What You've Just Bought!

Ah man, I find HDR on Windows 11 great now. The Auto HDR feature works pretty well for most games that don't have official HDR support too. And being able to quickly toggle it off and on with Win + Alt + B makes it pretty convenient to use. I run every game in HDR where possible.

I had heard the QD OLED's were quite nice but I havn't seen one in person yet. Might go check them out in store or something when i'm next near a big electronics store.
I almost exclusively never run games in HDR, but movies and TV it's just a painless process and looks way better on the Apple TV through Plex than fumbling about on the PC. The only time I watch a movie on my PC is when I want a much better surround sound experience.

Edit: thread appropriate and piggy backing off that last topic, wife got me an Audiosource amp so I can convert my current 5.2 setup to 7.2 for my birthday. Until I am able to get another pair of tower speakers I will be using it in bridge mode to power my NHT center speakers.
 
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I almost exclusively never run games in HDR, but movies and TV it's just a painless process and looks way better on the Apple TV through Plex than fumbling about on the PC. The only time I watch a movie on my PC is when I want a much better surround sound experience.

Edit: thread appropriate and piggy backing off that last topic, wife got me an Audiosource amp so I can convert my current 5.2 setup to 7.2 for my birthday. Until I am able to get another pair of tower speakers I will be using it in bridge mode to power my NHT center speakers.

Oh yeah agree, I use my Apple TV if I want to watch anything properly. Nice amp but considering your love for surround sound I am surprised you havn't plunged for a 11.2 Atmos setup!
 
Oh yeah agree, I use my Apple TV if I want to watch anything properly. Nice amp but considering your love for surround sound I am surprised you havn't plunged for a 11.2 Atmos setup!
Well that's the thing, because of my want for discrete analog outputs with a soundcard I'm limited to Marantz and they're expensive as shit. I've had their 9.2.4 on my list for a while updating through each year but it's 2 grand. Then it's another 800 for a pair of Atmos enabled Klipsch towers for the front, and it steamrolls from there. The amp was cheap and an easy way to get 7.2 from my PC later without dumping buckets into it. Frankly, if I was single I would have gone full on 11.2.4 a while back BUT would still be limited to 7.2 on PC and my current room I'm not sure how well height would go. Since the roof isn't flat and angles up then flattens in the center. On the flip side, since the PS5 doesn't have optical out I'm in need of a decent HDMI supporting receiver and so it's pushing a little more to get the new amp. Another issue I'll have is, games in 7.2 for PC sure, but then I'll need another Apple TV for content and I only have one HDMI input on my monitor.
It would make life a million times easier if on PC you could just disable monitor out and still retain audio via HDMI. It and individual channel controls are the only 2 reasons I still use discrete sound cards.

Also want to bag on Android for a bit. I've had a Shield since 2017 and it's far better than any built in solution and most other solutions like a FireTV. I started to hate it after a while though because of random freezing, app crashes, overall general slowness etc. Once I moved to an AppleTV 4k 2nd gen I will honestly never look back since it's a night and day difference. Literally everything about it is better, from the easier/bigger GUI, faster GUI, better voice control, better controller, rechargeable controller, tied in Apple profiles, general speed, boot up time, even updates. That experience, plus my work Android phone almost getting me in trouble Android fans can stay seething hanging on to buggy junk. Sorrynotsorry. I'm pretty sure the instant I get some sort of Mac I'll probably drop my PC for daily driving too....or maybe if iPadOS 16 brings proper monitor and M/KB support I might.
 
Well that's the thing, because of my want for discrete analog outputs with a soundcard I'm limited to Marantz and they're expensive as shit. I've had their 9.2.4 on my list for a while updating through each year but it's 2 grand. Then it's another 800 for a pair of Atmos enabled Klipsch towers for the front, and it steamrolls from there. The amp was cheap and an easy way to get 7.2 from my PC later without dumping buckets into it. Frankly, if I was single I would have gone full on 11.2.4 a while back BUT would still be limited to 7.2 on PC and my current room I'm not sure how well height would go. Since the roof isn't flat and angles up then flattens in the center. On the flip side, since the PS5 doesn't have optical out I'm in need of a decent HDMI supporting receiver and so it's pushing a little more to get the new amp. Another issue I'll have is, games in 7.2 for PC sure, but then I'll need another Apple TV for content and I only have one HDMI input on my monitor.
It would make life a million times easier if on PC you could just disable monitor out and still retain audio via HDMI. It and individual channel controls are the only 2 reasons I still use discrete sound cards.

Also want to bag on Android for a bit. I've had a Shield since 2017 and it's far better than any built in solution and most other solutions like a FireTV. I started to hate it after a while though because of random freezing, app crashes, overall general slowness etc. Once I moved to an AppleTV 4k 2nd gen I will honestly never look back since it's a night and day difference. Literally everything about it is better, from the easier/bigger GUI, faster GUI, better voice control, better controller, rechargeable controller, tied in Apple profiles, general speed, boot up time, even updates. That experience, plus my work Android phone almost getting me in trouble Android fans can stay seething hanging on to buggy junk. Sorrynotsorry. I'm pretty sure the instant I get some sort of Mac I'll probably drop my PC for daily driving too....or maybe if iPadOS 16 brings proper monitor and M/KB support I might.

Would love an atmos system myself but it's just a pipe dream for me. I will be lucky if in two years I can even afford a terraced house with a neighbour on the other side of the wall, let alone a detached house that would enable me to have a home theatre with a cranked subwoofer etc. Maybe in my 40's i'll have moved into a detached house and I can get an Atmos system then, or whatever technology replaces it. Until then i'll be having to stick to headphones or quiet speakers.

I like my Apple TV a lot too but I see a lot of people dunk on it for the cost. I honestly don't think it's particularly expensive at all :\ okay you can get Amazon Firesticks for a lot cheaper, but they are pretty trash in comparison. My only wish with Apple TV is that they'd release one with a top tier SoC like an M2 and put a billion dollars into paying for twenty or so AAA games to come out on it. They support the Xbox and PS controllers these days, just need some actual quality games. M2 is powerful enough for some proper gaming. It's not gonna be next gen quality, but that doesn't mean they can't make compelling games for it.
 
Would love an atmos system myself but it's just a pipe dream for me. I will be lucky if in two years I can even afford a terraced house with a neighbour on the other side of the wall, let alone a detached house that would enable me to have a home theatre with a cranked subwoofer etc. Maybe in my 40's i'll have moved into a detached house and I can get an Atmos system then, or whatever technology replaces it. Until then i'll be having to stick to headphones or quiet speakers.

I like my Apple TV a lot too but I see a lot of people dunk on it for the cost. I honestly don't think it's particularly expensive at all :\ okay you can get Amazon Firesticks for a lot cheaper, but they are pretty trash in comparison. My only wish with Apple TV is that they'd release one with a top tier SoC like an M2 and put a billion dollars into paying for twenty or so AAA games to come out on it. They support the Xbox and PS controllers these days, just need some actual quality games. M2 is powerful enough for some proper gaming. It's not gonna be next gen quality, but that doesn't mean they can't make compelling games for it.
I don't even care about games. I just care about speed and stability really. Like I don't have the time to sit down and fart with the media box just to consume some content. It wastes what little time we have to even watch TV and my wife has even noticed the drastic difference in machines. In comparison to the Shield it's cheaper by quite a bit and to me personally both the FireTV and Shield are equally trash when it comes to speed and stability. I have both (2 flavors of the FireTV and the Shield) and either the controller doesn't work periodically or I have to unplug the power to hard reboot to get any response. I expect nothing less of Android these days and it's a harsh truth. TV boxes or phones, they freeze, slow down and become unresponsive, or require reboots on a regular basis like a damn Windows machine. The ONLY time any of my Apple products reboot is during an OS update.
On that note, I'm kinda glad I didn't rush my upgrade and get an iPhone 13 Pro. Setting up the wife's 13 Pro max I can see it's practically the same thing as my phone. Expected, but still that's pretty trash with the stagnation. I also think putting any modern Apple chip in the TV box will up the cost a lot like the A15 or M chips. It's not really necessary unless we start needing to process 8k content which we both know won't happen for 10 years.
 
I don't even care about games. I just care about speed and stability really. Like I don't have the time to sit down and fart with the media box just to consume some content. It wastes what little time we have to even watch TV and my wife has even noticed the drastic difference in machines. In comparison to the Shield it's cheaper by quite a bit and to me personally both the FireTV and Shield are equally trash when it comes to speed and stability. I have both (2 flavors of the FireTV and the Shield) and either the controller doesn't work periodically or I have to unplug the power to hard reboot to get any response. I expect nothing less of Android these days and it's a harsh truth. TV boxes or phones, they freeze, slow down and become unresponsive, or require reboots on a regular basis like a damn Windows machine. The ONLY time any of my Apple products reboot is during an OS update.
On that note, I'm kinda glad I didn't rush my upgrade and get an iPhone 13 Pro. Setting up the wife's 13 Pro max I can see it's practically the same thing as my phone. Expected, but still that's pretty trash with the stagnation. I also think putting any modern Apple chip in the TV box will up the cost a lot like the A15 or M chips. It's not really necessary unless we start needing to process 8k content which we both know won't happen for 10 years.

Oh 8K, honestly feel like it's just pointless. Maybe more applicable in the US where people have larger living spaces and can fit 80 inch TV's, but most people in Europe have 55 or maybe 65" TV's, and at a 4 meter viewing distance like is often the case, I just can not see any difference. Maybe if it was side by side and I squinted I could spot the difference. But when I checked in store I couldn't really tell when they had an 8K and 4K TV side by side. I'm kind of worried about the gaming industry chasing 8K gaming and we spend three generations of GPU's wasting compute on getting 8K to good framerates but no other graphical improvements, that look almost identical to 4K for most people in most situations.
 
Oh 8K, honestly feel like it's just pointless. Maybe more applicable in the US where people have larger living spaces and can fit 80 inch TV's, but most people in Europe have 55 or maybe 65" TV's, and at a 4 meter viewing distance like is often the case, I just can not see any difference. Maybe if it was side by side and I squinted I could spot the difference. But when I checked in store I couldn't really tell when they had an 8K and 4K TV side by side. I'm kind of worried about the gaming industry chasing 8K gaming and we spend three generations of GPU's wasting compute on getting 8K to good framerates but no other graphical improvements, that look almost identical to 4K for most people in most situations.
Oh no, they definitely should chase 8k performance otherwise we'll continue to get crap like proprietary RT that really doesn't go anywhere. That includes where they're going in terms of power usage.
 
the people I had cutting my lawn for the past several years decided that they are going to stop, So today I ordered a Cub Cadet TX2 riding lawn mower
 
the people I had cutting my lawn for the past several years decided that they are going to stop, So today I ordered a Cub Cadet TX2 riding lawn mower

You can accurately guage someones wealth in the UK by if they have a ride on lawnmower (you're probably in a £1m+ property if you feel the need for one), but I feel like it doesn't work in the US.
 
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