AJBangkok

Dont miss

The nanny state looking over my shoulder

Peoples sense of entitlement

Everything shutting at 5.30 pm

Do miss

Vitamin shops

Fish and chip shops

Mini dim sims

My setup in Bangkok

As far as you switch goes try this. http://www.monoprice.com/Product?c_id=105&cp_id=10521&cs_id=1052104&p_id=8747&seq=1&format=2 At $86 bucks it's a decent deal. Monoprice also sell on Amazon and eBay and on eBay they use the internatiinal shipping program which will get it delivered direct to your door. ( It will cost around 40% m0re)

I'd say the best is the ASUS DSL-AC68U or the ASUS DSL-AC68R . Cost is around 6k. My place is 600sm over 2 floors and it pumps out the wifi to every room. If I was going cheap then I've found the D-link ( 2750 I think) to be the best. I use the d-link in m place in phuket and it is far better than the TP link modem that 3bb provided.

I watched the F1 on it yesterday. There was a tiny bit of buffering throughout the race but nothing to get annoyed about.

Well, Button should make the best of the first race as Alonso not even racing in Australia. Kimi beating Vettel, hard to see that.

Alonso is lucky not to be racing as the performance of the Maclaren today in FP2 was horrible. Kimi looked more comfortable in the car than Vettel but Vettel did manage a faster lap.

I was surprised the see the Ferrari's solidly outpacing the williams but it is only practice after all.

Although not Phuket related I'm excited that the season is starting this weekend.

This year I want to Kimi beat the pants of Vettel and Button put Alonso in his place. (Which is behind him)

Thanks for that I use both primewire and genisis but my genisis settings currently don't have auto play "on" for SD. I'll give it a shot and see how it goes.

Depending on how you live your life HCMC can be far more expensive than Bangkok. The biggest difference will be in housing. If you want to live in what would be the equivalent of lower to mid sukhumvit then you'll be looking at District 1, 3, or An Phu. For family's An Phu is where you want to be. Rents are substantially higher for what you get in Bangkok for similar money.

Unless you shop at fresh markets then your food costs will most likely be slightly higher. Any type of eating out at non Vietnamese restaurants will substantially more expensive than Bangkok. Beer is cheaper everywhere.Cable TV will be cheaper and internet will be the same. If your landlord has registered the dwelling for rent to a foreigner then your electricity will have a 100% foreign surcharge which will put it around 50-60% higher than thai price. Nightlife sucks. There are foreign places and local places. Local places are totally packed out and within a month you'll know all the foreign places and be seeing all the same faces everywhere you go. You're far less likely to get into an altrication with a Vietnamese male than a thai male, but they do get in your face more. If you are have an Asian wife then they will openly hit on her or try to give her their number

If you want to live like a local Vietnamese then you can live very cheaply. You can find a room for $500 a month and eat local food and the cost will be lower than Bangkok.

Are these the same kind of termites that will devour all the soft wood in your house?

My internet provider is True and I have 30mb xdsl service but it seems that streaming sites work for a while then they don't work or they start having buffering issues.

Right now my best streaming sites are sharesix, nowvideos, and thefileme,.

Historically it was beststreams, promptfile, and mightyvideos.

Sometimes streams work on genisis but not on primewire ( one channel)

Any have any suggestions on what works for them?

If you use xbmc and a receiver with upscaler then try watching the latest season of house of cards. If you have the genisis addon then down load the 1080P stream. It should be the first one on the list. I watched this yesterday and the picture quality was the best i've seen on my 4k TV. I don't know if I as getting 4k but to my eye it mached the quality of the promotional video loop they play in the store when displaying the 4k TV's.

I don't have a blu-Ray player yet but I have been looking at an oppo blu-Ray ( cost roughly 20k) that they say has upscaling capability.

BTW this is the first time I saw a stream on xbmc with a 1080p designator. I didn't think I'd be able to download it on my internet but there was no buffering at all. Later it was depressing to go back to watching SD quality downloads

Yes the shop at fortune town I bought my Minix X8-h plus also gave me the free air mouse so please ask for it if they don't offer.

Minix X8-H plus for around 5k or the M8 box for around 3.6k. Minix is a little more cutting edge, has better support and better wifi but if you're not interested in playing with all the bells and whistles on the minix then the M8 is the best if the rest in my opinion.

The center speaker is KEF Q600 and the subwoofer is KEF Q400 the ceiling speakers are KEF Ci 200's.

I appreciate sound quality will not be as good as a traditional 7.1 setup but it's probably going to be the best sound quality I've ever had and I'm not an audiophile so I really won't know what I'm missing.

In addition when I planned the system I did think about scalability if I suddenly became obsessed with" getting better sound" ( I have too much time on my hands so knowing myself it's a distinct possibility) . That's the reasons i bought the Onkyo 1030 reveiver. The Onkyo allows for a 9,2 channel setup with Dolby atmos the latest offering from Dolby which utilizes ceiling speakers to totally envelope you in sound. I can add additional floor / in wall speakers to the setup.

Finally my goal was just to get better sound than the TV and have something cool to enjoy. The whole audio set up including the installation will be around 200k which is not that much money, and yes there will be people who tell me I coukd have got something better cheaper, but the really really important thing is that I got exactly what I wanted, I had a lot of fun ( and frustration ) getting all the components and matching them, and that's good enough for me.

"Fresh off the boat " is good for some light watching. Series about a Chinese family that moves from Chinatown in Washington DC to Orlando to open an American steakhouse.

My first choice is a minix box but my second choice would be the M8 box. A friend has one and the although the minix says it has more bells and whistles only difference I can tell is the Minix has better wifi ( at least for me) and minix has a very good web help forum.

The M8 is solid, a good spec and easy to use. I don't think you can go wrong with it unless you get one that has a problem out of the factory, which can happen with every brand as they are all mass produced in China.

Those are awesome. . The problem is with big TV's the price drops are incredibly painful. I paid 320k for mine in December as I thought my condo renovations would be complete. Now the price us between 250k and 270k and in a few months I'm sure it will be offered somewhere for 199k. I don't look too smart today but hey sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and act.

If those 105 inch ever come down to 300k then I'll get one but I fear I may have to wait a long time.

Hahaha don't worry in a couple of weeks there'll be trash everywhere.

Cost of installation will be around 8,000-10,000. i didn't pay 80k for soeaker wire, that's what the dealer quoted me. I ordered from the states and it cost around 8k.

Here a pic of the stuff getting ready

A little off topic but the final components of my audio system for my tv room arrived today. The TV was mounted on the wall a week ago and I will meet with the guy who will install the system Sunday. He said it will take 2 days. On Monday the 2 sofas will arrive and hopefully I will be in TV heaven by the middle of next week. My system is an 84 inch LG UHD TV, Onkyo 1030 receiver, KEF center speaker and Subwoofer, and 6 ceiling mounted 8in KEF speakers. Everything bought locally except 3 of the KEF ceiling speakers ( the dealer here had run out) and 600 feet of pure copper speaker wire which I got from the states. I have an Intel i5 NUC box running windiws 8.1 as my HTPC. Plus the usual blue ray dvd and a couple if other boxes.

I'm not an audiophile, this is my first real sound system other than an out of the box home theatre system, so I spent hours surfing the web on systems brands etc. One of the things that freaked me out was when the dealer here said the wiring for the system would cost 80,000. That's more than I paid for the receiver ! I started reading about speaker wire and learnt that if you use pure copper 12 gauge wire then the difference is not really noticeable. The wire I bought from the states was a top performer in the reviews and total cost including shipping and import tax was around 8,000 baht.

Central Chidlom has an LG 65 inch 4k UHD TV on sale now for 87k. It's probably decent enough to fulfill both functions. And by the time you buy the projector, the cables, the screen and the 50 inch TV you're probably looking at a marginal total price difference. How often do you really think you'll use the projector? I probably used mine less than 20 times before it was regarded to a box in the closet.

Last week tonight with John Oliver is back for a second season. Even though it's news topical if you haven't watched the first season I would recommend it. One episode resulted in an official protest from the thai govt and him becoming person non grata in Thailand. In another he interviews Steven Hawking which is one of the funniest interviews I've seen.