Working Hard All Day Long

July 16, 2007 at 12:32 am (General)

When it comes to projects, I usually end up working on them all day long.  Today was no exception as I put together a tv stand, got the 50" Plasma HDTV on its base and on the completed tv stand, called the Dish Network guys to come out and upgrade us to the High Def receiver and then I put together the 5.1 surround sound system.

 

Sound easy?  Well, not when you have to figure out the darn instructions.  I had no problems putting the stand together, but I like to take my time on these things to make sure I have a decent finished product instead of something that looks like it fell out of the truck.  Even the Plasma was fairly easy to get connected up and showing us some television.  Apart from finding the instructions, getting the dish network remote to recognize the tv was also simple.

 

Then came the speakers.  My head still hurts.  My valiant efforts provided no surround sound for the tv – yet once a dvd was inserted, the surround sound was fully operational.  Okay, back to the drawing board.  While I was looking through the instructions to see what I missed, I had a little voice telling me to call customer support.  I hate calling ANYBODY.  I especially hate calling tech support for stupid things.  I eventually discovered the error of my ways though and that was I didn’t connect the audio portion from the tv into the surround sound system.  So, after discovering that I had an extra set of wires handy the problem was solved.

 

Last and definately not least was the 360 (which looks so nice sitting on its little glass shelf).  Also a little troublesome since I messed up with the surround sound at first, I also plugged the high def component cables into the surround sound system and not the back of the tv.  Upon fixing that I held my breath and hit the switch.  It was okay, looked a little stretched. . .  decided to check the video settings and made a couple of adjustments like switching the settings to 720P instead of the 480 it was at.  Hmm… seems like I had to make one more setting change but I can’t think of what it was.

 

Anyway, fired up Bejeweled 2 and got a case of the giggles.  Not only did everything looks so clean and crisp, but the surround sound of those jewels exploding was definately making extra noise.  I also checked out Hexic in HD.  Then I went for a retail game test.  Holding my breath I put in F.E.A.R. and was blown away.  Yeah, I walked into a roomfull of bad guys and they threw a grenade at me.  :p  Okay, I’m fibbing – Holy Cow!  Everything is so much clearer.  I can actually read the text and see the details in the little graphics for how many grenades I have and medpacks.  I can actually see the enemy a little better as well and I was having lots of fun.  Last of all I had to do some racing in Forza.  Took me a couple of tries to finish an arcade race and then I experienced a time trial.  Last of all I went for my last race in the Lightweight series (Proving Grounds) and ran directly into a wall.  Even after that, I still managed to briefly take first place only to run into another wall…. So much for my bragging the other day about no contact.  :p  My second attempt netted me a much better result and now I only have the Heavyweight series to complete in order to grab that achievement.

 

Who knows what I’ll play tomorrow… I’d kinda like to see how some of the other games look in high definition glory.  :p