Will work for AV gear . . .

[yesterday]
Worked from 4-8pm on adding some equipment to an existing system. Have to return one night this week to finish - not all the cables and power cords were moved with the equipment.

Payment? A new-in-box Pioneer BDP-51FD blu-ray player! I'll take it!

Last night I hooked it up to my old H/K receiver that doesn't have HDMI - wanted to use the DACs in the Pioneer anyway - via the 6 channel analog outputs. Futzed with the speaker settings between the AVR and the Blu-ray for a while, but didn't have a BD to test it with. SD picture looked worse than my xbox 360 when I tried 28 Days Later and Flight of the Conchords for some reason, but looked stunning when I put Lord of the Rings III in. Wow. Plus I could already tell the audio quality was better through this player.

[today]
Picked up The Dark Knight on BD this morning. Finally got to hear uncompressed Dolby TrueHD audio through the Pioneer's "high quality Wolfson DACs with 117db s/n ratio" yadda yadda yadda.
Incredible. It sounded like I had upgraded my amp. I can only imagine if I DO upgrade my amp and if I get some better speakers.

Also ripped out the OEM speakers in the rear deck of my car, "Motorjoy" brand that looks like the driver is made out of a Dunkin Donuts napkin and has a tweeter that I swear is brown construction paper. My personal truck is on its last leg and has been sitting unused for weeks, so I took out my good-old Cerwin Vega 6" door speakers and put them in the car. What an improvement! But of course now the OEM head unit doesn't drive them properly, they don't match the crappy front speakers that are still installed, I need a 4 channel amp and only have a 2 channel, etc. So I think I just started a new spending spree. :)

Anyhoo, here's my stuff. Complete with Spongebob "Imaginaaation" lunchbox, stuffed bat, sushi bandaids, and 12" Gumbi & Pokey.