Steve_L

>>> How about Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds: Live at Radio City Music Hall? Great idea! Thanks for the suggestion!

Well, I own pretty much anything that's ever been raved about out here. Seems like years past there would be quite a few new releases around Christmas time. But so far this year I've seen a new Rolling Stones and I've seen a Tom Petty coming January 3rd. But I haven't really seen anything that we're all rushing out to buy. I did just order.. Roy Buchanan at Austin City Limits (I love all of the Live at Austin stuff.) (If you want a killer pick up the Richard Thompson and/or Lucinda Williams they put out) I also just ordered these. Procol Harum: Live at the Union Chapel [blu-ray] Concert for George [blu-ray] Steve Winwood: Live in Concert [blu-ray] Joe Bonamassa Live from The Royal Albert Hall [blu-ray] Return to Forever: Returns - Live at Montreux [blu-ray] Al Di Meola, et al Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers: Live [blu-ray] I guess I'm just disappointed with no new releases.. Last one I got excited about what Clapton's Madiscon Sq Garden Concert with Stevie Winwood. That one was great.

So it's Christmas and I am looking for some Blu-ray concert suggestions of new releases, but not seeing much. Blues, Classic Rock, Jazz, Alt, Folk, ...anything good recently come out? I saw Amazon is taking pre-orders for new Tom Petty but it looks like a rerun of some of his past stuff. What's on your list?

One thing about Rob, he stood for what he believed in. He loved his music, and he loved his muscle cars from the 60s. He was a great guy, warm and supportive of all. I think of him often and especially when I get up into the Lake George area of NY where he lived. He was a wonderful man. We should all die having touched so many lives.

Here's what I pulled from my Pioneer AVR VSX-1015 users manual. Based on this, the same full frequency spectrum signal is fed to both sets of speaker terminals, and therefore the speakers still do the cross-over, but there are two sets of amps doing the driving. So from that point of view it's more of a bi-wiring scenario. Bi-amping your front speakers Bi-amping is when you connect the high frequency driver and low frequency driver of your speakers to different amplifiers (in this case, to both front and surround back terminals) for better crossover performance. Your speakers must be bi-ampable to do this (having separate terminals for high and low) and the sound improvement will depend on the kind of speakers you’re using. 1 Connect your speakers as shown below. This illustration below shows the connections for biamping your front left speaker. Hook up your front right speaker in the same way. Since both front and surround back speaker terminals output the same audio, it doesn’t matter which set (front or surround back) is powering which part (High or Low) of the speaker. • Make sure that the + / – connections are properly inserted. 2 Select the ‘Front Bi-Amp’ setting from the ‘Surr Back System’ menu. See Surround back speaker setting on page 33 to specify how you’re using the surround back speaker terminals. Caution • Most speakers with both High and Low terminals have two metal plates that connect the High to the Low terminals. These must be removed when you are bi-amping the speakers or you could severely damage the amplifier. See your speaker manual for more information.

I have a similar set up, on my Pioneer the receiver has the ability to use the back surround channel if not being used. My Klipsch F-3s have two sets of inputs and I "assume" but am not positive how it does the bandwidth splitting inside the speakers. I sometimes "think" I hear a bit more "clarity" at very high volume levels, but it could just be my imagination. For all practicle purposes I don't hear any difference. I did it becuase "it was there".[]

Thnaks, it was a piece of cake fix, and finally motivated me to throw away two old useless remotes I never use anyway after I stole their LEDs. I love spending money on my home theater and will be ordering a new Oppo-BD83 shortly, or maybe the new one their supposed to announce this week at some electronics show. We'll see. I didn't really feel like spending a couple of Benjamins on a new remote.

Well, I started out thinking I'll go with the Oppo, and then I was all over the place thinking maybe the Samsung or a Sony unit but what I'm finding is that only the Oppo does SACD, and the more I think about it, I'm not so worried about not getting Netflix streaming or Pandora streaming. I did learn that the Oppo is going to have a new model announced at the CES show this coming week, so I'll wait for that before pulling the trigger. Thanks for posting the articles above guys!

You lost me?

I was all set to pull the trigger on the Samsung and then I "think" I figured out that it doesn't support SACD mutli-channel out, which the Oppo does. poo! I wonder of the Sony does?

The Oppo not having the Internet access is what has me on the fence. Does the Samsung do a good job of upconverting DVDs? Also does it support the SACD format? I really don't want to have to have multiple disc players. I'm somewhat of the opinion that the DACS are most likely of equal quality in each device and hence I wouldn't be compromising audio/video quality.

V3, what BlueRay player are youy using. I'm considering the Oppo BP83 (or whatever the numbers are) $500 and it doesn't look like any discounts are available for the unit, but it does what you are stating. I've got a nice Pioneer 1015 that is not HDMI but I'm not ready to replace it yet. So the Oppo looks like the way to go.

I've used an elastic around the remote overnight to get the best connection. However, I wonder of that might not have caused the LED emitters to burn out due to the elastics pressing down on some button and causing it to "emit" and hence burn out. ...but I know nothing about these LEDs so I have no idea if that is happening. I think I'm going to avoid the elastics in the future.

All Fixed!! Cost of repair. $2.39 for a new roll of solder. Which I needed maybe 1/38ths of an inch. I followed the directions just like the directions above. I raped and pillaged two old remotes for new LEDs. Took apart the Harmony carefully, removing the top and bottom screws on the case. Taking out the battery. Prying the shell apart using a swiss army knife screw driver, unscrew the two side screws holding the integrated circuit board in place, unplug the little plastic plug from the circuit board to the front panel board. Unsolder the two old LCDs. They are surfaced mounted so just heat both connections at once and hold the glass of the LED and pull gently and the old one comes out. Shape the leads of the new ones and make sure you're doing the same polarity. Polarity matters and you can look at the Cathode and Plate and easily see how to do the proper polarity. It's not hard at all. Just a tiny bit of solder on each lead. I used the swiss army knife to just gently cut/clean a bit between Gently put it all back together. Keep your fingers crossed and point at your HT set-up and press watch DVD.... and Viola!!! It works. Happy, Happy JOY JOY!! Saved $200 at least!!! I did the view of the LEDs looking through the LCD screen of my Canon point and shoot camera afterwards to see if I could see both emitters when I pressed volume, and yep, they both work! Let me know if you have the same problem and need any help... it's well worth doing and wasn't brain surgery at all.

Yeah, I've thought of that. But the deal is 50% off MSRP from Logitech. I'm going to try and fix it first, tomorrow. Then of that doesn't work, I'll be forced to buy another. I wish there were another vendor, as I am now a bit soured on Logitech.

I had the same thought. Sometime just a bit more separation can make a nice difference. It looks like there's some room there for some experimentation with that anyway. Gorgeous room, it looks like it's got so many reflective surfaces though.. the windows and the hardwood floors. More curtains and throw rugs would help too. Look at the size of those windows! Is it a restored industrial building? Here in the Northeast many have been turned into beautiful condos and thats what that looks like. I'm jealous!

Im not done yet, but I did steal the IT LEDs out of some old remotes. Here's the directions. My Harmony 880 also died suddenly, and after reading through all of these threads about Infrared LEDs failing, I decided to pick up a couple at Radio Shack and give it a whirl. No one on any of the threads I viewed gave the part number. Well folks, I can happily tell you that I replaced the pair on my remote, and it is working beautifully once again. Here's what I used. Due to a lack of identifying marking on the Infrared LEDs, and the fruitless search for a schematic, I am not certain that this replacement part is an identical replacement part, but it did work for me. A $4.00 repair attempt seemed worth the risk to me, considering I had a $200+ dead out-of-warranty remote!!!Radio Shack Catalog 276-143 $1.99 ea. · Note: I am a computer technician with a degree in Electronics Engineering Technology so this was a simple task for me to perform. Use the following steps at your own peril. or have a qualified person do this rather simple repair for you. Unsoldering and soldering is required and the use of a magnifying lamp (if available) may help with the soldering process...· Remove battery cover and battery. · Remove 2 small Phillips head screws from rear of remote · Gently pry apart the upper and lower casing. There are about 3 locking tabs on each side of the remote that make this a little difficult to pry apart, so be gentle as not to break the tabs, or gouge the seams along the sides of the remote. I used a small flat head screw driver to gently spread the casing, and then worked it down each side popping the tabs free. You are now looking at the keyboard membrane side of the circuit board. · Remove 2 small Phillips screws holding the circuit board securely in the base. Gently lift the circuit board from the base, and carefully unplug the battery contact connector from the top of the circuit board. · Turn the circuit board over and you will now be able to see the 2 infrared LEDs located on either side of the USB mini connector at the top/front of the circuit board. · Caution: Infrared LEDs have 1 positive (anode) and 1 negative (cathode) lead and you MUST make sure you solder the leads to the correct contacts on the circuit board. The cathode is the short lead and there may be a slight flat on the body of round LEDs. If you can see inside the LED, the cathode is the larger electrode (but this is not an official identification method). The packaging of the Radio Shack Infrared LED describes how to identify the cathode lead. · Unsolder one LED at a time, noting which side is anode, and which is cathode. You will notice that these LEDs are 'surface mounted' as opposed to through the board mounted. This means you will need to trim and bend (form) your leads on the replacement LEDs before soldering them onto the circuit board. Use the suspected bad LED as an example. Now replace the other LED as well.That's it! Now reverse the disassembly instructions, to re-assemble your remote, and go try it out! I hope you have as much success as I did. http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d17/swervepf/logitech%20harmony%20repair/CIMG0001.jpg http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d17/swervepf/logitech%20harmony%20repair/CIMG0003.jpg http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d17/swervepf/logitech%20harmony%20repair/CIMG0004.jpg

Well, if you go to the Logitech support forums and search you get nothing, BUT, if you go to Google and search on Harmony 880 failed you get a direct hit to the Logitiech forums forums that tells you the LEDs are the culprit and if you have old useless remotes around the house (of which I have a few) you can rape them for IR diodes and solder new ones in and you're in business. So tonight I sourced the IR LEDs, but I don't have any solder.. of which I need less than an 1/8th of an inch.. but I'll do that tomorrow. ...well, or maybe Wednesday, I need to go pick my daughter up in Brooklyn and bring her and the Grandpuppy home for the holiday. More later. Your Harmony may be next, it's pretty common.

Good idea. Money is for upggrades, but this isn't an area I was looking to improve.

So my Harmony 880 that I got for Christmas a couple/few years ago, seems to have died today. I got back from shopping and went to put on a DVD and nothing. It has the words "System Options" on the screen in the lower left hand corner, and then I seemed hung in whatever funky state it was in. So I pulled the batter and put it back in hoping it would reset, but no joy. Then I had to download the latest version of the Logitech software for Vista to get into that and redownload my configuration. Still no joy. So then I called product support. He had be look at the emitter through a LCD screen camera, where you can see the red emitter signals that way (I never knew that).. and yep... No Joy! ...and I'm out of warranty.. and it's more costly to fix that it's worth. But, they'll give me a 50% discount on a new one. So I go to the web site and the Harmony 1 is like $249! and the Harmony 700 is $149. The 700 seems reasonable. Has anyone gone through any of this? Any magic I can use to fix the one I've got? Any other tricks? If not, whats the best bang for my buck for a remote? Harmony or some other brand. I hate electronics that seems programed to fail. They dude on the phone didn't seem at all surprised that I had this problem.

What did WC Fields say? "There's a sucker born every minute." This guy is out to find one. I think those were the Tweeter House Brand for a while about a decade ago. The dude prolly wants a new Bose system, split up into 12 easy payments.

It's dramatic and beautiful, and what is especially impressive is it's not that big a room. But I think the drapes and curtains must really make a huge difference in accoustics. ... ...and I'm close enough to visit and help Gary enjoy it!!!

Post 'em up Gary! I'm interested.

Sorry, edit for wrong window. yeah.. I feel your pain, I have a hard time with anything less that DD5.1 anymore. Even the old vinly sounds better in DPLXX II or some such surround sound mode.

Gotta' love Bob Dylan!