AV Rant #172: AV Rantier
Tom can’t catch a break this week. For the first time in just about forever, the podcast was late. The first podcast was rejected because of bad audio quality (the audio quality on the videos generally aren’t that good so he went ahead and uploaded the video below). So he re-recorded with Clint. They talk about Redbox going Blu, Blockbuster in general, Major Loser getting sued, and how all of this is Rory’s fault. Are you in the market for a couch potato? Tom gives his first impressions. Ian wants to know about bridging vs. bi-amping. For Dina’s take on how Mike should show his wife why high end audio is cool, you’ll need to watch the video. Thanks for listening and don’t forget to vote for us at Podcast Alley. To see our (mostly) complete collection of show videos, click here. To get our iPhone app, visit the iTunes store.
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Bwa-ha-ha-ha! I watched the video of the “lost” ep. 171.5. You two make it sound like I send you tons of e-mails and pester you to no end when, in fact, I pretty much only tweet to Tom and I sent Dina a grand total of 2 – only 2 – e-mails. And the only reason it was 2 e-mails instead of just 1 is because Dina NEVER WRITES ME BACK.
We have Dina on record, on this very podcast, going way back to summer of ’09 when she PROMISED that she would e-mail me back. Yup. Never happened. Oh miss polite. Miss oh so nice and gosh-darn honest. Really? REALLY?
lol
Anywho, I promised Tom that if he just gave the pilot a shot, I would never bug him about Breaking Bad ever again. And I have been true to my word! I hope Tom enjoys it. I’d love to chat about it with him if he does. But if he doesn’t like it, no biggie, and I will never bring it up to him again.
Dina, on the other hand, well she just ignores me completely! Brings it up on the podcast. Makes me sound like some sort of loon who writes to her all the time. I haven’t sent an e-mail to Dina since the summer! But, oh sure, I’m the bad guy for recommending an excellent TV show that isn’t as well known as it should be, and letting her know that she could have caught up on all the previous episodes, in order, for free – that was all.
Yeesh!
lol
So, since Dina asked:
Breaking Bad is difficult to describe without ruining the experience of watching the story unfold. But, in a nut shell:
Walter White (played brilliantly by Brian Cranston) is a 50 year-old, incredibly over-qualified high school chemistry teacher with a teenaged son who has Cerebral palsy, a smart and beautiful, pregnant wife and a brother-in-law who works for the DEA.
On his 50th birthday, Walter finds out that he has terminal lung cancer. He begins to tune out and shut down. But, after seeing footage of a meth-lab raid – and the bundles of cash that were seized – Walter gets the idea to put his considerable chemistry skills to use by cooking the most pure and potent crystal meth that New Mexico has ever seen!
His ability to produce the meth is not a problem, but he has no idea how to get cash for his product. That’s where Jesse Pinkman comes in. A former lackluster student of Walt’s, Jesse has become something of a low-level meth dealer who thinks of the proess as “art” rather than science.
Walter teams up with Jesse and the two of them plunge head-first into the local drug-trade, quickly getting noticed for their superior product and quickly realizing that they really had no clue about the level of violence and competition that would await them.
Walter’s only goal – at first – is to get enough money to secure his family’s future as he fully expects to be dead within a matter of months. But the experience of getting to flex his knowledge and skills in chemistry leads him to make “some very bad choices” as he starts to find that he has more in common with Jesse than he does with his own family.
Breaking Bad is intense, gut-wrenching and brilliant. What makes the show so amazing is that we are with Walter every step of the way. We understand why he does what he does, even when he is clearly going down a dark and dangerous path. To put it plainly, I have never wanted to watch a man cook meth so badly in all my life! lol
Anyone who has ever seen this show will back me up on this recommendation and that is why I’ve been persistent in trying to get Tom and Dina in on the fun! Tom’s been a good sport and I will stay true to my word and bug him no longer! But Dina? C’mon! Is one reply to 4 e-mails over the span of a year really so much to ask?
tsk tsk
😀
I watched it. Boy, that show has some of the worst commercials ever. More on the next podcast.
RE: Bi-amping speakers Vs. Bridged output:
The motivation behind bi-amping speakers is to improve signal clarity so that distortions introduced by the (necessarily imperfect) woofer drivers (for example) do not degrade the signal reaching the tweeter (for example).
Unless there is insufficient headroom / power capacity in the amplifier (to prevent clipping for example) There is little inherent advantage to bridging the output of a receiver. If your listener is not regularly turning his receiver up above 50% – 60% of full power rating; bridging the output is not advisable; in that case, provided that the crossover accommodates it, bi-amping will result in better speaker performance.
This is not to be confused with Bi-wiring which doesn’t require surplus amplifier channels and is a fraud.
About the Mac receiver, you guys forgot that it will work perfect as long as the TV and speakers are also Mac or have the right logo. Otherwise it will nicely tell you that you don’t even have speakers connected and wait for you to spend the $ to fix that issue. You will be able to hack it to support non-apple products but that is unsupported so any problem is not Apple’s fault but yours.
Apple’s actually got a pretty good record for supporting universal hardware. It’s the software that’s limited. But it’s just an analogy…