1080p HDTVs are still coming down in price

 has the Sceptre 42" 1080p model X42GV-NAGA for $899

after $100 rebate and promo code EMC809HOAV02. 



This monitor was one of the ones I was watching prior to buying my Westinghouse.  If I had seen this price I would have jumped on it.  Unique to this monitor is that it has a connections box where you plug in all of your sources.  This box is seperate from the monitor and connects to the monitor via a cable.  This is kind of cool because you can have just the one (or is it 2?) cable running to the monitor for a clean looking install.

Click on the Newegg logo or the picture of the monitor to be taken to the site.

Senator Dodd is at it again

He wants to bail out the hedge funds and investors who made bad loans to house buyers and speculators.  I don't support a bailout of any sort for the housing market.  I do support changing regulations on loans to protect the public.  I believe that most people who took out loans that they cannot afford new what they were doing and were speculating that the house would go up in value and they could resell it for a profit.

I just wrote to Senator Dodd again, here is my letter to him:

Senator Dodd,

You are pushing for higher conforming loan limits and I disagree with this action.  I don't believe that the limits are the problem.  The problem, in my view, is that home prices are too high.  Reckless investment and speculation in housing has caused the problems.
Raising the conforming limits would only continue the problems.  Reforming loan origination so that people do not buy beyond their means to pay would be helpful.  Changing lending standards to create a better informed consumer is always good.
I feel for the people who are losing their homes, everything that can be done for them should be, everything up to but not including the government taking responsibility for their loans.  I do not believe that the government should step in and guarantee loans that were made under false pretenses.  Working with the banks to alter the loans to save as many households as possible I do support.
I hope I was my writing is clear and understandable, if you have any questions please feel free to call me.

Sincerely,

Tivo HD, wow, incredible

Tivo has just announced its new Tivo HD box. This is the little brother to the Tivo Series 3.

The Series 3:

• World's only Digital Media Recorder with THX®-certification


• Control live HDTV and record 2 digital cable shows at once*


• 300 hours of standard recording time or up to 32 in HD


• NEW backlit, programmable TiVo® remote, easy to configure to your TV


• cost $799

Tivo HD

• Control live HDTV and record 2 digital cable shows at once*


• 180 hours of standard recording time or up to 20 in HD


• ordinary old style Tivo remote


• cost $299

Both units support up to 2 cablecards to allow for the recording of two shows at once. The units also support over the air (OTA) HDTV via an antenna.

I love the price point of the Tivo HD and would jump on it except that a subscription is still required. I hate the idea of paying an additional $100 a year to subscribe to Tivo.

For now I'm going to continue playing with my Microsoft Media Center Edition box.

Westinghouse 37" 1080p at Costco.com for $799

Costco.com has the 37" Westinghouse LVM-37w3 on sale for $799 plus shipping and tax.  This is the same monitor as the 47" LVM-47w1 except for the size.  there is some discussion about this product going on over at fatwallet.com and I posted the following in response to some questions about the monitor:

I have the 47" version of this monitor and love it. Television watching on this either through the cable box or through my Windows MCE is great. Standard tv even looks good. I run the MCE into the monitor through the DVI port, I don't use the HDMI at this point.

Watching television from the easy chair ten feet from the monitor is great, reading web pages from ten feet is very difficult. It's not the picture it's the size of the fonts. I've enlarged the fonts on my MCE system to as high as they will go and I still have to press cntrl + several times to enlarge the screen before I can read it at the ten foot distance.

To play games on this guy I drag my easy chair forward until I am five feet from the monitor, then it is an incredible experience. I wish I could play from ten feet away but everything is just too small on the screen. I don't think a 60" screen would help either, maybe a 105" screen would do the trick.

The picture on this monitor is incredible and rock solid. The colors are great.

I'm tempted to pick up one of the 37" Westy's from Costco for the bedroom but I think my wife would kill me.

Westinghouse in the press

I just found this in one of John Dvorak's columns, evidently he is a fan too:

 http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,2123846,00.asp?kc=PCRSS03079TX1K0000584

The 1080p Monitor Revolution Dept.: Many of us have been waiting for 1080p monitors, and now they're appearing at Costco. That means "mainstream." The most interesting of the group comes from a company called Westinghouse Digital Electronics. Well, the executives behind these monitors are various eggheads from Korea, Taiwan, and China with experience at Princeton Graphics, Samsung, and elsewhere, but they're licensing the Westinghouse name for marketing purposes.

I would keep an eye on these folks. They seem to be doing everything right, and they're part of a big market swing away from Samsung, a company that essentially owned the monitor space a couple of years ago.

Success seems to have spoiled Samsung, and the company ended up losing its best marketing people, including Peter Weedfald, who went to Circuit City, and Rey Roque, who went to Westinghouse. To top it all off, Samsung dumped its well-connected PR agency, HWH, out of New York City—and HWH quickly signed with Westinghouse.

These apparent missteps are costing Samsung momentum in the market, and Westinghouse appears to be the primary beneficiary, along with Sharp and Pioneer for their LCDs and probably Panasonic for its excellent plasma displays. If I were to buy an LCD monitor today, it would be a Westinghouse. I don't see anything else of this quality at such a low price.

A letter to Senator Dodd about the sub-prime problems

Senator Dodd,

You have been stating that the "sub-prime' loan problem was caused by predatory practices.  I will argue that the borrowers signed the loan docs knowing that the rates would jump when the fixed period was over and that they planned to refinance or sell prior to that time. 

While housing was rising in price at a humongous rate this was not a problem.  The fact that these people did not see the end of the housing boom approaching is the cause of the problem. 

I do not believe that we, the people of the US, should bail out these people, nor should we bail out the mortgage companies. 

Rather than changing the rules on financing how about enforcing the rules that we have now?  Rule Z, I believe, is the rule that requires full disclosure at the time of applying for a loan. 

I need to disclose that I do have a variable rate mortgage on my property.  I am planning on refinancing prior to the loan going variable.  If I cannot refi then I must be prepared to pay for the loan at the new rate.  I knew this going in and plan to live with the consequences of my actions. 

I have given you my phone number and address; please feel free to contact me if you would like to discuss this situation or any other. 

Sincerely, 

Clayton Gradis

Which processor should you buy in your next PC?

I have several computers at home. I have a server, two desktops and two laptops. My computers range in age from five years to just over a year old. Not all of the computers are ideal personal use, I'll explain why.

My server is an old Gateway that I bought about five years ago. I use the server for testing; it features two Pentium III 933 processors, a raid controller with a bunch of drives and a gigabyte of memory. The server is way too slow to use as a desktop but pretty good for testing server products.

The two laptops are my wife’s. She has a two year old Pentium 4 system running at 2.0 GHZ that she uses daily. Her other laptop is an older 1 GHZ or so system that she's had for years. She keeps it because she has some apps on it that we don't have the discs for anymore and she may need the data one day.

The two desktops that we have are AMD Athlon 64 based systems. The older of the two is a 3200+ that I've had since the Athlon was introduced. It's a single core system with a gigabyte of ram. This used to be my main workstation until I put together the new system a year ago. I used to think this system was fast but I'll come back to this story in a minute.

The second of the desktops, my current primary system, is an AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ system. The Athlon 64 X2 is a dual core processor allowing this system to process two commands at a time assuming your software supports multi-threading. Multi-threading allows the program to send commands to multiple processors at the same time to spread the load out and make processing faster.

I've been playing games and running my Media Center Edition Windows XP on this system. It's worked fine but friends of mine have purchased newer systems and the X2 is no longer the fastest system while playing multiplayer games. This hasn't been a problem but more a niggling bother.

After buying the large screen HDTV I moved my X2 system into the front room to act as a DVR with the MCE software. I reclaimed the old 3200+ Athlon system and began playing games on it again. What a shocker. I don't remember the 3200+ being slow but then again I wasn't playing Company of Heroes when I was using that system.

The 3200+ system is so slow that the games would just drag and the game would pause for long periods. The game was actually unplayable. That is when I finally got the parts I needed to be able to play in the front room. I'm now back on the X2.

So, the whole point of this article is which processor should you buy if you're buying a new system. I think the keys in processor selection are

1) Get a dual core or better system. Single core processors just don’t cut it anymore. Even if your application is not multi-threaded the dual core processors help with multi-tasking and with background services.

2) The processors should be relatively quick, the 3800+ I'm running is ok but I'd rather have the newer 4600+ or 5000+ that AMD has come out with.

3) Get at least 2GB of memory. I didn't talk much about the need for memory but memory helps processors be more efficient. Not to mention that Vista requires large amounts of memory. If you are going with Vista I'd get four GBs of memory. Two will work but four is much better.

Now I need to go out and build a new system so that I can keep up with my buddies. I'd upgrade my current one but my X2 system is a Socket 939 and AMD is no longer making Socket 939 processors. I'll need to buy one of the new AMD Socket AM2 motherboards and processors or move over to an Intel system. No matter which I decide to go with I'm going to incur the additional cost of new memory as the newer systems all use DDR2 and my old systems use DDR. Oh well, faster memory helps too.

Intel currently has the better performing CPUs. When Intel came out with the Core2Duo systems they leapfrogged AMD’s Athlon processors for the king of performance title.

Fry's always has motherboard and CPU combo deals listed in their advertisements. Each week they feature an Intel and an AMD system. I'm not sure which I'll buy. I've heard rumors that there is a big price cut coming for AMD in April, I'll wait for that before I decide.