The Cineplex is back! I spend all last night and this morning entering in every DVD I own to DVD Profiler (it has been so long since I last did that, I figured I needed a fresh start). Total count: 1,070 DVDs. I thought I had more, but before I had put in my award screeners I received when reviewing movies. This time through, I excluded those DVDs and just put in my retail DVDs - from HD-DVD to Criterion to snappers. They're all there.

Cables for home theater arrived yesterday. No word on tv stand yet. TV en route. Receiver expected Tuesday. HD-A2 still projected for Dec. 11th release date.

URL: The Cineplex - Blake's DVD Collection

Wow, these new HD-DVD cases are pretty sweet. They're not as tall as regular DVD cases and they are slimmer too. A cool translucent red color, they work quite well. Now, just to get an HD-DVD player so I can watch them.

URL: Amazon.com: V for Vendetta [HD DVD]: DVD: Paul Giamatti,Jeffrey Wright

My TV shipped yesterday from Crutchfield, not sure how long it'll take - but they say about 4-6 days (business days probably), so hopefully I'll be able to schedule home delivery some time next week.

My new Denon receiver shipped the day it was ordered and is scheduled for delivery on December 5th (seemed far away when I saw the date, but it's only next Tuesday! - this year has gone by fast).

I canceled my TV stand order at Crutchfield since they weren't going to get it in until December 20th or so and placed an order with etronics.com. It was going to be $27 more due to shipping, but after seeing they are running a promotion for free shipping if you pay via Paypal, I immediately did that and saved $77, or a $50 savings over Crutchfield. It hasn't shipped yet, but should ship tomorrow I'm hoping.

That's about it I guess. The HD-A2 will be shipped to retailers on December 11th. Hopefully Crutchfield will have enough to fill my order and send it out that week. If not, no worries, just a slight delay for me to watch my HD-DVDs which shipped from Amazon yesterday.

Oh yeah, my new cables should be here tomorrow. The new couch came today and is HUGE. Much larger than expected. But it looks like it will work and will easily seat 6-7 people for a nice sports-watching event.

URL: Crutchfield: Electronics, Car Audio, TV, Home Theater, Video, MP3

With Christmas coming and a bonus expected, I went a bit wild and I'm getting a new home theater system.

The cornerstone of the system is a new 60" Grand WEGA SXRD Rear Projection Sony TV. The TV is a thing of beauty. It will have it's own nice stand and the stand will hold all the new (and a few old) components.

With the new TV, I need a new receiver capable of handling HDMI. Based on reviews and advice from a few forums, I decided on the Denon AVR-2307CI. It has two HDMI inputs along with pretty much everything else you could ever possibly need. It will also be a huge upgrade from my cheap Onkyo receiver, which has served me well.

With an HDTV, you need an HD-DVD player, so I am getting the HD-A2 player from Toshiba when it is released (slated for December 11). This second generation player should be all I need, but I also will probably keep my old Daewoo DVD-5800 player which has worked flawlessly with burned discs and such.

Along with them, I'll be upgrading my DVR to the Explorer 8300 HD which features HDMI out, thusly taking up my second HDMI port on the receiver.

Also being connected, my HTPC and my D-Link Media Lounge network music and video player.

Oh yeah, and my Wii.

The great thing about the receiver is it will take all of those inputs and output them over one HDMI cable to the TV. That's it. One cable running to my TV from the receiver. Beautiful. Of course, with all this fancy-shmancy stuff, I need quality cables rather than the crap that comes packaged with these items. So I bought a bunch of cables from MonoPrice.com - their quality and prices cannot be beat. You pay $20 for a cable Monster wants to charge you $150 for.

The only question that remains is whether or not I'm going to get a power conditioner. I have two Belkin UPS's that I was going to use since they feature AVR (automatic voltage regulation) - all voltages are held at a steady 120 volts (or very close to it) and they also provide battery backup in case the power goes out.

My receiver shipped today, my cables will ship tomorrow or Friday, my TV should ship today, my stand is back-ordered, the DVD player will ship mid-december, and Amazon told me today that my first HD-DVDs shipped today. Ahhh...the anticipation.

Oh yeah, this was all facilitated because I'm getting a nice new couch for free because my dad won a gift certificate to a furniture store between innings of an Angels game on the big screen. With the new couch and new theater, I have to completely rearrange my room - which I've been doing over the past few days. I just can't wait to get it all installed, all working, and not have to worry about it again.

URL: SonyStyle.com | 60" Grand WEGA™ SXRD™ Rear Projection HDTV