The audio/video future is much nicer looking

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This media cabinet in my living room used to contain two more shelves and lots of audio-video gear that’s now all obsolete. I think the new contents, shown in more detail below, are much nicer to look at. Here’s what I used to have:

  • Turntable: Replaced with an Ion USB turntable next to my desktop PC for much easier digitising.
  • A/V receiver and five speakers: Replaced by a Vizio 38″ 5.1 soundbar that sits under my TV and does Bluetooth and optical audio, with left, right, and centre speakers in the bar and a wireless subwoofer that also drives the two rear bookshelf-sized speakers.
  • VCR and DVD recorder: The VHS tapes that I needed to transfer I’ve done, or their contents have become digitally available (examples include the complete Larry Sanders Show boxed set, the French-issued Tex Avery Complete, and the Japanese boxed set of Jûzô Itami’s ten films), but I am keeping these two in the spare room in case I run into something else I need to digitise in future.
  • LaserDisc player: All the LaserDiscs I had – maybe fifty – have been re-released on DVD and/or Blu-ray and I have the replacements I wanted.
  • DVD/CD player and Western Digital DLNA player: Replaced with the LG All-Region/All-Zone DVD/Blu-ray/CD/WiFi DLNA/Internet player you see above that plays 1) every kind of disc from any country you can throw at it, automatically converting PAL to NTSC as needed, 2) programmes and films from my file server via the free Universal Media Server much better than Windows Media Server – and 3) from online services like Amazon Video and Netflix. My Samsung TV independently does numbers 2 and 3 as well. The LG player is two years old and no longer sold, but you can find its current equivalent by searching for LG BPM55 Multizone on Amazon.
  • Cable TV box: Pffft. Not replaced. I have Internet-only service now.
  • About 500 feet of all sorts of cables and wiring: I filled up a tall kitchen trash bag with those and happily tossed the lot.

You can click any of the following to see a larger version:

Only one of the astronauts’ A7LB spacesuits should have the commander’s red striping, used to easily distinguish who’s who in live video and photographs. I’ll fix that one of these days.

These Red Hot Riding Hood and Wolfie porcelain sculptures by Kent Melton were produced in 1995. Red’s saucy pose is from her dance routine in this excerpt from “Swing Shift Cinderella”.

Franklin Mint art deco figures “Promise in Gold’ and “Galaxy in Gold”

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2 thoughts on “The audio/video future is much nicer looking

  1. foodandart says:

    Verrrry nice! I too am at the point where only the VCR, safely tucked away under the book shelf cabinet, is the remaining vestige of the electronics of my youth. The turntable is still on standby, but the stereo is now by the teevee as it drives a pair of Ohm L speakers I snaffled at the Manchester, Ct. Goodwill for 8 bucks a pop. Replaced the foam surrounds on each main speaker and was good to go.

  2. […] Repurposing my media cabinet as a display case the other day ended up kicking off a home decluttering project that’s going so well it feels a bit like conjuring. Moving the Lunar Module case and figurines freed up a bookshelf on the other side of the living room, which allowed me to move some of the books I had piled on top of other things to that shelf. Two small purchases have helped carry this increasingly nifty game of reverse musical chairs several rounds forward and it’s still in progress. A 2-tier Winsome bookshelf – my fourth – allowed me to clear the remaining books piled on other things, allowing me to further declutter those other things, and a second 16″ long clip-on drawer for my InterMETRO commercial kitchen shelving allowed me to declutter that 72″x48″x18″ shelf, and also store lots of little gewgaws that had been sitting in my simplehuman dish strainer for many moons simply because I had no good place to put them. That in turn allowed me to give the strainer a good scrub this morning, and so the list goes on. […]

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