| You can see I'm going to have to paint the shelf of the old electronics cabinet black so it disappears as does the black receiver. |
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New Sharp 52-inch LCD TV
Last step of installation completed November 7, 2008
Posted November 9, 2008
It was a long process but last week Roy Applequist completed the remodel of our living room wall cabinets to accept our new TV. He made a few mistakes along the way, but the result is beautiful as only Roy can do. There is no evidence of how he cut one of the old cabinets in half and moved its wall over to make room for the TV. It actually looks better than our original TV around which the cabinets were designed in 1997. Last Friday I picked up the doors of the new cabinet section below the TV from Grass Valley Glass, where they installed smoked glass windows and replaced the too-dark windows of our old electronics cabinet next to the TV. I re-installed the doors and took a few pictures of Roy's masterpiece. Today I have time to write this web page.
| You can see I'm going to have to paint the shelf of the old electronics cabinet black so it disappears as does the black receiver. |
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| Another view with the TV still facing directly forward |
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| The TV is now turned for viewing from our two couches. |
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| In this picture you can see that the TV is on a turn table that extends out into the room. |
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I took this picture from the corner of the couch where Mary sits for our evening movies. I made no attempt to reduce the flash-back from the camera, which gives evidence that the TV is pointing squarely at this seat. The purpose of having an extendable turn table is now clear; the TV hangs out into the living room so only a small corner of the cabinet blocks the view. |
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| Here you can see the tracks under the turn
table. A wonderful fringe benefit is I have complete access behind
the TV. (I'll bundle those wires after I've installed the rest of the equipment.) |
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| Here the TV is turned in the opposite direction to show the main banks of input receptacles. |
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| This is a rotated view of the bank on
the right in the above picture. Note the RS232 computer receptacle as Input 7, so we can display my slide shows and watch Internet movies as we do now. |
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| When we were at Sam's Club in
Yuba City on our most recent bi-monthly shopping trip, I bought a Sony
PlayStation 3. They had the best price, which was a whole $2 less
than at the rest of the shopping world, including the Internet.
It's been sitting on the living room coffee table for the past couple
weeks, still in it's protective wrapper. I want to catch up on
Park computer work before connecting it and learning how to use it.
I haven't connected our old receiver to the new TV yet, either, so we just have crappy TV speaker sound. The TV picture is good, but has never been tested with high definition input. I confirmed a conclusion from the one and only comprehensive on-line review -- all the pre-installed picture options are crap. Why do they bother? The good news is that there are enough things to tweak in the "user options" mode that we get a good picture, day or night. The next thing to buy is Tivo or equivalent, but you can tell I'm in no rush to take that drastic step into TV addiction. I may consider it when TV channels become dominated by high definition. If I'm going to be addicted I want to be addicted to high quality. Why get hooked on grass when crack is the same price? |
| As I was preparing this web page Mary opened the front door to tell me a large buck was sitting in the yard next door. |
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| He stayed seated until both Mary and I walked out onto our driveway. Now he's up and ready to bolt, but he just wandered off. |
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