Home Theatre Update

Since someone did care before, let me express where I am now in the process.

I fixed the issue I was having with audio in XBMC. I'd tinkered with a setting that evidently didn't work as I expected. Turning it back off fixed the issue. For a week or two I worked with that setup again. I didn't really care for it.

There were two parts to the problem as I saw it: my TV and the programme. My TV is old enough to not interface as well as it needs to with the computer signal. The video quality was good but, the more I watched different things on it, the less I was pleased by it. Items shot originally on video tended to have a hazy quality to them, as if they had been badly reprocessed to try to look like film. I couldn't tinker around with the settings on the TV to improve this enough. Also the programme didn't like ejecting disks from it while it was running. In order to change disks, I had to shut down XBMC, eject the disk, restart the programme, and insert the new disk. This may have been more of an issue with the Mac Mini than the programme or just how the two interfaced but it irritated me. Due to these issues, I never got the Mac Remote.

I started looking in other directions, as I had decided that this was going to be a temporary solution to watching TV. In the future I may return to it or just hope that my current TV will last until the next wave of awesome TVs come out and hop on that wave. For now, as concerned as I was with price before, you might think that I would look towards something simple but inexpensive with enough options to please me for the time being. I would have thought that as well. The responsible part of my brain is still mad at the rest of me because I didn't make that decision.

I bought a PS3. A used PS3 of the type that is backwards compatible with PS2 and PS1 games. It was more expensive than I wanted to pay but not nearly as expensive as it was originally. It just arrived yesterday and is working well so far.

The primary disadvantages are: more expensive than I would have liked and not (as far as I know) region code free and PAL compatible.

The advantages? I can finally use the component input on my TV for something. It plays media files as I wanted. I have the option for Blu-Ray (handy as I got a Blu-Ray disk in a multi-pack last week, but this is likely also a disadvantage as it may increase my interest in getting Blu-Ray disks). The option to get PS3 games (the controllers for Rock Band and Guitar Hero aren't compatible with each other on the Wii but are on the PS3 meaning I can have one set of controllers and play both games if I want. Please note that this should also be a disadvantage as it will increase my interest in getting these games).

A perfect solution? No, of course not. Was it something I was likely to get anyway? Yeah, pretty much. Was it a good idea to get it now? Probably not. Is it cool? Heck yeah!

I have more playing with it to do before I settle on how stupid an idea this was for me, at least at the moment.