The official tablet (and other useless electronics) thread!

[Mike]

yes it is. very happy with my 42" model.

[Sully]

How much is it normally? Is it like unbelievable saving?

[JPolen01]

I think I paid around $380 for the 54" earlier this year? $300 for prime members is a very good price for the quality of this.

[WRXtranceformed]

I have that exact system in my man cave and I got it for like $200 last year on cyber Monday :p

[ViPER1313]

For $300 I would rather build a component setup with a couple of polk monitor 40s and a true receiver.

[Evan]

For $300 I would rather build a component setup with a couple of polk monitor 40s and a true receiver.

this

I bought the vizio soundbar for my basement tv and its barely better than the tv speakers.

[Mike]

yeah, for $300 i don't know if i can recommend. i got mine open box for like $200. you can't build and hide a cheap receiver and components for that very easily. and wireless rears.

[Mike]

I bought the vizio soundbar for my basement tv and its barely better than the tv speakers.

you're high.

[WRXtranceformed]

I bought the vizio soundbar for my basement tv and its barely better than the tv speakers.

you're high.

+1, mine sounds crystal clear and is so loud I can only ever keep it on the 3rd or 4th setting from the bottom. I keep the bass on night mode all the time as well because my wife says she can hear it through the floors too loud.

[Evan]

I bought the vizio soundbar for my basement tv and its barely better than the tv speakers.

you're high.

yep. almost as high as youd have to be to spend $300 on a shitty soundbar.

if you dont know good sound, then yeah, i guess you could be totally blown away by the slight improvement over what comes out of the tv speakers :dunno: oh, and that muddy 6" 'subwoofer' that cant hit 50hz before shitting all over itself.

for $50 id have no problem with them, but if youre going to spend that kind of money, you should get good sound quality and real speakers, thats all.

[WRXtranceformed]

I guess I'm not an audiophile enough to notice the difference...nor am I listening to output sources that are high quality enough to notice the difference over a gaming system or TV box.

It's been a while since I pieced together a system but from what I remember $200-300 doesn't even come close to buying one or two pieces you would need. For $200, to get a full satellite surround system with bluetooth and that is good enough quality for most people...I don't think you can beat that.

[Evan]

well apples to apples, to compete with a sound bar you really only need an amp, good bookshelf speakers (or towers) and a sub.
$300 is a stretch you are right, but you could come surprisingly close to that. A little more and you can have a very good 3.1 setup which really rocks.
for a mancave, i think we all deserve to do it up right with 5.1 (or more)
living rooms and wife acceptance can make that more difficult

do newer tvs have subwoofer outputs? honestly I think the biggest perception of sound improvement in the soundbars comes from the sub filling out the low(er) end. If you could hook up a decent powered sub directly to the TV and use the TV speakers I think a lot of people would be just as happy or more as with a soundbar. the actual speaker drivers in a soundbar are very very close to what come in the tv.

[ViPER1313]

Just a quick look, a 5.1 stereo receiver is $180 on Amazon ($200 if you want one with the Bluetooth) and a pair of Polk Monitor 40s is $129 at Newegg. For that price you're getting a real component system that you can build upon in the future.

[JPolen01]

The big benefit to me (and I think others that bought it) was the wireless rear speakers. I needed that due to the layout of my apartment. Like Lee said, it sounds great to a non audiophile and gets the job done for a decent price. Went back and looked at what I paid for it and I paid about $350 including shipping.

[Apoc]

I think it really depends on the TV. My old plasma had pretty amazing forward facing speakers that I didn't bother supplementing when I moved to the bedroom. My current LCD has absolutely horrid speakers and I couldn't wait to hook it up to a stereo.

I've got a ridiculous system that was ripped out of our theater room when we moved as our primary. I had everything hooked up in our rental but haven't bothered yet with our house due to painting/cords etc. I have to say wireless rears appealed to me, until I realized they needed to be wired to the sub. It's wall mount or bust for me, so I'm back to my original 5.1 system. I'll also admit to being old fashioned in the stereo department so I'm not sure I could part with my towers. <3

[JustinG]

Any of you guys use Plex? My laptop just isn't cutting it as a media server, thinking of building a cheap dedicated media server. Any tips or estimated cost?

[Sully]

May have found one problem with my slow internet. I noticed an unsecure xfinitywifi signal when i setup my new modem router thing but thought maybe since we got the notice to upgrade, everyone else around me did to and upgraded and it was a neighbor or something. Well it shadowed my signal in the analyzer and i asked on here if it could be my signal but you guys got tired of commenting on this.

Anyway, im still fighting a dreadful connection, and tonight i hooked my old router back up and noticed it defaulted to channel 6 so i changed the new one to channel 6, checked the wifi analyzer and sure enough xfinitywifi followed me and its a very congested channel as is.

A lite searching and it turns out comcast has been enabling (possibly by accident as its still unclear) a secondary ssid broadcast from this device. Further reading says that this modem may be capable of broadcasting up to 8 seperate ssid. The forum posts seem to say most comcast tech support doesnt know anything about this feature while others will say its so more people can experience the xfinity greatness or whatever. There is no setting to turn it off on the user end and some service people say you cannot switch off this unsecured channel if you want to.

Seems with enough arguing, Comcast will switch it off or send you another modem or some crap. The forum posts were from months ago so not sure how I'll fare now but i plan to call tomorrow and try and get to the bottom of this.

[Mike]

i had a $1k setup. it was awesome. i can appreciate it. i no longer have the space for it. will the soundbar win any major awards? no. is it the best of that form-factor for the buck? yes. my tv speakers sound like they're coming from inside a cardboard box.

[Apoc]

Anyone have experience with Sonos? Seems like good value for the money and has applications well beyond a lone entertainment system. The "home theater" system is fairly expensive but you could really creative with multiroom setups for audio, if nothing else.

[.RJ]

Any of you guys use Plex? My laptop just isn't cutting it as a media server, thinking of building a cheap dedicated media server. Any tips or estimated cost?

I do. I have it set up on a Dell Zino with win7 and its been great for over 3 years now. Its no longer made but you can find them cheap on ebay. Much smaller footprint than an old desktop machine so it can be hidden in the living room easily.