I just wanted to pot that I was very pleased with the Zip.ca service I signed up for about 2 months ago. It a mailing dvd rental type service. I make a list up ( called a ziplist) of movies I would like to see and then send as they come available. I usually end up with about 5 or 5 movies each month. I have only used for Blu-Ray. My local video stores have had pathetic selection of Blu-ray movies to rent and this was a good solution. I have the 9.95 package which is almost the cost of one Blu-Ray rental at Blockbuster. Getting “good” movies has not been the greatest- but I do eventually get them, I would recommend using this type of service if you have a Blu-Ray player and are having trouble finding titles. Most, including zip.ca offer a free trial for 2 weeks.

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Posted by Linda- Home and Garden Ideas as Home Theater at 11:43 AM EDT

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I have been REALLY disappointed in the selection of Blu-ray discs available for rent at our local Blockbuster and other video stores. They have had MAYBE 30 of them in - most I wouldn’t rent in a million years. The I go to Wal-Mart and I see they have tons available. Annoying. I signed up for a trial membership at Zip.ca about a week ago. hey do have fast shipping ( usually 2 days) and they have cool feature where you can tell them you have mailed back a DVD and they take your word for it and send out another. i have found that my top choices never seem to be available.

There ar many dvd by mail services available I just happened to try zip.ca because I liked the price 9.95 a month. I You can have unlimited DVDs but only one out at a time. You can upgrade to having 3 dvd out and cost is 24.95. The cost of 1 Blu-Ray rental at Blockbuster is 7.99 ( I think) so this is good deal .

There is a good list of online dvd rental services in Canada, here

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Posted by Linda- Home and Garden Ideas as Home Theater at 12:34 PM EDT

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If you recently bought an HDTV and are setting up your home theater- you may have been pretty shocked to discover the cost of cables. At most stores HDMI cables- which you need for 1080p resolution high definition television, PS3, cable boxes or upconverting DVD players, and high definition DVD players ( Blue-Ray and HD DVD) you MUST have these. When we first brought our HDTV (an HP 5880 ) cables were in the 100.00 + range OUCH. They still are. Don;t pay for name brand cables- like Monster- they arent worth it. The HDM cables here at monoprice.com will do the job- for under 10.00!

These are pretty hard to beat. $6.52 or for 2- 5 of them $6.11 each.

Cheap GoldPlate HDMI Cables

HDMI Cable male to male 28AWG - 15ft w/Ferrite Cores (Gold Plated)

Shipping to Canada is about 4.00 . Can’t go wrong here!

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Posted by Linda- Home and Garden Ideas as Audio and Video, Home Theater at 1:09 PM EST

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Good list here of Good movies To Watch On Your Home Theater- Movies With Good 5.1 Sound

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Posted by Linda- Home and Garden Ideas as Home Theater at 2:19 PM EST

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My husband is an audiophile- as in collects vinyl LP’s and constantly building tube amps, pre-amps and buying/trading phonostages. Whole lot of tweaking and not a lot of listening IMHO. We have a really nice TV- one of the first 1080p capable televisions on the market- an HP 5880. He wont; hook up home theater sound and receiver CHEAPLY because it will sound awful. I just can;t see spending 5,000 on a system- then I am a girl

This week he gave in and is putting it together. We all ready have decent speaker and sub-woofer for it. I spent hours finding deal on receivers. I have ordered two different ones to try- a Yamaha 6025 5.1 and a Sony STRG510. Both were under 200.00.
This one I chose:

and this one he chose:

So we will check out both. The Yamaha he is convinced will have better sound- but it does not have HDMI(!) He bought a used center channel speaker- which he says is the most important speaker. I will get name of the make later. For rear channel speakers, I saw a pair of Braxton Bookshelf speakers for 30.00 at XS-Cargo.. How bad could they be? I picked them up yesterday and husband was okay with them- he was actually surprised at the quality. Our TV has a Faroudja processor in it- and I have been doing some reading that an up- converting DVD is not necessary with an HDTV UNLESS the dvd player has a better one than the one in TV. At any rate- I also got aPHILIPS upconverting dvd playeryesterday. It was floor model, didn;t have remote and they made mistake on pricing and cost me 30.00, they are usually about 70.00-80.00. Costco has them for 68.00 CAD and they go on sale ocassionally at other box stores. I wanted it more for the USB port. I was able to play divx/avi files on a flash thumb drive from it no- problem. This will be great! Oddly the player does not have DTS or optical audio. I am going to test it later and see if I can play off flash Zune player husband has and I have a Creative ZEN and will check out. Futureshop had 4 gig thumb drives for 14.99 this week and I am KILLING myself that I didn’t grab one the other day. I was a nut and tried to surprise husband boxing day and went down at 4 am to pick up Toshiba HD DVD (A3 model) player for 99.00 No dice :(.

The yards of speaker cable came from Home Depot. You can get for cents a foot and not dollars a foot at Radio Shack, etc. He got about 30 feet for 10.00. Cheap HDMI cable? Some nice ones at Monoprices.com for 5.24, HDMI 1.3a Category 2 Certified Cable 28AWG - 6ft w/Ferrite Cores (Gold Plated) - BLACK is in stock and shipped for under 10,00 total. So hooked that up- and I can see a difference- maybe about a 10% difference- especially when playing divx/xvid files. The receivers aren’t coming until this week so no chance to try the system out yet. Will update. Not sure what would be good movies to try and new 5.1 sound? Was thinking of Master and Commander or Jurassic Park? Any thoughts welcome!

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Posted by Linda- Home and Garden Ideas as Electronics, Home Theater at 10:25 AM EST

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