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eq_shadimar

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Posts posted by eq_shadimar

  1. I have an Onkyo TX-NR525 that I have had for a couple of months now for my bedroom system.  I have not had it long enough to comment on the reliability issues but I will say that it is one of the few modern receivers that works with my older HDMI equipment.  Additionally it has 2 component inputs (no upscaling to HDMI, just switching) which I needed as well.  I have tried several other receivers but they did not like to work with my combination of HDMI wiring and equipment so I was super happy that this receiver did not have any issues.  It is currently on sale at Fry's for $169!

     

    Laters,

    Jeff

  2. I have a 52" high DaLite Model C High Power pull down screen (132" diag. for 2.35 and 106" diag. for 1.78)  the screen wall is 8'x11'  the room is 11'x16'.  The front row is about 9' away and the back row is about 13' away.  The picture is like sitting in the middle of an average movie theater and from the front row the picture is BIG.  :)

     

    I have attached some screenshots in honor of The Force Awakens teaser release.  Screenshots are with the lights on and off.

     

    post-4836-0-23760000-1417644523_thumb.jp

     

    post-4836-0-86560000-1417644540_thumb.jp

     

    post-4836-0-96920000-1417644563_thumb.jp

     

    Laters,

    Jeff

    • Like 3
  3. I have had and use a Prismasonic anamorphic lens for many years.  If you have any specific questions please let me know.  Here are some pictures:

    Projector and lens:

    fp_PC300055_web.jpg

    Front view with lights on:

    P1010074_web.jpg

    Lights on while playing movie:

    P1010096_web.jpg

    Same shot lights off:

    P1010097_web.jpg

    Laters,

    Jeff

  4. Hey that is my speaker [:)] Just so you know they started life as plain birch and somewhere down the line they were stained an ugly dark brown. I basically sanded down the entire cabinet and laid a couple coats of plain old Behr flat black on them so nothing special and certainly not anything "official". I love how they came out though and the finish has held up for all these years. I was going to put a half grill on them to protect the woofer but haven't gotten around to that yet.

    On another note if you are like me and do not like the greying paper woofer cone you can use some old school black india ink and a foam brush to "dye" the speaker cone back to a nice dark black. One of the best experiements that I ever did for those speakers [:)]

    Laters,

    Jeff

  5. Hey Justin -

    Welcome back [:)] Anyway my two cents is to use some foam of the correct thickness, density, etc with a sticky side on it (or not depending on where you need to mount it) between the bottom of the case and the tube. Also put some on the top of the case so the tube is sandwiched between the foam.

    Laters,

    Jeff

  6. QNAP is one of the best out there but really either one should work great for you. If you don't already know about it Small Net Builder is a great site for network equipment (NAS, Routers, Switches, etc) reviews: http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/

    One other important item that you will need is a good way to manage your music. I have around 67,000 music files and the only application that will manage that many files that I like is Media Monkey: http://www.mediamonkey.com/

    It has great features for tagging and fixing the tags on all your music files along with all the normal stuff you would expect (playlists, sync with portable player, etc).

    Laters,

    Jeff

  7. Well I may just be able to help out here a little bit since I have been doing this for several years now, and I am a hardware guy [:)]

    First in a home application desktop drives in a RAID configuration are fine. The actual RAID class HDD's are meant for business applications (think Google's or eBay's data center) and are way overkill for streaming music and video files around your house.

    Second if you are going to want more than four drive bays then you will want to build your own server. I recommend unRaid on Linux. Here is a link to their site: http://www.lime-technology.com/

    Third whichever way you go buy the most amount of storage that you can afford. Many NAS boxes and unRAID will let you add capacity and grow the RAID on the fly without having to do a complete backup and rebuild but it is a long process. If your RAID solution cannot do this then whenever you want to add space you will need to totally backup all your data, rebuild the entire array with the additional harddrives, and restore the data (ick).

    Ok so what am I using? I have a Promise SmartStor 4600n with 4x1 TB Drives for a total usable storage space of ~3TB. With In a RAID5 configuration you will always lose the space of one drive for RAID overhead. This overhead is what allows the RAID to be rebuilt if you lose a single harddrive. You need to have at least 3 harddrives for RAID5. So in a 4 bay enclosure with 4 1TB drives you could have the following configurations:

    RAID5 with hot spare ~2TB (a hot spare is a harddrive that sits in the enclosure doing nothing until a harddrive fails. The RAID will detect the failure and automatically start rebuilding the RAID to the hot spare without you having to do anything.

    RAID5 ~3TB

    JBOD - Just a bunch of disks - ~4TB, no redundancy, no spare, if a drive fails you lose all the data that drive contained.There are some other configurations such as a mirrored RAID1 which would give you ~2TB of space as well.

    As far as the processor required I think that any NAS you purchase will be fine streaming a single stream. You only have to worry about CPU horsepower if you want to stream HD content to multiple clients or endpoints.

    Ok now on to DLNA. DLNA is a great idea. You can put a tiny client inside a TV or whatever and have it stream the media from the DLNA server. In practice it does not work so well. The biggest issue is that while your DLNA server may be able to see and stream DVD ISO’s, FLAC files, etc most DLNA clients imbedded in TV’s and such will only be able to use MP3, MPEG4, and JPG files. A DLNA client in a media streamer like a Popcorn Hour or XBMC will be able to accept most media files. Bottom line you want to look for a streamer that will support SMB (Microsoft drive mapping standard) for the most flexibility. Using SMB your media on the NAS will appear as a network drive or resource on your media streamer.

    I use Popcorn Hour A-100’s and I am planning on getting either the Popcorn Hour C-200 or a Dune streamer for Blu-Ray ISO’s. There is no perfect media streamer at this point as far as I am concerned. They all have their faults. Most streamers are great with video but the music interfaces are lacking. I have loaded MPD and MPDJB on my A-100’s and the music interface now is much better but you will have figure out how to get them installed and working. Not a problem for me.

    If you have any more specific questions e-mail or post here and I can try to answer them.

    Laters,

    Jeff

  8. I tried XBMC, and actually still run it on my original modded xbox - I really prefer the two that I listed - if you haven't you should check them out.

    Yup I have tried them out. Good thing there are options out there for every taste [:)]

    Laters,

    Jeff

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