Well, expect lots of questions (I went crazy this weekend)...

[brianluvdvd]

Well, I did it. I lost my mind but I think I will be happy about it. Today I made the following purchases:

Mitsubishi WS-65411 HDTV
Denon 1600 DVD Player
Denon AVR-1803 Receiver
Definitive Technology BP2X Rear speakers (to add to my current ones for 6.1)

I feel like I have maybe gone nuts but I am terribly excited as well. Delivery is on Monday but of course I will also have to get the TV calibrated properly which means more cash. Plus I really need to get higher quality front, center & sub speakers to go with this nice stuff. Oh yeah, and a dish or HD cable.

So...expect tons of future questions (I promise to do a "search" first)! Maybe now I will understand the hype over anamorphic transfers & understand all the complaints on crummy transfers (that had currently looked okay to me).

Any others here gone a little nuts like this over a weekend?

[chipmac]

Congrats and good luck with your new toys. Remember to take it out of torch mode by turning down contrast on all inputs as soon as you get it. Mits ships their sets with contrast turned all the way up so they look good in the store but this causes burn in and shortens the life of the CRTs. Next get Avia to start calibrating it yourself right away and give it at least 3 months or 100 hours to break in before having it ISF calibrated. If you really want to tweak it out youself visit the hometheaterspot.com and join up to get access to their list of tweaks. I did and the only reason left for me to get a ISF calibration would be for greyscale adjustment.

[brianluvdvd]

Thanks for the tips Chipmac. Let me ask...I have Video Essentials but I am guessing that is is mainly for 4:3 TVs since it seems like it was made forever ago (and the instructions on the disc seem that way & never mention HDTV).

Is the AVIA disc specifically for HDTV or is there a certain calibration disc for HD? Thanks!

[chipmac]

I don't have nor have I ever used VE but yes you can use it to calibrate your set. If you don't want to pay the premium for Avia you can get his little brother called Sound & Vision Home Theater Tune Up. It's cheaper in price and just omits a lot of the more professional tests to make it more consumer friendly. If you use any one of these on either a HDTV or a SDTV the calibration is the same for Contrast, Brightness, Color, Tint and Sharpness. The only difference is the aspect ratio of your screen so you'll need to check VE to see if it has the tests for overscan and geometry for 16:9 sets.