Cobalt Edge

Today the installers wrapped up the bulk of the new home theater and whole-house audio additions, changes, upgrades, etc. The house had come with a Nuvo Concerto system for whole-house audio. But, we wanted really good iPod control, so we upgraded (for cost difference) to the new Grand Concerto system, that has these improved touch pads (instead of keypads), and does full metadata display for iPods, radio, XM radio, and so on. They are really nice and we're stoked to have XM now (before it was a dual AM/FM tuner, which we swapped out for a dual AM/FM + XM). The iPod dock part shows up next week, can't wait for that.

They also installed the new Samsung 50" plasma, wall mounted, and then racked up the equipment in the little AV closet in our bonus room. Nice setup, but I think we'll likely have to get more ventilation in the little closet, it gets pretty hot in there.

They still have a bunch of othe wiring to do in the house, as we're having some ethernet and other stuff re-jiggered, and they didn't finish programming the killer Universal Remote Control MX-3000. Of course, I'll want to get my hands on programming this as well. You can do all sorts of crazy stuff with it.

The funny part is we probably wouldn't have done half of this if the Nuvo system didn't already come with the house. But now that we have it, boy is it nice. Being able to have music all through the house (and different choices in different rooms), as well as on the deck (that's my favorite!) is just so nice. We watched a movie on the new plasma tonight and it was great, plus super sound in that room. There are better plasmas, but for the money this one is extremely nice. BTW, we have a Loewe 42" plasma for sale if anyone is interested (no, you don't even want to know what that cost, it's rather embarrassing in fact). Anyway, as you can tell, I'm pretty giddy about it all.