Friday, March 21, 2008

Progress Report

We are scheduled for a final inspection on April 10th. The inspector is from the county as we are not inside an city limits. The movers are scheduled to deliver our furniture, which has been is storage for 3 years, on the 11th and 12th. The inside of the house is ahead of schedule and the outside is a little behind schedule due to the heavy snows. We expect to complete most of the exterior work right before the inspection. The deck railing will be a few weeks behind because they can't measure the railings until the stone is installed.

LIBRARY LIGHTING
We have been having an "interesting" time with out lighting experts. In the library I want to have three distinct sources of light, incandescent, halogen, and quartz (I hate fluorescent, especially those CFL's). The purpose is to cover the visible spectrum with frequencies of light that allow for easier reading. We are almost complete with the light sources but I can't seem to find anyone in the lighting business that understands the light frequencies that they teach in high school physics.

TV's
I went to a class on HDTV's. It was offered by a big store and supported by a local TV station as part of the digital conversion in Feb 2008. Before the class I researched as much as possible on the same subject. After class I went to our home automation expert and we ordered TV's. Here is what I know: HD comes in 720 and 1080 lines of resolution, similar to the old CGA and VGA computer screens. If you want to sit close to the TV and the set is over 55", then you need 1080. If not, then a 720 is fine. Note: the sales folks will not tell you this. LCD costs a little more than plasma. Plasma reflects light more than LCD's because the LCD's use a matte finish on the outer glass. The refresh rate for LCD's is 60hz, The top Sony adn Panasonic LCD's now have a refresh rate of 120hz. The refresh rate for plasma is about 500hz, or eight times faster than most LCD's. The refresh rate is important and if you want to watch sports then plasma beats LCD's. We ordered two 720 plazma's, a 42" for the bedroom and a 52" for the living room. If any one is interested in more data on the TV's drop us an email.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The one other detail you need to pay attention to with TVs are the p'is and i's. Basically, progressive or interlaced. Without going into the tecchie detail, the p is what you should be going for. 1080p is the king of HD, with 720p coming next, followed by 1080i and finally 720i

We have a Samsung 46" LCD 1080p which has a 25,000:1 dynamic compression ratio - after Simona and the dogs, it is the love of my life. We just watched No Country For Old Men on BluRay, and it was as though Tommy Lee Jones was sitting in the living room with us. Which I guess is a little disturbing when I come to think about it.

Anonymous said...

Richard is both a butler and a TV braniac. Who knew?

Anonymous said...

Well, I wouldn't say braniac. Just like your Dad, I did LOTS of research before buying my little baby at Christmas. So precious. *sigh*