New toys

I went shopping last night to fill some voids in my home entertainment lineup.

Wanted: good sound reproduction in my bedroom when I wake up in the morning, also whenever else needed.

Ideas: HD radio, streaming internet music, streaming music from my PC, some kind of alarm clock/table radio.

Solution:
Denon S-52 table radio

I ended up ditching the HD radio, USB input and CD player on the S-52 and just getting the S-32 instead.  Saves $200 and I still get to wake up to nice-sounding bass and clear treble instead of my 15-year-old Sony alarm clock radio.  I bought it from Fry's so I can still return it in 30 days if I want to upgrade.

It's pretty cool.  It has a wireless connection for streaming music from the internet or a PC/Mac over your home network.  It also has an ethernet port, which I decided to use since I have a bridged router in my bedroom anyway and it would likely be more stable for streaming music.  It uses the Windows Media Player 11 streaming service, so I need to set up some playlists somehow (Winamp-generated playlists don't seem to work, although the Denon does random playback of all songs in a folder so that's pretty useful).

Sound quality is decent (I said awesome before, but you have to remember that is compared with a clock radio only).  Not what you would get from separate components, but great for a small room as a non-primary audio source.  I think it's like 20 watts of power or so.  It even has a subwoofer jack (RCA out) if you want to add a little punch to the bass.

Next.  Wanted: better remote control for my primary home theater.  Currently using Yamaha programmable remote from my A/V receiver.  Problem is switching inputs on my TV and receiver together is difficult due to a lack of dedicated buttons for each TV input on my current remote control.

Ideas: Programmable remote control with more functionality.

Solution: Logitech Harmony remote control with XBox 360 buttons.  Why didn't I buy one earlier?

This thing is awesome.  I'm sure there are better Harmony remotes, but the basic operation is just simple and stress-free.

Next.  Impulse buy!

Panasonic upconverting DVD player on sale for $80.  I bought an S-53 (up to 1080p).  Panasonic really only makes one DVD player these days, the S-54.  The S-54 adds "Viera Link" or some such nonsense over the S-53.  They basically do everything.  Play any disc format or file format (even divX and MPEG4).  So hopefully this is the last dedicated DVD player I ever buy.  This replaces my 480p RP-62 that served me faithfully throughout the 55" Mitsubishi days.  I'd link a pic, but it's nothing fancy that you haven't seen before.

These buys are actually quite significant.  The table radio keeps me from being tempted to move my current A/V receiver and speakers into my bedroom and buy a new HDMI-switching receiver (like castlemonster's new Onkyo) and speakers for my home theater/gaming room.  The Logitech remote makes not having HDMI much less of an issue (since I am switching video through my plasma TV's 4 HDMI inputs and switching audio through my Yamaha receiver - the Harmony remote makes that work smoothly).  The upconverting DVD player makes better use of my 720p plasma TV (my previous DVD player was bought when I only had the capability to display 480p or 1080i and upconverting DVD players were rare).