Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Outlaw Model 997 cancelled

Yes indeed I'm not alone, this is driving everyone else just as mad as it is me!

The other day in another thread Ray Lewis asked me to see if I could find an interview with Bill Gates that I'd referenced. While I failed to find what I was looking for, I did stumble upon an interview where he was talking about an 'All-In-One' set top box that was your DVR, DVD/BR, cable provider, surround sound management... EVERYTHING box. And while I've heard others like Grunt (I think) mentioning turning computers into HT units, it never really interested me at all, until I read that article.

Then just the other day I had rented a movie from our local video store, and when I got it home my DVD player wouldn't play it. I took it out & cleaned it as good as I could, kept trying it, with no luck. I wanted to watch it so badly that as a last ditch effort I threw it into the CD-ROM on the computer (which is hooked up to my big screen LCD) and tried playing it on there... it played without a hitch!?! And I must say without doing any critical listening experiments on it, the soundtrack (Enemy of the State) sounded awesome!

And that got me to thinking, instead of looking for the perfect Blu-Ray player, should I just be looking to buy a Blu-Ray drive for the computer and be done with it? After all I have an HDMI video card installed on my computer, so it sends the picture out at up to 1080p, and while my computer doesn't decode the newest audio formats, I could send it PCM to the reciever to decode through the HDMI connection. So what's stopping me?

And then it really occured to me, when these recievers come out and are outdated within a year or two, computers are customizable. That's a huge plus. For instance if my Denon 4802 was built more like a computer, when HDMI 1.1, then 1.2, then 1.3 & now 1.4 came out, I could have just bought a new audio/video board with those connections built into it, slid it in place, and voila, no need for another $1500 dollar reciever!

Ok so now I'm seeing the light. The only down side is, the Blu-Ray drive for my computer won't have a scaler ship for regular DVD's will it? Is there hardware/software that will scale regular DVD's the same as the Oppo and other Blu-Ray players?

Heck if I could find the right hardware/software to distribute up to 9.2 discrete channels from my computer with the new PLII'z, and a few other modes that I use, then I'd toss my reciever altogether and just run the connections straight from my computer to my amps (I'd have to get a few more since all I have right now is the 3 channel Emotiva).

The more I think about it the more it makes sense. When something new comes out, I buy an upgraded audio &/or video card for a few hundred bucks tops (my HDMI audio/video card set me back a whopping $75 bucks), instead of having to plunk down upwards of $1000 bucks on a new reciever that I know will be outdated in a few years time. Need HDMI 1.4? Upgrade the audio video card. Need a 3D Blu-Ray player? Throw in a 3D Blu-Ray ROM into your computer instead of waiting for prices on the new 3D Blu-Ray players to come down from $1500 down to something I can afford. And it's all custom, I don't have to spend money on any bells I don't want/need, but can pick up the one's I do want without having to pay for all those other one's at the same time.

At the very least these new possibilities should have the audio/video manufacturers rethinking their products. Now that technology is moving so fast, why aren't they making recievers with upgradeable audio/video cards so that the entire unit isn't just a disposable commodity when the consumer wants to upgrade to the newest technology? There's no reason I shouldn't be able to at the very least send my 4802 back to Denon & have a new board installed in it with the connections I want at a fraction of the cost of a new reciever.

Where's our man Tucker? Why if he were around today he'd make a reciever with upgradeable components on it & steal away EVERYONE's business! The first company who does offer this would clean house in my opinion. They'd also get many death threats from the other company's who're still trying to wring every last cent out of the consumer as they can... But the other guys would soon have to offer the same options or go out of business completely I would think.

In this day and age, that sort of capability should be expected, not neglected.