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Where to get A/V cables
Many, and I mean, many of you have left comments concerning where to get cables for your HDTV. Monoprice.com has been a favorite of many of you but there are other places when quality is a concern. Don't get me wrong, a lot of the cables that Monoprice sells are good but, lets be honest here, there are better out there. A couple of months ago we showed you how to make great quality component cables. BlueJeansCable.com takes out all the guess work, and fun, of constructing these cables. They use Belden cables with Canare ends; just like we did. Last but not least is Monster Cable. Say what you will but these are great cables. Yes, they cost a good amount of money and sometimes their business practices can be questionable, but they make one heck of a cable. HDMI, DVI, and optical are digital so cheap low-priced should preform as good as expensive ones, right? Not from my experiences. Radio shack was clearencing out some cables so I picked up a few optical/s-video kits only to return them as the optical cable just did not sound right. I found it is all in the connector so before you order that ultra-low price HDMI cable, make sure it has a good connector.
Gefen's new component extender
In today's home theaters, no one want to have all their fancy equipment sitting on top of their shiny new HDTVs, and yesterday's technology can't help much when it comes to distributing HD signals around the house. Transferring HD material throughout the house or even to another room just got a little easier with Gefen's new Component Extender. The extender uses CAT5 to extend your VGA or component signals up to 300 feet and handles 1080p transmissions. It has VGA ports on the box but includes the VGA to component adapter. I could have used one of these in my setup, but instead I used 3 coax runs which are a little harder to run than a single CAT5 cable. On the other hand 3 coax runs doesn't cost $300 like Gefen's new device.
Think the Xbox 360 doesn't fit in with your home theater? Think again
Check out this installation done by Diversified Technologies, which combines an Xbox 360, Windows XP PC and a high definition video switcher and distribution system to play music, movies and pictures throughout the house. Although they are not streaming video from the PC because it isn't running Media Center, the Zektor video switch and Audio Authority distribution system display content from the 360 or satellite source to any of the connected TV's.Thats certainly an interesting approach, however one has to wonder about all the heat the 360 puts out, not to mention whether it has space for the hard drive on the side in that slot. That aside, the 360's smooth interface and wireless controllers make it ideal for this sort of application, I guess we'll see these showing up on the HD Beat flickr group soon.
How to connect your PC to your HDTV
Now that we all know how to get OTA HD, now we need to know how to connect our HTPC to our HDTV so that we can watch our free HD in all its glory -- HD is cool on a computer monitor, but it's nothing like a huge HDTV.How you do this will depend primarily on your PC and your HDTV, lucky for us that they both share some common interfaces -- and newer video cards have HDMI. The most common interface for computers is DVI and HDMI for HDTVs, so you have a few options here -- S-Video and Composite won't work because they only carry SD signals and what fun would that be?
Truck carrying HDTV components hijacked in the Phillippines
Apparently some of you guys are really excited about higher quality images on your high definition TV's. I don't know if it was because of our mention, but a truck full Maxim's parts (possibly including some of their "true" high definition amplifiers) was hijacked recently. I'm not sure what you could do with $565,000 worth of amplifiers, but I'm sure it wouldn't include MNF at your place now would it? Cuz you'd leave us a note in the tips form right? right?
