Everyone made such a big deal about how many HDMI ports the TV has, so now I felt obligated to use at least one of them.

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1985 380SE Blue/Blue - 230,000 miles
2012 Subaru Forester 5-speed
2005 Toyota Sienna
2004 Chrysler Sebring convertible
1999 Toyota Tacoma

this is wrong take a look at it again, but instead of looking at the bright areas look at the dark areas. HDMI and component will look the same in the lighter areas of the picture but when you look at the darker area HDMI has way more detail. HDMI can carry way more bandwidth that component, component losses detail in the dark areas because those are the areas where you really wont notice all though it is there.

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http://i148.photobucket.com/albums/s...titled-1-3.jpg
1981 300d

see this is why Monster Cables HDMI wire costs so much more. Monster cable uses tons of shielding this makes the price of the cable cost more. i myself have some competition monster cable interconnects and speaker wire in my car and the shielding used in them are amazing. They will separate each wire strand with a teflon shield allowing no single little strand to touch each other, allow with 1/4" shielding along the outside. these extra materials and way of production add alot of money to the price tag.

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http://i148.photobucket.com/albums/s...titled-1-3.jpg
1981 300d

well here it is who do you think will when the battle. also i believe this chart is no longer accurate because i think paramount moved to Blue-Ray. It kinda sucks because i bought a new laptop with an hd-dvd drive in it and now hd-dvd is going to die.

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http://i148.photobucket.com/albums/s...titled-1-3.jpg
1981 300d

Is there really a need to invest in any new disc based media player, when "on demand" for HD digital content is being deployed?

yes because On Demand is not the highest quality HD, 1080P is the highest On Demand is using 720P. Along with the new Formats there are new Audio Formats Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby Digital, DTS-ES. Just imagine 50 Gigabytes on one CD thats were Blue-Rays is at.

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http://i148.photobucket.com/albums/s...titled-1-3.jpg
1981 300d

Drank the Kool Aid huh? As stated earlier, the $300 cables are no better than the $13 cables. Copper is copper and fibre is fibre. There has never been any hard evidence to Monster's claims. Also, teflon doesn't provide any shielding from RF that I know of. I guess you also use the "oxygen free" Monster Cables?

This isn't a personal dig at you, it's just that companies like Monster take advantage of the general public with unsubstantiated BS.

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99 ML320
94 SL600
92 SL500
95 E320 Cabriolet
87 560SEC
86 300SDL Grease Car
80 380SLC Euro

13 Fiat Abarth
02 Maserati Spyder Cambiocorsa
00 BMW Z3
90 Rolls Royce Silver Spur
80 Ferrari 308 GTSI
88 Jaguar XJS12 H&E Edition
99 Land Rover Discovery

That was last week's On Demand, Here's the On Demand for the "House of Next Tuesday"

Pardon the obscure Ren & Stimpy reference.

well in home audio its not that big of a deal to use cheap wires but in car audio were you have to run interconnects next to huge power wire that have up to 80 amps of electricity running through them can be a problem. The magnetic field around the power wires can introduce distortion into the interconnect causing the music to have strong amounts of distortion in the sound of static and such. As for the oxygen free stuff most speaker wire has it but monster also has extra shielding for automotive use. the louder the music is played the more distortion can be heard. for those of you running off your headunits you will hear little to no distortion because the sound levels are not high enoungh for you to hear.

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http://i148.photobucket.com/albums/s...titled-1-3.jpg
1981 300d

Input "the truth about Monster Cable" in google and you will find that monster cable just isn't worth the cost.

BTW, I've held a Broadcast Engineer's license for over 30 years, so I know a little about wire.

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99 ML320
94 SL600
92 SL500
95 E320 Cabriolet
87 560SEC
86 300SDL Grease Car
80 380SLC Euro

13 Fiat Abarth
02 Maserati Spyder Cambiocorsa
00 BMW Z3
90 Rolls Royce Silver Spur
80 Ferrari 308 GTSI
88 Jaguar XJS12 H&E Edition
99 Land Rover Discovery

At work today we were discussing the comparison between Betamax/VHS and Blu-ray/HD-DVD. By purchasing what amounts to a controlling interest in the movie industry, Sony have effectively positioned themselves to completely dominate HD media and more than make up for losses suffered at the hands of VHS.

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-Evan


Benz Fleet:
1968 UNIMOG 404.114
1998 E300
2008 E63


Non-Benz Fleet:
1992 Aerostar
1993 MR2
2000 F250

It's been a while, but I'll try to do this from memory:

Betamax-got it's name because the tape formed a "b" when the tape threaded around the players head unit.

VHS-Video Home System Invented-perfected by Ampex.

The reason VHS emerged as the dominant: Poor marketing by Sony. They tried to market beta to the industrial/corporate video producers who were mostly using 3/4 inch video tape at the time. They didn't bite.

While Sony was going after the semi pro market, JVC and others went after the consumer market.

Beta was the superior format, but by the time they went after the consumer market, it was to late. Sony even introduced their own line of VHS units and did fairly well with them.

I have both HD DVD and Blu Ray units but my opinion is that they will both go the way of the CD compared to MP3's. With companies like Netflix offering unlimited online movie viewing, not much reason to own a DVD player. I think movies will be downloadable and available on digital cards such as SD.

I have a 1.5 TB multi media server that streams in HD and I use that more than my DVD units.

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99 ML320
94 SL600
92 SL500
95 E320 Cabriolet
87 560SEC
86 300SDL Grease Car
80 380SLC Euro

13 Fiat Abarth
02 Maserati Spyder Cambiocorsa
00 BMW Z3
90 Rolls Royce Silver Spur
80 Ferrari 308 GTSI
88 Jaguar XJS12 H&E Edition
99 Land Rover Discovery

just out of curiosity, are you running coaxial speakers in your car?

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1983 300D classic white 196,xxx
2007 toyota yaris lb
2007 nissan versa (wife's)
2001 nissan frontier
2006 bmw r1150gs
2001 ducati monster 900
2003 zr7s
2007 klr650

No and yes. in the front are Kenwood KFC-P403, these are component the rear are kenwood KFC-X6900 these are coaxial.

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http://i148.photobucket.com/albums/s...titled-1-3.jpg
1981 300d

That "80 amps" you mention is pretty much D.C.(save for the power draw fluctuations), so there's minimal inductive interferance from it.(used to be an electronics tech years ago), let alone any R.F.
I recall back in the early 80's Stereo Review magazine did a monster cable test, when they first came out. They ran a gamut of tests, and could find no difference between them and an decent gauge standard speaker wire. I used to run a set of folded horns speakers thru a Hafler DH500 amp, and just use 12 gauge wire from Radio Shack. Worked fine. (Amp got a bad voltage spike one day from a bad wall outlet, went up in flames)
No slamming meant here. I just haven't seen any REAL evidence that the monster cables are really all they're cracked up to be, and I've been a stereo geek for some 35 years now. But I'm sure they don't hurt.

I saw a program awhile ago on TV about the whole VHS vs Beta thing. They claimed VHS won out for 2 things. The Beta tapes were limited to something like 90 minutes play time, and porn was released on VHS
Interesting that over in Japan, Beta won the war. Go figure.

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past MB rides:
'68 220D
'68 220D(another one)
'67 230
'84 SD
Current rides:
'06 Lexus RX330
'93 Ford F-250
'96 Corvette
'99 Polaris 700 RMK sled
2011 Polaris Assault
'86 Yamaha TT350(good 'ol thumper)