So I’ve been talking to John tonight about a slew of random crud tonight. It’s amazing sometimes how my brain can go from completely idle deadness to a buzz like flurry of random multi-tasking. As I’m writing this I’m making full use of the three (yes 3) Dell 2405FPW’s I have at my disposal. I have WMP11 going playing my complete set of Gardiner’s conduction of Beethoven’s 9 Symphonies; The word-wheel is going to kick ass! I have uTorrent going, Outlook, Excel (creating my wish list for a later blog), a couple Ars articles I have to read, FileZilla uploading to Streamload, 12 MSN chats, and 42 Internet Explorer windows. Shame it’s not running on Vista at the moment.

What have I been discussing with John? Well started out with me doing my anal-retentive comparison of my A/V receiver and speaker options. Basically, I’ve wanted a TV of late. No, I do not own a TV, something I’m actually rather proud of in a way. That being said I still watch content from various sources and have over a thousand DVD’s and rent off Netflix so it’d be nice to watch something in the living room on a nice sized screen instead of sitting in my office watching by myself on one of the 24″ Dell’s. So of course to go with the TV which I’m totally undecided on at this point. I need a decent set of speakers. I was thinking of just moving my Klipsch 5.1 Ultra’s and the Creative DDTS-100 to the living room since I’ll only have the Vista Media Center PC and the Xbox 360 plugged in. I may still go this route as total cost is like $360 for a pretty darn amazing system. But of course, I start dreaming.

Having had a jaw dropping BostonAcoustics 5.1 set up at one point which was stolen I’ve always wanted to replace it. So I looked into Boston again. Sure enough, the one place that sells them is OneCall.com located in Spokane, WA. Highly ironic really considering the person that stole my original Bostons lives in Spokane now. Anyway I found this FatWallet forum thread about the Boston AVR-7120 receiver that is currently on sale for about a $1000 instead of the normal $3000. Fantastic really. I read this review about the receiver along with the one set of 5.1 speakers I was possibly interested in. They have those too. So I was tempted. Tempted not only into buying the receiver but the higher end line of VR-M speakers from Boston. I’m happy to report I’m not suffering from buyers’ remorse at the moment, as I didn’t drop the plastic. I’m glad I didn’t either as it would’ve been a mistake.

One of my requirements is the ability to play back WMA Pro 5.1 content via analog or S/PDIF. I figured out that I could still do analog via the 8ch direct analog in which these high-end bad boys have. You need three 3.5mm to stereo RCA cables which then split into 6 inputs on the back of the receiver. The Boston didn’t have HDMI, which I honestly don’t care about but would like to have just in case. It apparently should sound true, neutral, and natural, something Boston speakers are known for. The other issue with the Boston is timing. I don’t have the cash to drop now. So with WMA Pro 5.1, DTS Neo:6 music up-mixing, a couple optical and coax S/PDIF inputs with maybe WMA Pro 5.1 via the S/PDIF, I went searching for receivers under $2000

The options? From best I can tell Pioneer make the only receiver to report with confidence full playback of Windows Media Audio Pro 5.1 via S/PDIF. I’ve not heard how well this works but the option is definitely there in WMP10 and 11. The two, cough one, option is Denon and Marantz. Marantz are out instantly since they simply don’t match Denon or Pioneer for features. So the two options I see at the moment are the Denon AVR-4306 and Pioneer VSX-74TXVi. The Pioneer is a wee bit cheaper, but does WMA Pro 5.1 via S/PDIF. The Denon has built in Windows Media Connect which means I don’t need to have the TV on and don’t need a Roku. It even can play back from USB Mass Storage devices. The Denon can also still do WMA Pro 5.1 via the 8ch direct analog that I mentioned. I believe the Denon to also be better than the Pioneer. At any rate I’ll be reading more reviews and looking for more options. Know of any send them my way via the comments. As for the speakers I’m still thinking the Boston rig would be super nice, money will decide the VR vs. VR-M issue.

At the same time I was also discussing the last few bits and bobs I need to grab from the coldest place on earth, IKEA. Obviously need a TV stand but they don’t really have anything that takes my fancy. I just want a simple modern stand with the components (receiver, pc, xbox) 100% hidden. The only thing I should see out is the TV. I checked out Dania Furniture as well but there wasn’t anything that took my fancy for the right price either.

Next we got onto the topic of his recent blog post. He’s giving up caffeine and all meat save fish for a little while. So I said I’d have to cook some Quorn dishes and have him over. Quorn has become a mainstay of my diet since discovering its availability here in the US. It’s fantastic stuff. You can have it soak up more water and flavor than chicken making it super moist and tasty. The texture is quite nice as well, I almost prefer it over chicken. Yes Mom, I know, I should try eating fish more. I just can’t stand seafood though.

From the Quorn recipe discussion we made a quick segue over to Clif bars. I was introduced to Clif bars when Ben Schiendelman (apparently he has more than one blog)let me try a couple bites from the one Chocolate Chip Peanut Crunch bar he had in the lab at building 50. Damn it was good. Sure Ben, being the author of a many global warming alarmist, tree hugging, bike for peace, mass transit, train fetished, liberal democrat manifestos (available for iPod playback) did tout the fact that the nutritional protein bar I was eating was made from 70% renewable organic ingredients. So I guess me being just slightly left of center had to agree with him and since then I went to Costco and bought two boxes of assorted (3 flavors) 24 pack boxes of Clif bars. Cost per bar is about $.784, not bad compared to the Balance Bars I was having which aren’t as good in every way.

So back to the convo with John. He suggested I do a power buy on them jokingly. Of course me being following Corey’s Law think sure, why not. Plan tomorrow during lunch will be to call up Clif and ask how much of a discount I can get if I order a full years supply (2 bars a day for 365 days) for 3 people. Figuring I’ll convince Ben to do it and John is already in. Maybe I can work it out and get them to comp some if I keep blogging about the entire thing. I wonder if I could live off Clif bars. They certainly have a large enough variety in flavors. I’m totally stoked and looking forward to the mint ones I just ordered.

Now that it’s getting later the conversation is getting weirder and I won’t get into the details of that.

Closing words for the night then… Well just one word. That would be wondrous I hate that bloody word with a passion. It’s all because of the letter ‘e’. Yes I believe wondrous should be spelled wonderous, no reason, I’m not a linguist, but it’s like centre in that sense. Just one of the intricacies of the English language.

Tags: Friends, Home Life, Ideas

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