9th February 2017, 6:30 PM
As far as TVs go, I've said some of this before, but since I don't want to have to spend the huge amounts TVs cost unless I have to, I've always had free TVs that I got from people. So, I still have a pretty old TV... well, sort of. It's old, but I only got it last summer. My first HDTV was a rear-projection CRT that I got from some relatives when they upgraded to a new TV. It was a Samsung with a ~38" screen, made in about '05 I believe. I got that TV in late 2012, which helped push me to get that 360 mid 2013, since I finally had an HDTV. However, that TV had a problem, the screen was badly tinted yellow. I kind of got used to it, but it's not great. I don't think it was like that before I got it, but something must have messed up in transit or something, because it always was like that for me.
Mid last year though, a neighbor was getting rid of an old TV of theirs, and I decided to take it. It's a ~45" rear-projection CRT from Sony, and it's from '04 so it's actually slightly older than my previous one, and it's a LOT heavier too -- the Samsung was relatively light for its large size, but this thing is very heavy, over a hundred pounds for sure. It's bigger than the last one and works perfectly, though, so it's a big upgrade in comparison. Of course, as it's still an rear projection screen it only supports up to 720p/1080i, but oh well, that's fine for now at least. One neat thing though -- I found this TV remote that works with both this TV and my PS3. I don't have the original remote for this TV, so it was great to have one with a button for changing the screen shape (4:3, 16:9, etc.), something the universal remote I found doesn't have; having to go into the menu every time I switch between a classic game and a modern one is not fun. Do more recent TVs automatically detect the correct aspect ratio of the image, like computer monitors do (or at least, the one I have, the 16:10 Asus I use as my main monitor, sure does)? That would be nice... having to switch that is kind of annoying on the TV, when on PC it recognizes that and does that automatically.
Returning to PC stuff, one issue I'm unsure on is if I need a separate sound card for this PC. On my previous (Vista) computer, using the onboard motherboard audio sounded noticeably worse than a dedicated sound card, so I used a sound card (A Soundblaster X-Fi) and not the motherboard audio. Unfortunately the motherboard for this new machine does not have a regular PCI port, and my sound cards are regular PCI, so I'd need a new sound card that uses a PCI Express x1 port to have a sound card here. Will it be worth it, though? Listening to it so far the audio on this motherboard seems okay (though not the best), but it'd probably be better with a sound card... I'm no audiophile of course, but you can probably do better than this. PCIe x1 sound cards are cheap enough that I might pick one up, but which... not sure.
Mid last year though, a neighbor was getting rid of an old TV of theirs, and I decided to take it. It's a ~45" rear-projection CRT from Sony, and it's from '04 so it's actually slightly older than my previous one, and it's a LOT heavier too -- the Samsung was relatively light for its large size, but this thing is very heavy, over a hundred pounds for sure. It's bigger than the last one and works perfectly, though, so it's a big upgrade in comparison. Of course, as it's still an rear projection screen it only supports up to 720p/1080i, but oh well, that's fine for now at least. One neat thing though -- I found this TV remote that works with both this TV and my PS3. I don't have the original remote for this TV, so it was great to have one with a button for changing the screen shape (4:3, 16:9, etc.), something the universal remote I found doesn't have; having to go into the menu every time I switch between a classic game and a modern one is not fun. Do more recent TVs automatically detect the correct aspect ratio of the image, like computer monitors do (or at least, the one I have, the 16:10 Asus I use as my main monitor, sure does)? That would be nice... having to switch that is kind of annoying on the TV, when on PC it recognizes that and does that automatically.
Returning to PC stuff, one issue I'm unsure on is if I need a separate sound card for this PC. On my previous (Vista) computer, using the onboard motherboard audio sounded noticeably worse than a dedicated sound card, so I used a sound card (A Soundblaster X-Fi) and not the motherboard audio. Unfortunately the motherboard for this new machine does not have a regular PCI port, and my sound cards are regular PCI, so I'd need a new sound card that uses a PCI Express x1 port to have a sound card here. Will it be worth it, though? Listening to it so far the audio on this motherboard seems okay (though not the best), but it'd probably be better with a sound card... I'm no audiophile of course, but you can probably do better than this. PCIe x1 sound cards are cheap enough that I might pick one up, but which... not sure.
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