Random thoughts.... [Tech Edition]

So I've had a set of Mackie MR5 MKII monitors for desktop speakers at my pc. yesterday one of them decided it wanted to fry it's input circuitry so I'm left with one. Googling this seems to be a common issue and the board that have the diodes on them or something is $130. A pair of these sell for 150-200 freedom dollars so that's not happening for now. Rather I found a guy on craigslist selling a pair of Creative Gigaworks T40 for $60. They only a year old supposedly. I hopefully will be picking them up tomorrow. I'm trying to use headphones and tell myself that's good enough, but I really don't like it. If I'm in a space where I don't have to wear headphones, wearing them feels weird and I want to get them off my head as soon as possible. I don't know why, but it's just the sensation I get.

photo of offending burnt parts. :(

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I suspect they'll somehow fight it in a year saying it wasn't sustainable because not enough people took them up on it.
 
I'd expect them to only offer these kits for the consumer bundled with the necessary tools making the whole thing exactly as expensive as having the procedure done in an approved/certified shop :|
 
93Flareside said:
Rather I found a guy on craigslist selling a pair of Creative Gigaworks T40 for $60. They only a year old supposedly.
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I'm guessing they're the T40 IIs (black ones) which are amazingly still on sale new but I got a set of original T40s (grey ones) in 2007. If they're the grey ones then he's talking out of his arse.

Great speakers that have a nice weight to them, sound nice and look great with the yellow Kevlar-coned drivers. The power supply in mine died but I kept the drivers and two of them now live along with a 1960s Lucas car cassette player in the little unit I built for my mother to play old cassettes.

Edit: Think I found the Craigslist ad, yeah those are T40 IIs. Seems like a fair price.
 
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Matt2000 said:
I'm guessing they're the T40 IIs (black ones) which are amazingly still on sale new but I got a set of original T40s (grey ones) in 2007. If they're the grey ones then he's talking out of his arse.

Great speakers that have a nice weight to them, sound nice and look great with the yellow Kevlar-coned drivers. The power supply in mine died but I kept the drivers and two of them now live along with a 1960s Lucas car cassette player in the little unit I built for my mother to play old cassettes.

Edit: Think I found the Craigslist ad, yeah those are T40 IIs. Seems like a fair price.
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I had to look up what those were, but yes, they sound nice. I had a set of Creative T3 2.1 speakers for a while, and I felt bad for my neighbors whenever I used it. That sub makes the whole building shake... :ROFLMAO:
 
Updates work wonders.

I was having issues with the LibreELEC/KODI installation on my Raspberry-Pi-2, to wit: The YouTube addon just couldn't play videos remotely smooth anymore, running into buffering issues so severe that it was completely unusable.
I then noticedt that I couldn't update that addon, and neither the others that had also updates available.

So.... update the whole system it is. Now that I'm running the lates 9.2.8 version instead of 9.0.2, the addons could be updated and I can watch YouTube again. :)

... now off to working through my backlog. :D
 
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A worthwhile investment for about a 4hr total drive to get them. ?
 
DanRoM said:
Updates work wonders.

I was having issues with the LibreELEC/KODI installation on my Raspberry-Pi-2, to wit: The YouTube addon just couldn't play videos remotely smooth anymore, running into buffering issues so severe that it was completely unusable.
I then noticedt that I couldn't update that addon, and neither the others that had also updates available.

So.... update the whole system it is. Now that I'm running the lates 9.2.8 version instead of 9.0.2, the addons could be updated and I can watch YouTube again. :)

... now off to working through my backlog. :D
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Sometimes they also break things. After updating my kodi (rpi2 like you) media center it takes anywhere between 30 seconds and 1 minute to start watching a show. It even happens on local files, so it’s not a streaming/buffering issue. Very strange and annoying, because at some point my patience gets the best of me, I press stop and just then the video finally starts playing, restarting the whole process.

I did a complete reset due to a bad sdcard a month or so ago, so I’m kinda out of ideas… found several people with similar issues (has something to do with the script taking forever to do anything) but no fix yet…
 
GRtak said:
This covers more than Vizio, and has hard numbers of what your viewing information is worth. I am worth $40 a month to Roku according to the article.

www.theverge.com

Vizio’s profit on ads, subscriptions, and data is double the money it makes selling TVs

Vizio’s business model doesn’t end once you buy a 4K TV.
www.theverge.com www.theverge.com


I think it is time to build an HTPC.
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wasn't someone just saying that their TV had discontinued carrying apps he used so they were looking for a streaming stick?

Also Plex
 
@NecroJoe

I prefer my Amazon Fire TV set up. I have the DVR through them so it records antena tv and lets me watch that too. the cubes also have voice controls that let me shout at it, the navigation is clean and intuitive... I also think its well worth the price of prime membership but if you dont have one you can still use the Fire stick for free content and to use to open apps. Its remote has controls for power and volume

Roku is probably the best overall and have a fantastic remote with headphones kinda neat. I got this after a tv I bought had Roku built in. I dont like the overall cutsy behavior (takes over the background during holidays even if i set a background)

I tend to stay with Amazon
 
Momentum57 said:
@NecroJoe

I prefer my Amazon Fire TV set up. I have the DVR through them so it records antena tv and lets me watch that too. the cubes also have voice controls that let me shout at it, the navigation is clean and intuitive... I also think its well worth the price of prime membership but if you dont have one you can still use the Fire stick for free content and to use to open apps. Its remote has controls for power and volume

Roku is probably the best overall and have a fantastic remote with headphones kinda neat. I got this after a tv I bought had Roku built in. I dont like the overall cutsy behavior (takes over the background during holidays even if i set a background)

I tend to stay with Amazon
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There is a setting in Roku that will disable the holiday theme background.
 
Momentum57 said:
wasn't someone just saying that their TV had discontinued carrying apps he used so they were looking for a streaming stick?

Also Plex
Click to expand...

Amusingly, my other TV is a Vizeo, and it's continually adding new apps and more content. Compared to the Samsung, which keeps dropping content.
 
It's really tempting to buy a new SSD in the Amazon Black Friday sale, my current motherboard can't handle PCI 4.0 to make the most of the 2TB Samsung 980 Pro that's currently going for £232 but I was already thinking about building a new Ryzen machine next year and at that price they may as well be giving it away. Incredible to think that I paid around £350 for my 1TB SATA 840 EVO back in the day.

The only thing stopping me is the need to buy a CFExpress card for the Z9 when I eventually get it (no idea when that will be), those are basically small NVMe SSDS but with the prices massively jacked up. The 2TB Samsung 980 Pro would seemingly wipe the floor with the 512GB Lexar CFExpress card I'm looking at and that's twice the price for a quarter of the capacity. 4K 120fps video is still going to gobble up that 512GB like it's nothing.
 
I've actually gone and done the thing you're considering a couple days ago - got a 970 Evo Plus 2TB, with the same reasoning that my mainboard doesn't do PCIe 4.0, and 970 is among the best options one can get for a PCIe 3.0 setup. Arrived less than 24 hours later, now it's laying around on the desk, and I can't be arsed to actually install the thing :D The idea is also to install a fresh W11 instead of migrating my closing-on-decade-old current system, so there's some hesitation to get everything set up again and whatnot.
 
970 EVO is a great choice and a very good price, 4GB/s isn't exactly slow anyway! I'm not actually sure if my PCIe 3.0 M.2 slot is running at X4 speed, I intended to check but forgot.
 
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