Recently, in a fit of splurgy madness, I went and acquired an Onkyo TX-SR504 AV Receiver (yes Mrinal, that’s what they call an “amplifier” these days and an Onkyo SL-107 subwoofer. This was to replace my stone-age Kenwood audio system that I had acquired sometime in the last century.

I am yet to buy some decent speakers (mainly because I am still recovering from the sticker shock of the purchase), but my old Kenwood speakers are holding remarkably well. In fact, I even managed to get surround sound going and after some tweaking (thanks, Shanu!) for my weird living room acoustics, things sound really good.

The dealer had sent an engineer to wire things up initially, but it didn’t take me long to figure out that he probably knew less than me about what an AV receiver is all about. So I sat down and re-did it. In the process of wiring up the gear, I learned a lot about these new-fangled electronics, connections, optical cables, and what not. I learned not to let any audio connections go to my TV (the aging AKAI 29″ TV, which needs replacing soon, now has a single, fat video cable going into it, that’s all), I figured out the PhD-level Onkyo RC-647M remote control until I could control receiver, TV and Tata-Sky set-top box with that one remote (I am still trying to find the correct code for my DVS DVU-764S DVD player – help, anybody?), etc.

I have been spending the past few days stress testing the setup. A few tiles seem to have fallen off the roof, and I get ugly stares from some of my neighbours (not speak about the wife . I seem to have a problem with the DVD player’s optical link to the AV Receiver, which I shall do some R&D on. But otherwise things are holding out nicely.

In the process, I have also made a few discoveries about music and movies I own. Most of them I could deal with, but this one is one for the books:

In July 2003, I wrote this:

During this time I also received the 5 DVD “Beatles Anthology” set – something I have been dying to own, and finally got thanks to friend Sanjay Ramaswamy. I now own the Beatles Anthology audio CD set (6 CDs!), the book (which is HUGE!) and now the video (11 hours of prime Beatles footage!) – I am happy as a pig in the mud!

Now, I have seen all these DVDs, several times, in fact. While I really enjoyed them, I was sometimes disappointed that large swaths of beatle history were simply not covered on these DVDs, but I resigned myself to the fact that there is only so much you can put on a set of 5 DVDs.

Today, put in the first DVD and watched it beginning to end again. But just as it finished and the titles started coming up (which is when I usually pressed STOP and put in the next of the 5 DVDs), I got distracted into a long chat with my friend Harsha. And after the DVD ended, it didn’t stop – it started again.

Or so I thought.

All of a sudden, I was watching Beatles material that I had not seen before!

It turns out that each of these DVDs has TWO episodes of the Anthology on it! So while I had seen Episodes 1, 3, 5, 7 and the bonus DVD, but I had not seen episodes 2, 4, 6 and 8!!!!!!!!

So in these 4 years that I have owned this DVD set, I had not seen approximately 5 hours out of 11 hours of Beatles footage!!!!

DUH!

I am both horrified and delighted – horrified because for someone like me, who is such a Beatles fan and so deep into technology, this is really an unforgivable goofup, and delighted because I have an entire weekend ahead of me to watch “new” Beatles material.

Now go away, everyone, I have TV to watch!