Sharp LC-60LE650U LED LCD 1080p HD Television

After 10 years out venerable 57" Sony reap projection TV started to have issues.  A month ago we noticed that the colors were "separated" around the edges, and time progressed the problem was getting worse.  I tried to troubleshoot the problem on the internets and determined the most probable cause was a failing convergence circuit.  This could be repaired, but if the part could be found the repair would not be cheap.  Instead, it seemed like a good time to retire the old TV and find a replacement.

We weren't in a particular hurry so I had time to research some options.  I measured the distance from where the TV would sit to the couch (120") and calculated that the correct screen size would be between 40" and 80" (You take the viewing distance and divide by 3 for the low end and divide by 1.5 for the high end), since the old TV was 57" we decided to look primarily at 60" flat screen TV's.  The second feature I wanted was LED backlighting.  LEDs last longer than fluorescent backlights, use less energy and don't suffer from as much of a color shift over time.  Next, I wanted at least 3 HDMI inputs so I would have at least one left over after attaching our Blu-ray player and DirecTv box.  Pretty much all TVs are 1080p capable so that wasn't an issue, I did briefly look at some 4k displays, but they're still quite expensive and there really isn't much in the way of 4k content available.  The final "must-have" for me was to have a smart TV with built in wi-fi.

One major concern was that our old TV would need to be removed for proper recycling so I started looking at electronics website such as Abt.com, HHGregg.com and BestBuy.com who offer this service and that would allow me to filter results and narrow down the prospective panels.  Once I had a short list I checked online for reviews and comparisons, at sites such as LCDTVbuyingguide.com.  After many days of research I pretty much had settled on a Samsung UN60F6300AFXZA and was just waiting to see if it would go on sale for Father's Day or July 4th (like I said, we weren't in any particular hurry to spend lots of money), but kept doing my research anyway.  While browsing BestBuy.com one day I noticed that my second choice, the less expensive Sharp LC-60LE650u, had a "See Price at Checkout" tag next to it, the TV had been on sale for just under $1100 so I went along to see the new price.  After entering in all my information and finally getting to the checkout page I saw a price of $881 with free delivery and free removal of the old TV!  That was too god to pass up, so I pulled the trigger.  Good thing I acted quickly since the next day the price was back up to $1079.

The TV was delivered two nights ago, so I haven't really had a whole lot of time to play around with it and customize the setup so these thoughts are somewhat preliminary.  As I have more time to mess around I'll make edits to this post.  First, the setup was pretty easy.  The stand was easy to attach with a few screws and the TV is only around 60 lbs so it was simple to pick up and place on the media cabinet I had purchased.  I plugged in the 2 HDMI cables, ran the digital optical TOSLINK cable from the TVs output to our old audio receiver and plugged in the composite cables from the VHS (yes, we still have a VHS).  Picture quality seems to be excellent, there are multiple picture modes available (Movie, Sports, Dynamic, Dynamic(AUTO), Game (and a few others I can't think of right now) and a User Custom mode.  Attaching to the house Wi-fi was also a snap.  If your router is equipped with WPS you can use that for easy setup or you can do things manually.  Our router does feature WPS, but I have it disabled due to security concerns.  The manual setup just took a minute.  Once you have the internet connection working you can update the TVs firmware through the on screen menu, mine did have an update available so I wen't ahead and took care of that.  You can also install new firmware from a USB drive using a file downloaded from the manufacturer's website.  There are a lot of options accessible from the on screen menus and I'm still playing around with them, one thing that was quickly done was to blank out the unused inputs and rename the ones being used to make it easier for everyone to find the input they are looking for.

As of now, there are a few things that I consider weaknesses.  The first is the sound, when you make a TV as thin as this one there isn't much room for decent speakers.  Sound is somewhat tinny without much on the bass end.  I'm still playing around with settings but the sound from the AV receiver is SO much better.  The second weakness is the remote.  The buttons are rather small and close together.  While it can be programmed to work with up to 3 additional devices it lacks the ability to access some basic functions on those devices, such as the DirecTv guide.  It also only contains codes for a limited number of devices.  They only have codes for AV receivers made by Sharp, so my trusty Panasonic SA-HE100 is out of luck.  I've also not been able to get it to work with our Sony Blu-ray player, but after I turned on the Sharp AQUOS link feature it does seem to communicate and turn on the Blu-ray player when that input is selected.  For now, we're just sticking with the DirecTv remote, it does allow us to at least turn on everything even if we can use it for some features of the specific devices.  I may have to look in to purchasing a Logitech Harmony remote if we're going to fulfill the dream of "One remote to rule them all"!

The final issue I'm gong to have to look in to is the signal passed through the digital optical audio output.  I watched Avatar last night to see how the 1080p picture looked, and it was fantastic.  The problem was that it seemed like the AV receiver was only playing in stereo instead of 5.1 surround sound.  I don't know if that's due to a setting in the TV, on the receiver or just not possible.  Tonight I'll try it again using an audio output directly from the Blu-ray to the receiver.  If that gives me the proper sound channels then the issue is with the TV.

Update:  After searching through the menus a bit I found that the default audio is set to PCM, by changing that to Bitstream I was able to get the Dolby Digital 5.1 signat sent to the AV receiver from the TV's TOSLINK output.

My first Woot Bag of Crap revealed!!!

My Random Crap from Woot arrive a few days early!  After following what people were getting on their discussion boards I was pretty sure what I'd be getting, and I wasn't too far off.  My loot was...

4 Woot wine bags (green in color)
1 Disney Princess Scratch and Design pack
1 Active Air Aroma Remedies unit
1 Apple iPod Nano lanyard earbuds
1 Golds Gym tote

Not bad, no letter but worth more than the $8 I paid.  I'll edit in some photos and possibly the video I took of the opening if it doesn't suck!

Woot! Bag of Crap!

A website I visit on a daily basis is Woot.com.  The website, with its tag line of "One Day, One Deal", offers one product a day at a usually great price.  These items are sometime new, sometimes refurbished and are often tech related but could be anything.  Once a month, they change things up a little and have a Woot-off.  During a Woot-off you will see flashing yellow lights on the page and they will put up one item after another, changing when an item sells out or they pull the plug.  This is also where you might just encounter the coveted "Woot Bag of Crap!".  When the bag of random crap ($8 including shipping) comes up they usually sells out within a few seconds, they are highly sought after.  So what is it?  Well, it could be anything.  Those lucky enough to get their order in will receive a box of random items from Woot about a week or two later.  The items sent can be working or broken, cool or crap.  You never know.  An item that everyone hopes for is "the letter".  The letter simply states that one item of random crap was too big to fit in the box and was shipped separately.  These can turn out to be TVs or in one case, a pallet of car wax.

The latest Woot-off started just ater midnight on August 18th and lasted through August 20th.  A72 hour Woot-off is a long one!  I was running a cool little tool in my browser at woot.kishk.org which can calculate how many of an item are left and estimate the time to sell out.  You can also set it to give audible alerts when an item gets to 20%, 10% or 5% left as well as when the item sells out or a new Woot is put up.  This works OK, but I found that Kishk didn't update very quickly when an item sold out, so when it alerted me that only 5% of an item was left I would start reloading the Woot page until the next item was up in hopes that it would be the Bag of Crap.  This went on for three days!  While at work I would take a short break whenever the audible alert went off (just a minute or so, I wasn't ignoring my job!) and at home I'd stop what I was doing when I would hear the birds chirping from Kishk.  I also have an app on my iPhone so I can keep track of what was going on while in my car, but only when stopped at lights.  So on Friday, Kishk showed about 9 minutes left on an item so I decided I had time for a bathroom break.  I took my iPhone with me so I could play a game while indisposed, but the first thing I did was run the Woot app.  Of course as soon as the app loaded it showed the Bag of Crap was being offered.  Jumping to my feet I shuffled to the computer (which was still showing the previous item), refreshed the Woot page and there it was!  The "I Want One" button was frantically pushed and within a minute or so the order confirmation page popped up.  My credit card security number was quickly entered and the order confirmed.  I'd been this far several times before, only to have my dreams crushed when the order finally finished processing and tell me that the item had sold out before my order could be completed.  This time the processing screen stayed up for what seemed like a LONG time, and when it finished my order was CONFIRMED!  I successfully ordered my FIRST BAG OF CRAP!  Will it contain a new computer?  The Lost Ark of the Covenant?  Spock dolls with their ears missing?  I don't know!  But it'll be fun waiting to find out!

HIS 5830 graphics card arrives, and still doesn't work!

So the HIS 5830 graphics card was delivered on Tuesday.  The card is a bit longer than the malfunctioning XFX 4870 card it is replacing, but I was able to get it in place by moving cables out of the way as much as possible and wiggling it in to place.  No issues on power-up, but when I went to install the drivers they did the same thing as the 4870 was doing.  Each time I tried, the driver installation would fail.  Obviously there was nothing wrong with the old card, so I went about trying to track down the true issue.  The possibilities I came up with (besides the video card which seems NOT to be the problem) were the PCIe slot, the power supply and the hard drive.  The hard drive would be the easiest thing to check out, so I ran the disk check included with Windows 7.  The process is simple, click on Start then select Computer and right click on the drive in question.  Select properties and then go in to the tools tab and click the check disk button.  I checked the boxes to automatically fix detected errors and hit OK.  The disk can't be checked while it's in use, so the system set up the scan for the next time the computer is started.  This turned out to be the problem (which is good because I didn't ant to have to replace the power supply or mainboard).  The scan took about 7 hours to complete, and there were a LOT of files with bad clusters which were fixed.  After all was said and done (at about 2am), I was able to boot up and install the latest graphics drivers from the ATI website.  SUCCESS!  Still, there are a few issues.  I don't know why the files got corrupted, so I don't trust the HDD that much anymore.  I've backed up all my data and will be purchasing a new hard drive this weekend.  I'm thinking of just using Synctoy from Microsoft to sync all of my personal folders to another computer on the network which is backed up with Carbonite.  Then I'll just keep running my computer as it is until the drive fails or I build another box, which I'm planning on doing early next year anyway.  When I do, I'll probably get another 5830 card to run in crossfire mode.

The video card I purchased came with a free download of Modern Warfare 2 from Steam.  It took about 12 hours for the download to complete, but the game is working great with the 5830 card!  With all video setting as high as they can go I'm getting around 75 fps frame rates.  It could probably go higher if my monitor had a faster refresh rate.

Trouble in video land

On Wednesday, ATI released this months update to their Catalyst suite and video driver so I decided to install them when I got home from work last night on my XFX 4870 card.  When 10.5 was released last month I noticed that the installation took a long time and when it finally finished the log indicated that the driver installation had failed.  I tried a few more times with the same result.  My assumption was that this was a software problem, and since everything was working I decided to wait for 10.6 and try again.  When it didn't install either, I tried several steps to get around whatever the problem was.  First, I tried to install just the driver without the Catalyst suite.  No go.  Next I uninstalled the old driver and tried to install the new one.  Big mistake.  The new driver would not install, and when I tried to reinstall an older version that had worked in the past it also would not install.  This tells me that there is a problem with the card itself.  This is the second XFX 4870 card I've had, the first one lasted about a month before it had to be sent back to XFX for replacement.  They were pretty quick, but I wasn't to happy about having to pay to ship back their defective card.  I ended up pulling my old Geforce 8800GT off the shelf and was able to get back up and running in no time.  After reading an article on Tom's Hardware, I decided to purchase an ATI 5830.  I just ordered an HIS iCooler V H583FN1GD HD 5830 video card from Newegg.com due to it's high rating and the free Modern Warfare 2 doesn't hurt too much either.  I'll write about the card once it arrives.

Making pizza with a 2Stone Pizza Grill

A few years ago, a thread was started on PizzaMaking.com entitled "Reverse engineered coal fired brick oven".  The OP had created a pizza oven to fit on his Weber charcoal grill which mimicked the conditions and high temperatures found in a traditional coal fired brick oven.  The thread can be found here...
Reverse engineered coal fired brick oven 


I was really (and I mean REALLY) in to pizza at the time, so the oven intrigued me.  Before long I had placed my order and shortly thereafter received my 2Stone Pizza Grill.  The weather has been improving here in Chicago, so I decided to make some pizza for dinner last night.

To make a really great pizza you need to start at the bottom, the crust.  To stand up to the high temperatures a dough with a higher than usual hydration (water content) works best.  The dough formula I use for pizzas baked in my home oven (expressed in bakers percentages, I'll explain that later) is...

100% bread flour
60% to 62% cold water
2% salt
0.25% Instant Dry Yeast (IDY)

This is mixed in the Kitchenaid stand mixer, balled, rubbed down with oil and left to ferment in the refrigerator for 24-48 hours before use.  The dough I use for the 2Stone oven is this...

100% Caputo "00" pizzaria flour
70%-72% cold water
2% salt
0.25% -0.5% IDY
2% Extra Virgin Olive Oil

 The "00" flour I use is imported from Italy and is milled finer than American flours.  When I tried using American brands of flour such as King Arthur I had issues with the crusts sticking to the stone and burning, those problems have disappeared since I started using the Italian "00" flour.  It can be difficult to find a local supplier for this type of flour, but you can order it from Amazon 00 Pizza Flour Attimo Caputo or PennMac.com.  The method I use to make this dough it to make a sponge with the water, yeast and ~ 70% of the flour, which I cover and let ferment all day while I'm at work.  If I want to use it that night I use a higher percentage of yeast, but if I'm going to let the finished dough sit in the fridge until the next day (which does seem to improve flavor and texture) I will use the lower percentage of yeast.  When I get home from work I add the remaining flour and mix for ~ 2 minutes, then add the oil and continue mixing until the dough is smooth.  At that point the dough is dumped out on to a floured surface, rolled in to a ball (which can be tricky with a dough this loose!) and placed in a covered, oiled bowl to rise until needed.

The formulas posted above are in baker's percentages.  The weights of all ingredients are expressed as a percentage of the weight of the flour, which will always be 100%.  If more than one type of flour is used then the weights of the flours combined will equal 100%.  The reason that this method is preferred in commercial bakeries is that it makes it very easy to scale recipes up and down according to need.  The way to do this is simple.  First, you need to add all the percentages in a particular formula together.  For the dough formula above you add all the percentages (100% + 70% + 2% + 0.25% + 2% = 174.25%).  Convert that in to an integer and you get a conversion factor of 1.7425.  Now that you have that number, you can use to to find out the weight of flour required for any given weight of final dough.  Say you need 850 grams of pizza dough, just divide 850 by 1.7425 and you see that you'll need 487.8 grams of flour.  70% of 487.8 = 341.46 grams of water and so on.

Now that the dough was done and rising, it was time to set up the 2Stone.  I lit a chimney of charcoal and let it go until the coals on top started to turn white.  The chimney was dumped and I arranged the coals in even layer in the center of the grill, roughly 2" high and 13" square.  The 2Stone was then placed on the cooking grate over the coals and allowed to heat up with the grill cover placed on top.

I can usually get the oven up to 900-950 degrees, but I was hungry, I was impatient and I only had enough charcoal to fill the chimney 3/4 of the way.  Now it was time to stretch the dough, dress the pizza, cook and enjoy!

I was lazy on the sauce, it was just a store bought brand (Boboli) that I dressed up with oregano, basil, vinegar, sugar and oil.  There were some left over vegetables that I had grilled the night before (mushrooms, onions and peppers) that I diced up and added after saucing the dough, then topped with slices of whole milk mozzarella and finished with slices of Ezzo pepperoni I bought from Pennmac.com.  After baking I picked a few leaves of Basil off my AeroGrow and tore them over the top and drizzled the pie with some really good olive oil from Old Town Oil.  I have enough leftover dough in the fridge to do it again tonight if the weather cooperates!

The creator of this product has been making improvements and new models of this oven.  He sells them via his website, www.2Stonepg.com.

HDMI to DVI adapter for Sony BDP-BX57

I received the HDMI to DVI adapter I had ordered on Friday and changed the video connection for my new BDP-BX57 to HDMI from the component video outputs I used when first setting up the player.  The adapter I bought was the most inexpensive one I found on Amazon, Eforcity HDMI-F to DVI-M Video Adaptor with Gold Contacts.  There seems to be a misconception that expensive cables are necessary for digital signals.  This may be the case for analog signals, but a digital signal is either there or it isn't.  If the signal is too weak you won't get a picture.  Except for long cable runs you will find little difference in picture quality when using the most expensive cables versus the cheapest.  It didn't take long to hook up the player via the HDMI output, but there is a very noticeable improvement in picture quality.  The blacks were fairly gray before, now they are much deeper.  Contrast has improved as well.  While I had the TV out I took the opportunity to clean up the cables back there, bundling them makes everything look cleaner and more professional.  If your TV has a DVI input but no HDMI, the adapter from Amazon will do the trick.  The cheapest on I could find at Best Buy was $20, so this adapter is a bargain.  If your TV only has analog inputs you will need to get your Blu-Ray player before December 31st, 2013.  After that day "Analog Sunset" goes in to effect.  Read here for more details AACS Final License - Analog Sunset.