Thank you! What would I do without y'all? Yes, we decided we are not astute enough to notice the difference between 720 and 1080 on a 32" screen! LOL Thanks for explaining the Netflix to an old lady. I gather that the content is blasting away out there -- all of it -- all the time. I'm not ordering a fresh version of whatever movie be taken out of storage and sent to ME. It's already 'out there'. I'm just being permitted to 'grab it' -- I can start viewing any part I want of what I've ordered. This isn't like waiting for an AdobePub book to be available from my library, where the library has X numbers of the product to lend. Um...so what if every person in the USA asked to view "The Grapes of Wrath" right now? Could everyone get it immediately -- no limit to how many people access the same thing? Both the TV salesperson at Sears and the Blu-Ray salesperson at Costco told us the cable here (Oceanic on Maui) provides only 720 at best. We currently have a Digital cable box; it's a substiture for the HD cable box we ordered in January. The HD box was 'out of stock' -- as we learned only when the installer showed up. The HD is to be installed Monday afternoon. I hope I see a lot more difference with the HD; I saw very little improvement with the Digital over plain cable. (Diital and HD is the same price: $7/month. Makes me wonder.) Oceanic offers a landline/broadband bundle I could use if I bought my own router. However, my dealings with Oceanic over this box have not been positive. (Hours on hold. Mixed up orders. Installer shows up with wrong box. HD boxes 'out of stock' for a MONTH just between Oahu and Maui?) We have no choice of cable provider in this condo; it's Oceanic. So, I need to ask Hawiian Tel for 1.5 - 3.0 mpbs broadband? Will every router push that? I was unable to register the Blu-Ray w/Sony/Netflix, but that may be because our leased router is failing -- or we have insufficient bandwidth from Hawaiian Tel? I'm probably ahead to continue leasing (a replacement router) so that Hawaiian Tel will be responsible for maintaining the router/service for guests.

I just spent a little more time on the netflix site, and I agree that the quality of the downloadable stuff isn't spelled out clearly. I have comcast cable and they have some SD and HD movies that are truly on demand and start pretty much right when you select them. There will be a delay in downloading content off the netflix site, it seems like it could be 10-15 minutes. Not sure of that though. The netflix print, to paraphrase, says something along the lines of "the quality of your movie will depend on the speed of your internet connection. At 3mps, the quality will approach that of a DVD." I have a fast connection so I should get the best they have to offer. But that tells me it won't be HD (1080 or 720), and that it may barely be DVD (480). So yes, I take from that that the downloadable stuff on Netflix isn't HD. And with a fast connection you just might get DVD, which is 480. What's standard-def TV, something like 320, right? And VHS tapes were 240? I guess the good news for me is that my projector has a pretty decent upconverter in it, but the question begs as to how well it can upconvert what I download from netflix. A plus for me is that if the picture quality isn't great at 133", I can choke the projector down to display a smaller picture and improve quality. There are a variety of boxes you can use to download content from netflx. Personally if I was going to get a box I'd probably go for a blu ray player. But my wife wants to be able to also play games for the kids, so we'll probably go with PS3 or Xbox, more likely xbox. She wants to get dance dance revolution for my daughter! I don't have a real good feel for just what movies netflix has available for download. They claim 12000 out of their offerings of 100000. We were very happy with netflix when we just used them for discs years ago. We switched to blockbuster more for the kids, they liked being able to go into the store and pick up a DVD (a couple free in-store pickups per month) on their way home when they were having friends over. But blockbuster has gotten away from that feature, and blockbuster always seems to send discs in the que out of order. Makes it tough when you're watching a series. So I guess what it comes down to is that we're changing back to netflix for the DVDs via snailmail. At this time we look at the downloadable content as bonus stuff, and an excuse to get an xbox, and by getting an xbox it will allow us to watch bluray and work on our dance steps via DDR. One big slippery slope! But I do have a bit more head scratching to do...

This is the 2nd time we've been there - last month we used a $25 coupon, but we found this place has $25 entrees. Since it was DH's bday, this time we bought $50 coupon, I ordered a romaine salad (came grilled - yuck!), he ordered calamari appetizer, we figured we'd share. Well, his $11 appetizer turned out to be one 4" squid, 1 clam, and 2 baby octopi so he ate it all himself. He ordered a $24 entree (risotto with sausage and brussel sprouts - sounded good except for the brussel sprouts), I ordered a special lobster tail in kind of a tomato-based (turned out to be almost Fra Diavlo!) chowder that ended up being $29. Add a couple of glasses of wine, coffee, 1 dessert sampler and we had no trouble going over the $100 before tip. On the bright side, we got to open the envelope they gave us in December - DH was hoping for the $500 gift certificate or even a free meal (would be around $100), but it ended up being a cooking class for 4 people. Date TBD. I don't know if this will be a private class or if we're going to be with other winners, since they gave away 12 of these. I'm sure they won't have 48 people at a time in the kitchen LOL but maybe 12? I was thinking of asking my cousin K and her sister - will have to see if K is up to it. Dh suggested my mom but no way would she be interested in Italian (esp. fancy-pants Italian) cooking class. We did see on Restaurant.com that they've added more family-style places in our area (incl. my parents' favorite Italian place) so we're going to have to buy some certificates for those while they're half off (and with a $10 free certificate to restaurant of your choice with every order, the coupon we used Sat night ended up being free so we still had a nice meal for $88 after tip). DH wanted more kid-friendly places, DS is no problem but DD is so picky and antsy, I told him "Friendly's (local ice cream parlor chain, burgers, hot dogs and such) doesn't participate, sorry!" But a nearby pizza place (not our favorite but OK) does, we'll have to see if it's good for dine-in only or takeout OK. Hey, I came back to show you this CL ad (went a little farther from home, Fairfield Cty where the formerly rich Wall st types live). Do you think this "china table" might work for b/t my windows, to put DVD player on, if dimensions are right? It's got plenty of storage, and even glass doors if I want to put components inside instead of on top and still use remote. Here is a link that might be useful: china

Behind our TV is an electrical outlet and a cable outlet (the one with the little round cable thing that you screw the cord onto. The tv is plugged into both. The cable outlet runs into the closet on the left side of the photo. That is where all of our things are hooked up. The cable is screwed into a box, in the closet, which is made for remote sensors. There are "outlets" on the box, which you use to connect your dvd/vcr/satellite/surround sound into. The remote sensor is installed near the bottom left of the fireplace. But you can also get a sensor that just peeks out from your tv...very small and not noticeable. There is a basic cable wire (very cheap) that runs from the sensor on the wall, into the closet and also plugs into that same box as everything else. Then there are small sensors that you place on your dvd player/satellite receiver/surround sound. They just stick on the front of them. Now you can control all of your items even though you can't see them, via the remote sensor. I'm sure this sounds completely confusing, because I'm not good at explaining things like this. All of our wires do run through the walls, but you can also run them through the attic if you need to, or just do small holes, or even just "hide" the necessary cords. We have just one cable cord that goes from the box behind the tv into the closet, and then one cable cord that goes from the remote sensor on the wall into the closet. So we only really ran 2 cable cords. We purchased our supplies from smarthome.com. The whole setup was under $100.