I have truly arrived...

After enduring an arduous three years, one month and eight days to complete my formal education in SE Asia, I have returned home. Actually, I returned home almost four months ago, but haven't blogged since December. My experience in South East Asia was, naturally, mixed. There were good times, and there were bad times, and the experience will never go away. I will go into the details of "the experience" as I like to call it sometime later. Since I'm back home, there isn't much adventure to write about, other than the urban adventure we call wining and dining. I'm gonna be talking about some of the hobbies that I've gotten into and will get into.

So I've gotten a place, a condo. Its a one bedroom plus den and solarium, so its quite decent for us. I've gotten pretty much all the AV gear I wanted, which mainly consists of:

-A 61" 1080p DLP Samsung TV. I chose this based on information from the AVS forum and reviews. It was a choice between this and Sony's 60" 1080p SXRD TV, but reports say that after calibration, the Samsung looks much better. Also, the Samsung accepts 1080p over component, and its piece-de-resistance, it allows for overscan to be turned off on HDMI input. This is really useful because I had planned to integrate an HTPC into the setup, and use it as my main computer. To do this, the display would have to be great, and the Samsung fit the bill.

-HDTV PVR cable box (if you don't know what this is, its a digital TV/HDTV tuner box, that allows you to do things like pause live TV, record TV shows, record 2 TV shows while watching a 3rd, scheduling recordings of your favourite TV shows etc.)

-A Harman Kardon AVR 140 reciever. I was originally gonna go for a top-of-the-line Pioneer Elite model than can switch 1080p HDMI sources, but I thought I'd wait until they become more mainstream. Plus, with a reciever like that, I'd feel obliged to pick up some crazy speakers, and then everything just adds up. It turns out I found a brilliant deal on this receiver. Harman/Kardon is one of the premier names in sound, in fact, they INVENTED the reciever! So this was a good addition to the setup. Interesting story - I had at some point thought that I should go cheap and get a HTIB (home theater in a box). I shopped around, and everyone seemed to recommend a particular Sony setup (people recommending Sony? weird...) so I grabbed it. Supposedly pushing 1100 watts, the receiver was outputting to a 10 inch powered sub and 6 satellites, but when I plugged it in and connected the DVD player, I found it to be underpowered and tinny sounding. Not being in Malaysia anymore, I could crank up the volume without others hearing it, and when I did so to the point I thought was umm... enveloping, the reciever was at max volume. Those were some lazy 1100 watts. The speakers sucked too, and seemed to be of the quality of free-in-the-box computer speakers. I returned that shit right away (thank God I'm back home!) and shopped around. It took me a few days to decide, but I finally settled with the HK.

-Harman Kardon 5.1 speaker system. I was originally going to get the Bose Acoustimass sound system, as I liked the demo they had running at Future Shop, but after listening to these speakers, I was sold. They sounded as good for 60% of the cost, and looked better to boot. 10" Harman/Kardon subwoofer? Can. Beautiful, 3-way directional satellites? Can.

-Samsung HD-DV960 DVD Player. I cheaped out in the beginning and bought this over a Toshiba HD DVD player. Later I regretted it, but I wouldn't have had much to play on the HD DVD player anyway. I'm now selling this to pay for the PS3, but basically what this player did was upscale DVDs and output them at 1080p over HDMI. Everybody said there's a significant difference, especially with the Faroudja video processor and all, but I never noticed any difference. I do notice a difference upscaling on my computer though?! I didn't use this much, and it wasn't amazing, AND I got it for much less than the regular price, so I said hey, why not use the PS3 to play DVDs and get rid of this? So it is no longer.

-XBOX 360 Premium Modded. One of the first things I bought, it was supposed to be a rational choice over the PS3 based on number of titles available and yes, price. While the 360 looked decent enough over component at 1080p, it didn't blow me away. I've read some technical articles about the CPU, a 3-core, RISC affair that is pretty far beyond desktop CPUs at the moment, and thought that it would look great. In reality, the graphics look like PC graphics from a few months ago to a few years ago. The only game that had really good graphics was Gears of War, and that too didn't absolutely blow me away. It also made a huge difference if a game was 1080 or 720p, as the latter just sucked. A game I was really looking forward to, Test Drive Unlimited, looks better on the PC, and not so amazing on the 360 IMO. Well, I sold it for the Wii, thinking it'd be a lot more fun.

-Nintendo Wii. Since these are out of stock everywhere, I had to buy one from a "street guy." Price was almost the same though, so it was ok. Wii Sports is a good addition to the console, and its real fun lies in multiplayer. When we first got it, we played tennis quite a bit. All the games are fun, except for golf, which I'm not into much. For some reason, we haven't played the Wii much since we got it, but its a cheap console, and we're looking forward to Super Mario coming out on it, so we're gonna keep it for now.

-PS3. The latest addition to our setup. Used the money leftover from the 360 and combined it with the sale of the DVD player and our Nokia N80 to get it. First I bought it from Future Shop with the intention of returning it to see if I liked it. The first thing I downloaded was Gran Turismo HD 1.1. That just sold me. The graphics are stunning, like nothing else I've ever seen, and the realism of the driving is superb. I got it partially for GT alone. We then downloaded the demos for Motorstorm and a bunch of other games, but Motorstorm stuck out as being a good game. Tried out the browsing, its as good or maybe better than the HTPC in some ways! Now I have gotten used to nice-looking HD broadcasts on TV, and movies in HD on TMN, and from what I've been told, the HD discs (BD/HD DVD) look more or less like that. That is pretty wrong IMO, because even the MP4 trailers I downloaded (NOT in BD quality) looked much better than broadcast HD. That got me thinking, and I said hey, reason #2 to get a PS3... Blu-Ray movies!! So I returned the PS3 from Future Shop and bought one for $250 less from a "street guy."

So now all that's under our TV is the PS3, HD PVR, Wii and reciever.