New Home, New Media Choices

This site has been a good place for me to blog about my life with media as a journalist, blogger and of course like everyone else, a consumer. In that vein I present you with the largest media consuming I’ve ever done as The Other half and I prepare to move into a new duplex in the city (that’s Chicago for those not keeping track).

On our first floor we have the main living area. It’s one open space with living room, dining room and kitchen. The main feature here will be the plasma, a 42 inch Panasonic. The Panasonic is widely regarded as the top choice in the segment. Besides the plasma our main concept for the room is to not have any electronics visible or on the floor. So I bought 8-inch Polk in-ceiling speakers to take care of the sound.

The receiver I chose was also a Panasonic, a new thin number with HDMI and 7.1 surround sound. It should be plenty for what we’re looking for and I like the small size since space is going to be a concern.

We’re trying to get everything wired to a closet on the opposite wall of the TV. Hopefully that will happen and it will house the HD Cable/DVR box, DVD recorder and receiver.

To compliment the downstairs set-up I bought the new Logitech Wireless DJ system. It connects to your PC and stereo and uses a wireless connection to stream digital music stored on the computer to the receiver and through our in-ceiling speakers. It’s a much more affordable solution than something like Sonos, and if it becomes outdated in a year or two I won’t feel ripped off. You interact with it pretty much like an iPod too and it can stream all formats of digital music. Some competitors won’t stream songs bought on iTunes which I find kind of odd. We don’t buy a lot on iTunes directly but I still like the concept.

Upstairs we’ll have the computer set-up in the 3rd bedroom and it will have cable access and the Wireless DJ thing connected to iTunes (we have a 300 GB external harddrive for tunes). I can watch TV and play Xbox on my 19-inch flatscreen at the computer desk. But I think I’ll set up the gaming in the second bedroom with its 27 inch Sony that used to be our big TV in the old apartment. It’s still a great TV and the Xbox will serve as a DVD player too. Not bad. Plus it gives us a comfy place when one of us wants to watch an entirely different show than the other.

The master bedroom will have no media in it besides a Bose Wave CD player. We need one un-wired room in the joint!

Something we haven’t bought yet is a universal remote but I’m eyeing the Logitech Harmony 890 because it uses RF and infrared. If everything is going to be hidden in a closet, the RF is essential and it will allow us to change the volume and TV while we’re in the kitchen or at the dining room table which is at an even odder angle to all the devices. If anyone has feedback on the Harmony 890 I’d love to hear it.

Also if anyone has suggestions on other devices we might be interested in comment below.

I’ll be blogging about the install and results as well so stay tuned.

Comments

[littlemoney]

beautiful features......

[LeOgAhEr]

I Love you girls

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