UPDATE: Scott has posted his first review of the Optoma GT720 gaming projector on his blog! Check it out!

Greetings everyone!

Well, I’ve warned you guys.  It’s time for our third new blogger to come on line.  This time, welcome Scott S.  He’s a local – lives about 25 miles from me here in So. Cal.  Scott S will blog on gaming and projectors, and, like Pete, has looked at the Optoma GT720, which he will comment on in is first (non-intro) blog.

This may be curious, or co-incidence, but would you believe Scott S, like Pete owned an Epson 6500UB, though now Scott S. has the newer 8700UB.  (Pete’s still got his 6500UB)

Scott S (we need a moniker for him) wrote an intro, which you’ll find below.  I will also use the same process as we did launching the other two bloggers.  I’ll post his first full blog on my blog here, and when his blog is fully live in the next 48 hours, we’ll move his blog over.

OK, Scott S has a bit different background than Pete. While Pete’s a hard core gamer, that, these days, is more into consoles than PC based – he plays both – and was a fanatical PC gamer, pre-college.    Scott S, by comparison, is a PC gamer first, (though he has consoles as well, and will use them too, when contributing his two cents about projectors for gaming).

Scott, though, is very much a hardware guy, which means he’ll have other interesting things to contribute.  He loves to build high power gaming PCs.  He’s going to build me more of a  medium power PC shortly.   He’s also about to upgrade to an Nvidia GeForce GTX 580 card in one of his own game PCs.  If I understand correctly, that GTX 580 has to be one of the most bad ass graphics cards in existence.   (I’ll get a “lowly” 560 card, by comparison, I believe.)  Our thanks to Nvidia for providing the graphics cards.

OK here’s Scott S’s intro.  A good part of it is his history of gaming.  Enjoy and look for his blog (links from here, the homepage and the other blogs, in just a few days:

Greetings,

I’ll start off with a brief background, I guess.  I am thirty-six years old, I am an Accountant, and I was born and raised in the Los Angeles area.  I currently reside in Orange County, California. I have been playing video games since I was too young to remember.  I can honestly say I was born into the video game world; I don’t recall a time without video games.  My first system was a hand-me-down Pong system from my Aunt.  From there I graduated to an Atari 2600.  My first home computer was the Commodore 64.  I loved that thing. These are all of the console gaming systems I have owned:

Pong
Atari 2600
Intellivision
Colecovision
Atari 5200
NES
Sega Genesis
TurboGrafx 16
Neo-Geo
Super NES
Atari Jaguar (to be fair I only paid $29.99 for it)
Nintendo 64
Sega Dreamcast (currently own)
Nintendo Gamecube
Playstation 3 (currently own)
Nintendo Wii (currently own)

I am not a huge Sony fan, but the PS3 had too many features for me to pass it up.  In all honesty, my PS3 is mainly used for Blu-ray playback and Netflix streaming.  I do play a few of the exclusive games, but not many. I generally prefer PC gaming over console gaming.

Handhelds – Game machines:

Gameboy
Atari Lynx
Sega Gamegear
Gameboy Color
Nintendo DS

The Atari Lynx was the shining star of the bunch, I really miss that thing; it was way ahead of its time.

I guess I would fall into the moderate gamer category.  I don’t have enough free time to be a “hardcore gamer”, but probably would be if I had the time.  When I was younger, I would have definitely been considered a hardcore gamer; I would play for twelve hours straight during the summer months.  Ahhh those were the days.  I spent a lot of time playing all of the classic games – mainly NES – and TurboGrafx 16 titles.  I am a huge sucker for Zelda, Metroid, Mario, Sonic, Bonk, and Donkey Kong games.

I spent most of my teenage years in an actual arcade, attached to a Street Fighter II machine.  I was involved in tournaments, and was pretty damn good.  I would usually play at our local 7-11 located on Cahuenga and Riverside Drive in Toluca Lake, and make some money from time to time with a little wager here and there.  I also played a lot at the Family Fun Arcade in Granada Hills, California.

For the past five years or so I have really gotten into PC gaming, and PC building.  I love building PCs, and that has become a new hobby.  To put it bluntly, I am really cheap.  I am not going to try and sugarcoat it.  I am always looking for deals on Slickdeals.net, and planning for my next build, or upgrade.  I currently have three PCs in my home: one home theater PC, and two gaming machines.  One is a mid-tier gaming machine, and the other is higher end.  The HTPC is perfectly capable of gaming as well.  I usually game on a monitor, but do game on my Epson 8700UB projector as well.  I have my Wii hooked up to the projector and also game on the HTPC from time to time.  There is no comparison to gaming on a 120” screen; it’s a whole new experience.  And nothing is more fun than family game night with Mario Kart on the Wii, using a screen that large.

My top 10 favorite games/series of all time:

Console:

Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Mario Kart Wii, Crazy Taxi (Dreamcast), Little Big Planet, Resident Evil, Infamous, Splatterhouse (TurboGrafx 16), Sonic the Hedgehog

PC:

Half-Life, Left 4 Dead, The Sims, Mafia 2, Fallout, F.E.A.R., Bioshock, Civilization, Overlord, Doom

Arcade:

Track & Field, Donkey Kong, Galaga, Ms. Pac Man, Stryder, Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter II, 720, WWF Superstars, Double Dragon

Here are the specs of my current gaming computers:

Moderate Gaming PC:

Case:  COOLER MASTER RC-692-KKN2 CM690 II Advanced Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
Processor:  Intel Core i3-530 Clarkdale 2.93GHz
Motherboard:  BIOSTAR TH55B HD LGA 1156 Intel H55 HDMI Micro ATX Intel Motherboard
Power supply: COOLER MASTER GX Series RS650-ACAAE3-US 650W ATX12V v2.31 80 PLUS
Memory:  G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666)
Video card:  Sapphire Radeon HD4670 1 GB DDR3 VGA/DVI/HDMI PCI-Express Video Card
Optical drive 1: ASUS 24X DVD Burner Black SATA Model DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS
Hard drive:  SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB
Wireless card:  Zonet ZEW1605 802.11g Wireless PCI Adapter

Main Gaming Rig:

Case:  COOLER MASTER Storm Scout ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
Processor:  Intel Core i5-2500K Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz (3.7GHz Turbo Boost)
Motherboard:  GIGABYTE GA-P67X-UD3-B3 LGA 1155 Intel P67 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
Power supply:  CORSAIR Gaming Series GS800 800W ATX12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified
Memory:  G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666)
Video card:  MSI R5770 Hawk Radeon HD 5770 1GB 128-bit GDDR5
Optical drive 1: ASUS 24X DVD Burner Black SATA Model DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS
Hard drive (boot drive):  Crucial RealSSD C300 CTFDDAA064MAG-1G1 64GB SATA III MLC
Hard Drive (storage):  Western Digital Caviar Black WD7501AALS 750GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache

Home Theater Gear:

Projector:  Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 8700UB
Receiver:  Onkyo TX-SR606 7.1 Channel
Front Speakers: Boston Acoustics CS226B Classic Series
Center Channel: Boston Acoustics CS225CB Classic Series
Rear Speakers: Boston Acoustics CS26C Classic Series

HTPC Specs:

Case: nMEDIAPC Red Wood Wood/Steel HTPC 8000 ATX Media Center / HTPC Case
Processor:  Intel Pentium Dual-Core E6500 Wolfdale 2.93GHz (stock cooler)
Motherboard:  EVGA 132-CK-NF79-A1 LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 790i Ultra SLI ATX Intel
Power supply:  COOLER MASTER GX Series RS650-ACAAE3-US 650W ATX12V v2.31 80 PLUS
Memory:  Crucial Ballistix 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) 6-6-6-20
Video cards (SLI):  2 x PNY GeForce 9600 GT 1GB GDDR3
Optical drive 1:  LG Black 10X BD-ROM 16X DVD-ROM SATA Internal Blu-ray Disc Combo Model CH10LS20K
Optical drive 2:  X-box 360 HD DVD external drive
Hard drive:  SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB (adding another 2TB drive in the near future)
Wireless card:  Zonet ZEW1605 802.11g Wireless PCI Adapter
Remote:  Lenovo Multimedia Remote with Keyboard (Black)
Software:  ArcSoft TotalMedia Theatre Platinum

-Scott S

Art’s note:  OK, Scott will need to work on his blog endings a bit, a touch of what’s next, etc.

Well, that’s it for now.  Scott’s bringing back the Optoma GT720 tonight so I can finish the overall GT720 review in a day or three.

On a separate note, the BenQ W1200 is on its way to Pete, for his take on how BenQ’s W1200 does as a gaming projector.  We liked it well enough as a near entry level home projector.

Ahh, we also have the Mitsubishi HC9000D, their first 3D home theater projector (LCos), inbound as I write this.  (or so I’m told) -art

Enjoy!