Theater in the Round

I've mentioned before the fact that we have an ersatz "home theater" in our basement. I've mentioned the projector a number of times, I know that much. The sound is still pretty wimpy, just my old stereo and speakers set up on either side of the screen (no fancy surround sound yet). The other part of the setup is the big 400 disk DVD changer that both plays and stores a big chunk of the disks we own.

I have finally gotten around to filling the silly thing, and cataloging what's in it. There is the option for the changer to do that itself -- but it doesn't work very well. It's not the fault of the changer, it's just that most disks aren't properly labeled and encoded with the info for the changer to read. Sony provides the option for you to manually enter in disk titles (and even includes a PS/2 keyboard jack on the front to make entry tolerable), but in the end it's just not worth the hassle. If you take a disk out, the player forgets it's name and you have to enter it again. So instead, I've created a spreadsheet with all the names and disk numbers on it (which I can sort by name or number, or type, once all the info is entered) that I can print out and leave downstairs for easy reference. I've left space for movies I know will be coming out soon (Shrek 3, Pirates 3, Fantastic Four2, Spiderman 3, Harry Potter & TOoTP) as well as expansion space for movies I might go ahead and pick up sometime (another Veggietale, Reservoir Dogs), and slot #1 for movies not stored in the changer (Das Boot is a 2 sided disk, you have to flip it over to watch the whole thing -- and there are too many anime and TV series disk to fit in the changer with everything else).

I suppose I'll make the list available some day (the file is in Google Docs) just so nosey people can see what I watch.