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We bought a 3D TV!

The title of this blog post is true, but the deeper truth is that we had no intention of jumping on the 3D fad-wagon. When we settled on a range of TVs based on quality reviews on CNET the ones that we were looking at just happened to also have 3D. So we have a TV does 3D, yeah, you can laugh now, but the stunning 2D is what this TV is really about!

We ended up with the PN58C8000 58″ 3D Plasma HDTV which was on sale at a local Video Only store. We saw it first on Saturday and grabbed a Zipcar to buy it and pick it up on Sunday.

This is the first new TV I’ve ever owned, and certainly the largest, I never thought I’d have one this big! For now we’ve mounted it on the wall mount that was here at the condo when MJ moved in, but we’re looking into the slimmer picture frame mounts to get it closer to the wall. The 3D part of it is cute but kinda gimmicky, especially since the $100+ glasses are specific to the TV brand and there are only a half dozen 3D movies on the market. As a promo, the TV came with a starter kit that includes two pairs of glasses and a Monsters vs. Aliens Blu-Ray in 3D, but the store was out of starter kits and we need to pick it up when they have it in stock.

As far as bundled apps, we’ve already started enjoying Netflix, Hulu Plus and Pandora. I knew when we bought it that it would not support samba or nfs shares and figured we’d need some kind of system hooked up to the tv to handle it. Then I discovered Media Tomb, “an open source (GPL) UPnP MediaServer with a nice web user interface, it allows you to stream your digital media through your home network and listen to/watch it on a variety of UPnP compatible devices” – guess what our TV is? UPnP compatible! So by firing up Media Tomb, adding a few tweaks from a super helpful ubuntuforums.org thread and cataloging the directories I wanted I was able to get my music and movies playing on our TV! Very cool! Cable? Broadcast television? Not bothering with either one really. We do have a Blu-Ray player and Wii to set up though.

Before going TV shopping on Saturday we headed up to Crissy Field to take some photos of an XO for some photos for the OLPC SF Community Summit 2010 in October. Unfortunately it’s summer in San Francisco and apparently that means that it’s chilly and foggy every day.

Not that I’m complaining about the weather aside from it making my pictures all look gloomy, the sun does tend to come out a bit most afternoons, and I quite enjoy the cool weather (certainly am not sad about missing the 100+ Philly weather that struck this year, sorry guys!). Plus, locals tell me that the area gets warmer in September and October so there are warmer days ahead. But after a few months of lovely weather through the winter and spring I am starting to understand why people outside of SF complain that the city is cold and foggy – 20 minutes outside of the city and it’s warm and sunny.

Tuesday MJ and I headed down to AT&T Park for a game, Giants v Cubs. It turns out that I really quite enjoy going to the stadium for baseball games.

The Cubs won 8-6, and with 4 runs in the 1st by the Cubs and 2 in the bottom of the 9th by the Giants it made for quite an exciting game, especially at the end.

This weekend MJ has a friend coming in town to visit, and my todo list must have become sentient and started adding things to itself (certainly I didn’t agree to do all this!?). Looks like I’ll be pretty busy for the next couple weeks.