Blu-Ray, HDMI, and LOTRO @ 50"

As much fun as it is to stream Netflix videos via the Wii and it's Wii-Fii (???) the novelty quickly wears off when the LAN bogs down and the movie needs to buffer every 5 minutes. Watching movies at the Wii's 480p was also not what I'd become accustomed to after watching HD Cable for a few months, so the wife and I decided an upgrade was in order. Queue in a Blu-Ray player with its glorious 1080p, hard-wired into the LAN (no Wii-Fii here). In the Wii's defense it could have been hardwired into the LAN as well, but it would have required the purchase of a $30 "dongle" to plug in the Cat-5e cable, whereas the Blu-Ray comes with a more sensible and LAN-friendly RJ45 port.

So the Blu-Ray arrived last week and the first thing I did, even before plugging anything in, was RTFM. Yes, I did. Which is how I read that Blu-Ray players apparently like the faster, Category2 HDMI cables. So off to Target I went, armed with a $25 Gift Card provided by my thoughtful wife, where I found 3' cables for $30, and 6' cables for considerably more. Best Buy were next door, and while their online store said the brick & stone store did not carry the el cheapo $10 HDMI cables readily available online (& for in-store pick-up, if you want to wait a week), I thought I'd check there anyway. I left empty-handed when I saw their cheapest 3' cable was $40, and made my way across the road to that bastion of the working class man, Walmart, where I picked up a 6' cable for $20. Hooray!

Back home I got everything plugged in, tuned the TV to HDMI#2 and...the words "Invalid Format" appeared and began floating around the screen.

Invalid Format? Whaddayamean Invalid Format???

It took a day and a couple of visits to an online forum for my Blu-Ray player to work out that my 50" Plasma HD TV is not 1080p like I thought, but only 720p (which sucks, but I'm old, so my eyes probably can't tell the difference anyway) and solving my "Invalid Format" problem was as simple as telling the Blu-Ray to output a 720p signal.

That was all it took to get high quality Netflix movies streamed to our HD TV without pauses to buffer every few minutes. A bonus is that the Blu-Ray will also do Pandora, Hulu, and other streaming media sites, including Youtube. I now have the ability to watch Youtube videos on my HD TV, which means when BBC-USA wants to edit & cut episodes of Dr. Who so they can get in more commercials, we can watch Dr. Who on the 50" TV via Youtube. Another bonus is BBC-USA sometimes delays airing certain episodes, sometimes for a week or more, but considerate fans will often record those very same episodes & upload them to Youtube literally the second that episode has aired in the UK.

Getting the Blu-Ray hooked up and streaming Youtube also piqued my curiosity about hooking up one of our PCs (albeit temporarily) to the 50" TV, which I initially thought I could do via DVI. Except even though the HDMI#1 port (for the HD Cable) is labeled HDMI/DVI, the 50" TV doesn't actually have a DVI-in. Curiouser & curiouser. What it does have, however, is an RGB port, being the current industry standard PC video plug. Awesome. Unlike the Blu-Ray, hooking up the PC was as simple as plugging it in and switching to the appropriate Input. Okay, so there was also the issue with turning off & unplugging my son's PC, then dragging it downstairs, then getting it all hooked back up again, including unplugging the Cat5e from the Blu-Ray so I could have wired Internet access on the PC. After that, it was simple :)

And that was how my wife found me, kicking back on the sofa, playing Lord of the Rings Online on our 50" HD TV. Additionally, rather than rest the keyboard on my lap, I'd dragged over our two small side tables and had the keyboard on one and the mouse on the other and had my legs stretched out between them. If you currently have a mental picture of someone piloting a starship a la "Flight of the Navigator" you probably have a good idea of what I looked like.

I was only able to get in a few hours playing like this before the boy was due back home and I wanted his PC back in his room before the in-laws dropped him off (I didn't want him to get any funny ideas...maybe as a special treat, maybe ;) but those few hours of playing LOTRO @ 50" was awesome, and very, very comfortable :)

As for streaming Netflix, I'm in two minds over that. While it's great having a ton of movies-on-demand for a very low price (we have the cheapest 1 physical DVD at-a-time package), the selection of movies that can be streamed is somewhat limited. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of movies you can watch, including some relatively new releases (the bunny was watching Astroboy last night), but many of the movies I'm interested in are only available on DVD, like Clint Eastwood's two classic "Clint & Clyde" movies, Peter Seller's "The Party", and Terrence Hill's obscure but hilarious "Trinity" movies. I'm happy to have streaming Netflix at 720p, but not happy that many of the movies I want to watch are not immediately available.