On a semi-related topic - I've had surround since the mid-'90s but recently got completely fed up with all the extra wiring and fussing with speaker placement, and committed to ONE 22-gauge HDMI cable to the wall-mount plasma, no amplification, with only the Roku, our FIOS DVR, and DVD player as sources (though I could easily add a couple more).
For me, it was a terrific decision. I'm liberated from receivers, gobs of cabling and input switching on multiple devices. I use a RF-10 IR/RF remote with IR repeaters inside a cabinet to control everything, a $40 Monoprice HDMI switcher to handle switching duties, and have macro'd the RF-10 to handle the now-trivial power and input sequencing; the RF-10 is great and managed the rather complex sequencing before with aplomb, but with very few devices having dedicated on/off IR signals my programming was susceptible to one or more devices being in the wrong power state.
The TV stays at a single input. Now we don't have to look at a single cable or any device except the screen unless we're loading a DVD (which isn't even terribly often these days), aiming the remote is unnecessary, and the whole process of actually watching something is vastly more elegant. I thought I'd resent the sound quality from the plasma's built-ins but it has been more than adequate.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2011-06-20 03:35 am (UTC)For me, it was a terrific decision. I'm liberated from receivers, gobs of cabling and input switching on multiple devices. I use a RF-10 IR/RF remote with IR repeaters inside a cabinet to control everything, a $40 Monoprice HDMI switcher to handle switching duties, and have macro'd the RF-10 to handle the now-trivial power and input sequencing; the RF-10 is great and managed the rather complex sequencing before with aplomb, but with very few devices having dedicated on/off IR signals my programming was susceptible to one or more devices being in the wrong power state.
The TV stays at a single input. Now we don't have to look at a single cable or any device except the screen unless we're loading a DVD (which isn't even terribly often these days), aiming the remote is unnecessary, and the whole process of actually watching something is vastly more elegant. I thought I'd resent the sound quality from the plasma's built-ins but it has been more than adequate.