Lerch

For Home Theater (and actually for surround gaming too), I think that having a processor involved is at least as important as the cans you're wearing. Before I had a home theater setup, I had a little Sennheiser box that would take an analog two-channel Dolby Pro Logic signal and convert it into simulated surround, either through the main speakers or with headphones. It colored the sound a little bit but it was fun and really did spice up action movies and such. When I was finally able to buy some home theater components, knowing how much I enjoyed the "surround" in headphones, I chose a Harman Kardon receiver that had the Dolby Headphone circuitry built-in. The Dolby Headphone processing regularly blows my mind, even just using a $20 pair of Skullcandy INK'D Earbuds (with an extension cord to the receiver). There have been *many* times watching a movie or The Sopranos or something where I've been afraid that I accidentally left the main speakers on and am therefore waking everybody up. I pop out an earbud and realize that no, it's only that the soundstage was expansive enough and the bass was deep enough (and the sound design was good enough) that it fooled me.

So I heartily recommend Dolby Headphone with whatever headphones you have lying around, but getting a receiver with that built-in is going to bust your $200 budget. So just now I figured, "Hey, I'll look for a little outboard box like I used to have, except a newer one that uses Dolby Headphone!" And I did find one, the JVC SU-DH1 ( JVC: http://sn.im/s2nuy)...but it looks like they don't make it anymore.

What I DID find were a number of kits that paired a processor with a set of wireless headphones. Here are three: the Sennheiser RS 130 can be found quite inexpensively, but it uses SRS surround, which I've never really liked. The Sony MDR-DS3000 uses a proprietary surround method, and is still friendly to your budget. The Pioneer SE-DIR800C has a list price way above your budget but the street price makes them worth a hard look: they are the only ones like this I could find that actually had the official Dolby Headphone system. (c|net review: http://sn.im/s2mhk).

Important: I haven't used any of these products I'm linking to, but I'm in a situation similar to yours and have found that the Dolby Headphone processing is just the ticket, even with budget headphones. Note that the Pioneer and Sony above have both digital and analog inputs, so I think you could plug the DVD in via a digital input and the VMC with the analog; hopefully you can switch between them on the device. The official Dolby Headphone site is at http://sn.im/dolbyheadphone.

Cliche, but my honeymoon in Las Vegas was probably the best. It was our first time going there and it was tremendous fun to walk around seeing everything with my honey.

Don't know how to fix the economy, but we sure are taxed all over the place. Was at a school board meeting recently and they celebrated that they were lowering our local taxes via federal stimulus. A fiscal conservative spoke up and noted that if our local taxes go down and fed taxes go up, we're not really gaining. And his point is doubly true because our local taxes are STILL going up: the stimulus money just meant they are going up 1% instead of 4%!

I had the three disc unlimited plan with blu-ray, but the third disc was a luxury: one for me, one for the wife, and a spare one for one of us to watch while we shipped our other one. With the price increase, and the fact that we often hadn't watched the "extra" disc before our replacement was shipped because the shipping speeds have gotten much better in our area, we decided to drop down to the two disc unlimited and keep blu-ray. It better reflects our current Netflix habits anyway, and our monthly subscription price remained the same.

Thanks for the contest, neato!

I surely would love to win a South Park Blu-Ray! But you know what I'd like even more? For Time Warner to hurry up with the Switched Digital Video converters so I could actually watch Comedy Central HD on my Tivo HD. And Food Network, and Discovery, and NatGeo, and... :(

I was pleased that the Logitech Squeezebox Boom was an honoree in the audio component category, products received, as I am a giant fan of that line and am looking forward to picking up that particular model.

Augh! This is my market, but as much as I love my Tivo HD, almost everything Time Warner adds this days is using SDV, so I don't get to watch them until that new add-on box comes out :( :( No Good Eats in HD for me. Or Discovery :(

Hi, please enter me in the contest! Thanks much!

I wish I'd read this before I bought the game, though I don't know if I would have done it differently: we bought the Wii version of the game because I knew that the whole family would want to play it, and for PC I was just thinking of the Steam version, where (I believe) we'd have to buy a separate copy for each of us (because I don't want someone logging on to my steam account on another PC, messing up my Team Fortress 2!). So we got the Wii version and we all LOVE it. We haven't even done the multiplayer yet, we just each have a save file (3 are available).

However, reading the review above it sounds like I could have bought it direct from 2DBoy and installed a copy on each of our machines, so really the PC version didn't have to be as limited as I was thinking.

One nice thing about the Wii version is that we have gathered around to watch someone else play a few times, and that would have been tough on the laptop screen. Get this game, it is fantastic.