This is why Computers make me Cranky

[varjohaltia]

1) Signed up for Netflix!
2) Discovered that playback on my home theater PC (XP, Nvidia 8800GS on a 50" 720p plasma) has tearing so horrible it's unwatchable.
3) Searched the internets, found tons of threads on this, upgraded video drivers, forced vertical sync on.
4) Tried to find help at Netflix, but there doesn't appear to be any way to report trouble that isn't one of their check boxes.
5) Discovered that there is no vertical sync in Silverlight for XP, so no way to avoid tearing. Netflix won't let you play content on a computer any other way, though.
6) Upgraded to Windows 7, with the hopes that the improved APIs would fix that.
7) Discovered there are no drivers for my sound card, bluetooth adapter, remote, or NIC that will work with Windows 7.
8) Went to see how much a supported NIC and soundcard are, and bought a Sony streaming media box instead, since it was about the same price.

Comments

[elusivetiger.livejournal.com]

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.