Just thought I’d update on some of the new equipment.

With 412 hours on it the lamp of the AE4000 is starting to show it’s age. I’m still running it in “eco-mode” since I don’t see a big difference running it in normal. I’m still using “cinema 1” which IMO gives the best un-calibrated picture. PQ is still great but it’s lost some of the pop it had right out of the box. Switching the picture mode to normal retuns the pop but also IMO is as true looking and also seem to loose a little shadow detail though I haven’t tried tweaking any setting to make this mode look better yet. No complaints since I knew I was going to be stretching the limits of this projectors capabilities.

I’ve done a lot more listening using the height and wide speakers and can say it’s really a coin toss for me which I prefer. I would say if you can, wait until a reasonably priced receiver (last time I looked the Denon wasn’t in my reasonable range) comes out offering both of them. They are both nice but not IMO at twice the price I paid for my Onkyo.

Since the chairs I bought are more than tall enough to see over the M80s to the screen building a riser became unnecessary so I tried to find another way to connect my Buttkicker to all three of my chairs. Turns out just attaching the Buttkicker to a long 2x4 and putting the back legs of the chairs on it works great. Actually the bass now feels better (tighter and more natural) than when I had it attached directly to my futon in the apartment. Must have something to do with the dampening effect of having the 2x4 laying on the ground. If I ever decide to add more chairs I’ll need to make I riser or use another Butkicker.

Still waiting on the curtains from Dazian as they ran out of the material I requested. To their credit they offered to substitute an equally dark and more expensive material for he same price but it had audio dampening qualities I didn’t want so I chose to wait. Should get them some time in January. Have to say they’ve been great to work with sending samples of material so I could test it and grommets so I could check for compatible curtain hardware.

Having seen and heard what Blu-ray has to offer I’ve started ordering more of them than I had ever intended as I see them on sale at Amazon. For example:

Original Star Trek seasons 1-3
Original Star Trek movies pack
Star Trek Next Gen movies pack
10 pack of James Bond movies
15 other miscellaneous titles.


3M80 2M22 6QS8 2M2 1EP500 Sony BDP-S590 Panny-7000 Onkyo-3007 Carada-134 Xbox Buttkicker AS-EQ1