Plasma TVs -- Worth the price?
 

Why does no one advocate front-projection CRT?

For anywhere from about $7K to $20K, all your concerns are over for a protracted period of time. They are supposed to last forever and give very high resolution.

Plasma TVs -- Worth the price?
 

Most people don't live in a theatre. In order to get good contrast, a CRT prefers a completely dark room. Not so with a plasma, LCD or DLP where the windows can be open and you can still watch.

Digital SLR Camera
 

Sorry to come late to this party.

As someone who habitually drops significant cash on camera equipment, my philosophy on DSLRs for a long time has been that I'll move that way when the bang for the buck starts getting comparable. I think it is starting to get close, with the Ds being good examples.

I think the film/scan approach introduces some unpredictability in image quality, and so my high-end film to digital conversions often have artifacts or distortion that is absent from my little digital snaps. And I tend to use digital images as much or more than printed images. But I also think film and digital have different uses, and probably always will -- there's something about a nice, fine grained black and white image that I don't see digital replicating any time soon.

But why did you ever put away the Holga? They're almost as much fun as sex.

Plasma TVs -- Worth the price?
 

Basements.

What else are they good for?

Plasma TVs -- Worth the price?
 

Wine cellars.

Hmmm. Maybe both.

But here in earthquake country, no basements per se. All the new homes are built on slabs.

Plasma TVs -- Worth the price?
 

Reminds me. In the process of doing some addition on the manse, we're going to be in need of a temperature controlled unit for wine (since the space now devoted to wine cellar will be heated). But, can't find a single unit that can hold in the 5-6 case range without prohibitive cost (prohibitive means about $1,200 or so, which is what it will take to set up a space as a separate zone). Seems like the choice is a little unit that holds a couple of cases or temperature control a whole room, with little in between that makes sense.

Has anyone looked into this before?

Plasma TVs -- Worth the price?
 

Wine Enthusiast has several units in your price range (barely) that hold between 110 and 220 bottles. A 500 bottle monster will put you back $1800.

Since refrigerators of similar size are in the same range, I don't think you're going to get too much cheaper -- you may do better than this, but I think this is indicative of the range. It seems in line with the prices I noticed a couple of weeks ago when shopping for a refrigerator. These are becoming very popular; every store we visited had at least 6-8, and 2-3 full size models.

Wine cellars.
 

I haven't researched it thoroughly, but the stand-alone wine cellars seem prohibitively expensive as compared to insulating a closet or a corner of a room. Especially if you can do the work yourself (I did). It's not terribly hard if you know some basic carpentry. You can have an electrician come put in another plug for the refrig. unit, and enjoy!

Wine cellars.
 

That's what I seem to be figuring out. And since we don't care if it is pretty, just that our wines are kept crisp, we may just be forced to have a wine room instead of a little refrigerated unit.

Thanks.

Wine cellars.
 

I think every large unit is butt-ugly. unless you're super-rich, the idea of having a dine-in cellar is just ridiculous. You can fit 500-1000 bottles in a pretty small closet that you can still walk into, and that's $20k+ of wine, depending on your investment. that strikes me as plenty, unless you just want to show off.

Wine cellars.
 

We'll never hit 500 bottles, though our investmnet per bottle probably averages over $50; the key will be identifying the space to use in the basement, where we do have a lot of room. Setting up a separate zone on the heating and cooling systems seems like too big a deal for a closet though. So what else can we use cellar cool temperatures for? Probably just dead storage ("and here's our wine cellar and storage closet...")

Plasma TVs -- Worth the price?
 

We looked at every wine type device on the planet - in stores and on the internet. It made sense for us to get the SubZero - granted, it only holds 2 cases, but was totally worth the money.

You could consider this, the SubZ will hold your more precious bottles at perfect temp and humidity with low vibration. And you can keep the not-so-precious bottles in a cooler portion of the house since you'll be drinking those more often in theory (plus a couple in the SubZ so you'll never be without a perfectly chilled bottle for spur of the moment binging).
But dude, really, when you're talking 5-6 cases, think of the investment $$ wise. Do you really want to taint that much wine with anything less than the best? Think about it. It's really less for the fridge than for the wine at that point. And you'll never say "damn, I shoulda got the better fridge."

Plasma TVs -- Worth the price?
 

FWIW, some analysts just announced they expected a 30% drop in retail prices for flat-panel TVs in 2004.

What does it take to become one of these "analysts," anyway?

Wine cellars.
 

Don't need a separate zone. Just don't have a duct/vent into that area. Take a corner, build a closet. Store wine, beer, other dry goods. GEt a cooling unit. Done.

Wine cellars.
 

Ah, very good. Thanks!