Critter Time and my Entertainment Center

Ok, Critter wasn’t working, but she was awake and bored. Unfortunately she never can seem to remember my off days so she didn’t call me because she thought I was at work and I didn’t call her because I thought she was probably asleep.

I did see her some last night (Thursday). I sent a text message asking if she was working and a few minutes later she called back and said she wasn’t and asked if I wanted to come over and I said sure. Just after I got there she put D & B to bed, and B actually stayed there. D was having a bit of trouble remembering he was supposed to be sleeping and kept hollering advice on Super Mario Galaxy from his bedroom. He eventually went to sleep though. That was my first time playing, and I have to tell you it kind of stressed me out. Even with Critter helping me I kept dying because I couldn’t keep my Wiimote pointed at the right part of the screen. That and there were serious depth perception issues with the environment since the only game I’ve ever played with Mario in it is Donkey Kong and that was either in an arcade or on my old Atari 2600. Yes, I’m a little behind the times when it comes to Mario games. Critter was pretty well split between shocked and highly amused that I’d never played any “real” Mario games, and was quite proud that she had taken my “Mario cherry” as she so gleefully called it.

I might have to buy a Wii now. Add that to my PS/2, the PS/3 I want, and the various and sundry other gadgets that will be running through the entertainment center and I may have to buy a separate entertainment center just for gaming. I kind of wish folks would start putting HDMI pass-through ports on HD devices. I mean even Sony’s top of the line receiver the STR-DA5300ES only has six HDMI inputs, and all of those are on the same channel/device as the other inputs (S-video, component, etc.). So in an ideal situation, you have an HD cable/satellite box, an HD DVR, a Blu-ray player, an HD-DVD player, and a PS/3, all requiring HDMI inputs (or what’s the point?) then you’ve got the PS/2 and the Wii, both needing S-video and optical audio, and to top it all off the VHS, the cassette deck, the record player (yes I still own some records), and a possible MD/DAT player and you quickly run out of space. So I’m counting eight audio and video signals and three audio only and if you want to throw a computer into the mix then there’s one more audio and video and the best unit Sony has to offer for home use only has five A/V input channels and three audio only. Grrr.

Sometimes being a geek is really no fun at all. Maybe if Sony decides to make a Blu-Ray/HD-DVD combo deck I’ll buy one of those. They are rumored to exist, but I haven’t been able to track one down anywhere that looked reputable. I’d like to keep as many Sony components as possible because I trust them and everything I have now is Sony so the A/V remote should be able to control everything I currently own. And I know, Sony doesn’t make HD-DVD players, but there’s a nice entry-level Toshiba I saw at work that will do nicely, and that’s a good brand too.

I’ve got to find a way around the input problem. Even if I ditch the HD-DVD player (most everything I want is available on Blu-ray as well) and if I stack my old receiver on top and use its line level outputs for the legacy signals I’ll still need two inputs on the new system since my old receiver (STR DE1075) won’t output optical audio inputs through the LINE OUT nor will it output the LINE IN audio through the optical audio out. Since the turntable and the VHS both use LINE OUT audio signals I’m stuck. Of course I could choose to degrade the sound quality of the Wii and PS/2 and run everything through the LINE IN/OUT, but I really don’t want to. I could also free up a channel by going with a combo satellite/DVR box, but I’m really hooked on TiVo and that would mean going with DirecTV, and DISH has much better customer service where I am, at least in my experience.

And you know this really wasn’t meant as a dissertation on my entertainment center. I have no idea how I got here. I’m going to leave you nice people alone now while I ponder this on my own time.

Of course if anyone has any suggestions…..