9 out of 10 monkeys believe they are not behind glass

Having a home theater PC on a TV that can handle it is very nice indeed.

Hitting iTunes, or even Winamp, radio on the system is great. The sound gets piped to my reciever over fiber, and the video hits the TV at 1920×1080 resolution. The visualization stuff with winamp (the pretty pictures that move with the sound) looks awesome and on a decent sound system, even internet radio sounds great.

Surfing the net from the couch is kind of neat too. I was surfing some car sites, looking at the new models and the like for our upcoming car shopping, and having a 3D model of the car on your big screen is a great way to look at vehicles.

But the real kicker is actual HDTV. The Kansas City Chiefs game was cool to watch.

And I hate football.

It is like being mesmerized by the very blades of grass, hypnotized by the depth and clarity of the field and the players, even the audience in the stands. You just start to fall into it and an hour later, you snap alert with instant clarity and realize that you have been drooling all over your remote.

Ok, not really. But dang. Every channel should be in HD. The movies on my HTPC look awesome. I have an program that processes the DVDs to output to the size of the screen, cleaning up defects and the like at the same time. Makes the Sony upconverting DVD player my wife uses pale in comparison. And I thought it looked good on my old gen1 hdtv.

Its like I am a kid at christmas. My name is Ralphie and I just received my official Red Ryder, carbine action, two-hundred shot range model air rifle, with a compass in the stock and this thing which tells time!

Hopefully I won’t shoot my eye out.