It's irratic. I've had to give up posting at times. GW has always had a problem somewhere. I just figure they have a tough time keeping up with the growth and either working on new software/servers or trying to make the old still work. Problems showed up when they merged, which doesn't surprise me. They probably have to get more than one thing to sinc with another. It is odd though as not all the forums will act the same at the same time and it doesn't seem to matter relative to graphics or traffic.

Hey, Scott....
Glad to see you on this side.
Done anything interesting with your house lately?

Well to keep the censors at bay, let me first say that I haven't made any interesting improvements to my small house. My septic tank drainfield stopped working and had to be replaced. Home maintainence zapped the home improvement budget so everything else is on hold for a while. Add my son's 16th bday on the 9th and Christmas closing in fast and there just isn't any cashflow left. In fact, it all left!

My son and I did engage in a rather fun and interesting project two weekends ago but since it was more furniture related I didn't feel right airing it here, but since you asked.....

I bought him a flat screen high def television for his birthday. My first. I had a 27 inch conventional tube TV sitting in a typical entertainment system/wall unit. That unit was quite large and included a concealed, swing out rack on the left to hold the CD's, DVD's, etc. and a rack system on the right for stereo equipment. Although the old wall unit was quite large, my new flat screen TV (37 inch) wouldn't fit the hole for the TV. I had looked around for a replacement stand to hold the cable box, my son's game system, etc. and put the flat screen TV at an appropriate height but couldn't find anything. We had unloaded the old wall unit and wheeled it out to the porch so we could load it into the truck and take it to the dump. We had talked about designing and building our own stand and since the old unit was very large and very heavy, we started dismantling it to salvage hardware and make it easier to handle. The more we dismantled, the more I started thinking I could cut this old unit down to size and redesign it. So we did.

My old (1985 vintage) component stereo system had developed some problems so the stereo section was eliminated. I liked the concealed rack for the Games. Cd's, DVD's so we disassembled that, shortenened it, changed the location of the shelves and reassembled it. Then we shifted the stereo cabinet upright panels over to the "TV hole" and shortened them, creating a shelf for the cable box, game system and another shelf for the modem and wireless router since all that connects to my incoming cablevision. We shortened and refitted the top and voala! A redesigned cabinet/TV stand for zero dollars. The old unit was about 60 inches wide and 50 inches tall the new unit is about 40 inches wide and 34 inches tall. Perfect fit! And, my son and I had a great time thinking through the redesign and planning it out so most of the old hardware went back into the factory holes. It was a fantastic father/son project and one we won't soon forget.

This will do until we find a better solution or until we design and build a replacement unit from scratch.

Fun enough? Sorry that took so long to describe.

Scott

Scott, that sounds like a great idea. Can you show a picture of your rebuilt cabinet?

btw, I haven't noticed any difference in the speed at GW.

Scott never fear about your repurposing of storage components making your post "offtopic." Oh no way. When they have a special forum for storage and organization in the home, it is totally proper that we have such posts appear here. Where better to talk about using space than on our SMALLER HOMES forum?

You really came up with a good solution to your TV problems.
To make a further bit of information that I recently tested and found that IT WORKS, it is about playing AUDIO CDs on the DVD player.

I have a DVD player connected to our flat panel HDTV via the HDMI cable. I turn the TV remote to HDMI#1 input (it has 3 HDMI inputs) which is where the DVD unit is attached to the TV inputs. And, it will let me play the audio CDs or picture CDs/VCDs through the TV, including the speakers.
I am using the internal TV speakers (stereo) and have no external speakers attached, but the sound is good for me.

I point this out, because you may wish to play your audio disks before buying another music sound system. This will work fine, and it is worth trying anyway. Both DH and I like music, but do not need a high-$$$$$ sound system, since he is very hard of hearing, and I have other priorities right now. So that is the way we now listen to music.

I also have a wireless router connection coming to the Blu-Ray player in the HDTV set in Alabama. I subscribe to Netflix and can stream movies direct to the house. If your Cablevision setup supports that, you might have that option as well. It does take a Blu-Ray player I think. Mine is the Vizio brand Blu-Ray player.

Moc - I guess I'm sort of a creature of habit almost to the point of OCD. When I find something I like, I take care of it and expect it to last forever. Sometimes, I have been known to buy two, one as a back-up to substitute when the primary eventually fails. I'm also not an early adopter. Final point, minus the constant ringing, my hearing is fine and I sometimes want a robust sound when listening to music. More robust than my TV speakers can deliver so I was sad to see my JVC component system develop a noticable limp. And no, I don't want to go out and buy (more money) a surround sound system and have to crawl under the house to run wires.

My son has an Xbox game system and we subscribe to Netflix so I have made that techology leap.

I have been burning my old CD's (and some new ones) to my computer hard drive on my last three computers. Although I have never had a PC or laptop with really good speakers so I haven't really used the PC as a playback device.

I was given an iPod last year and have been slowly warming up to that technology although I find iTunes cumbersome and not very user friendly. Or at least I was warming up to iPod based music systems until I recently ran across the Bose wireless speaker system. They are marketing a speaker system similar to their iPod sound dock but instead of plugging your ipod into it, you plug a wireless transmiter into a USB port on your computer and it transmits the sound to the Bose speaker. The speaker itself operates on AC or DC so you can even take it outside with you. You simply call up whatever program you have your music stored on, I prefer Microsoft Media Player, pick your album, playlist or random selection and hit play. Great sound, no more earbuds. It's about $500 and I had it on my Christmas wish list (from me to me) but I'm afraid the septic drain field put a serious dent in that dream for now. Maybe someday.

The other factor to mull over here is I honestly doubt that iPod technology or any other current option will be around as long as my 1985 JVC compnent system lasted. And regardless of technological improvements, there is something disconcerting about rapid technology changes combined what appears to be planned obsolescence forcing consumers to continually upgrade hardware just to keep up. It is very hard to live below your means and accumalate wealth when hardware seems to have a built in lifespan of about three years max. My first PC keyboard could be used as a weapon. My currnet keyboard on my work PC could almost be mailed with a first class stamp! With the exception of automobile engines, nothing seems to be built to last anymore, including houses. But I digress.

Scott

OMG Scott, I absolutely ADORED my JVC component system which I bought back in 1990. I had it stashed in the attic until my DH cleaned out and asked me why was I hanging on to it.

And I have a wireless transmitter that plugs into a USB port to boost signals....with all the wire mesh reinforcing our plaster walls, it seemed like a good idea. My DH is a fan of
Bose, so I bet I could convince him that the wireless system is the WAVE of the future (pun pun). I'm wondering if it is a through-the-air transmission, or if it will work through the house wiring that way, like some cordless phones.

I thought that maybe using your DVD player for music CDs would save you some funds, but it sounds like you have multiple options.

Oh yes, about discussing FURNITURE. There is a whole forum here on the home side of GW that discusses just that. I visited there tonight for a while, and had to bite my tongue to keep from chiming in on some topics, especially some of those asking about DURABLE KITCHEN TABLES. Mercy we on this forum have great people who are not restricted to shopping only for NEW OBJECTS, folks who have a lot of IMAGINATION ( just about everyone over here), and who know about RESTORE and CRAIGSLIST and FREECYCLE and ROADSIDE SHOPPING. Among other things. So keep on bringing your alternative solutions to the board and do not hesitate to revel in your creativity. You came out ahead because you also have a great father/son memory as a result.

Appreciate your input, and have missed it. Glad you're back.

Never far away, just didn't have anything productive to add to the current post.

On the positive side, as I endeavor to live small yet uncluttered, eliminating the old component system seems like a natural progression and moving towards electronic music storage is a natural evolution. I just wish I had confidence that this evolution won't push me further down that road of planned obselescence. It is undeniable that wealth accumalation and repetative consumption do not go hand in hand.

Another cool feature on my new TV is I can plug in a flashdrive/thumbdrive/jumpdrive into a USB port on the side and it acts like a digital picture frame switching from photo to photo. So I guess some progress is good.

Scott

Talking about electronic evolution.....
Well, I had some "issues" with my laptop which is now 4 years old. It was a hot machine when I bought it, but is showing signs of aging. But now is not the time to replace it for various reasons.

The DVD drive quit working at all, then the techie got it to reading but NOT writing, so I could not use it to back up any of my treasured photos. That is when I discovered that Western Digital has a removeable hard drive which connects via the USB port, and it is tiny and holds close to 1000 GIGABYTES.....And so I bought one, hoping that USB technology will not be soon replaced by something which will make my photos inaccessible.

And that tiny little drive holds that much info, while my very first desktop computer, an IBM brand, had a total harddrive internal of only THREE GIG? How far we've come.

Now I can take that T1 external drive to any computer and load copies of photos to that computer. No problem with sending files to my DH's computer via email now. Or trying to do so via the home network. I can also load music on his computer as well. Very handy little gadget.

I think that the obsolescence is in the nature of technology. Whether it is "planned" or not, things do change. JVC was the creator of the VHS (and that was driven by the porn film market), and that format is totally aged and passe now. I think even the CD and DVD formats are on their last legs as well. Certainly the 8-track and mini-cassettes are all passe too. The problem with hanging on to that format is, you won't find anything to play your tapes on in the future...they will become untranslatable to the new machines. Hopefully, the MPEG3s and other computer readable formats will be backward compatable with any new equipment in the next generation of computers.

In my case, I hope the books I buy through Audible.com can be read for years to come. I've already disposed of all my old VHS movies. I've stopped buying DVD movies. Now I just stream them, or borrow them from Netflix. Most of the new movies they advertise these days are far removed from my comprehension and/or interest. They are soap bubbles which soon expire and leave no impression. I like stories with substance and impact, not simply noise.

I take it back. GW is slow for me today. Crawling. Along with every link to photobucket.