check out their work at their website http://www.awoodenmasterpiece.com/ .
So, the cabinet is 4-5 weeks out, and now I can order the TV. I've decided on the 56" Samsung DLP model and in fact entered the order for it yesterday. It also is probably 4 to 5 weeks out although I do not have that confirmed.
The next significant piece that need to be in place to have HDTV working is a HD DirecTV receiver and a new 3 LNB DirecTV dish. I expect to make some decisions on that in the next week.
Once all of that is in place, I can get back to the HTPC and be able to test various pieces of software in an HD environment.
About this time you're probably saying "Man, this dude is spending a lot of money - He must have more green than he knows what to do with!"
Well, the truth is: I recently sold my Harley Davidson Dresser and am using the proceeds to fund this project ---- Thus, I refer to it as MY HDHD
