Sunday, April 13, 2008

Home theater improvements

Last week I bought a HDMI-DVI adapter that lets me hook up my Macbook Pro to my HDTV. Now I can use my 42" TV as an extra monitor. Why? Well, why not? It's there, it's beautiful, and the Mac can output 1920x1080 to fill the entire screen. Right now my extra HDMI cable is only 6 feet long so I can't sit comfortably on my sofa and use the TV as a monitor. I have to put the Mac on my coffee table and lean over to make it work. So at some point I'll get another HDMI cable that's longer and then I work in my living room with two monitors.

The other reason to get the adapter is that my old Dell PC has DVI outputs on the video card, so I can hook up my PC to the TV. I intended to keep the old PC as a media server anyway, so this way I can put it in the living room as well and just connect it directly to the TV. I still need to figure out just what I'll keep on that PC. I have room on the Mac for all my music and photos so I could just use it as a backup system. I'm not making any big changes until my housing situation is resolved. As long as I have the office then I have no reason to overload my living room power outlets with more equipment.

Another thing is that mucking about with my home theater setup is that it lets me avoid bigger things in my life, like thinking about where I want to move and what I want to be when I grow up. I should be devoting some time to those issues, but I'd much rather tinker with my computers.

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