- Philips HD TV - £1600
- Sky HD Box - £300
- Sky Monthly Subscription - £52
- Watching England get knocked out of the World Cup again on penalties, Terry and Beckham shedding tears and Andy Murray winning magestically all in high definition - priceless
What an amazing day of sport. First Andy Murray. Great performance especially as Roddick was serving so well. Still think it’s too early to be thinking of semi’s or final’s but that performance today was one of the best sport moments of the year so far. As for England they didn’t play well when they had eleven men, they had the better of the game after Rooney was sent off, the substitutions were frankly bizarre (take off wide man and put on Crouch, aka gigantaur, with no one left to cross it?) and to be honest the England team performance throughout the world cup did not merit a semi final place. Bye.
Looking forward to Murray in the 4th round now. Just how far can he go? I hoped that the comments on his website would be a bit more positive after the nasty stuff left over the last week but the one copied below shows that despite a really good post match interview some people just never let up.
If you weren’t such an unbelievably lucky hitter and hoper, so incredibly dull and such a nasty piece of work, it would be easy to look past the fact that you’re so dam ugly.
I thought Mr Burns was a cartoon character. I didn’t realise he was real and had offspring.
So sad.
Blue Planet - BBCHD - 8:00pm 10th July
Deep Blue - BBCHD - 9:00pm 10th July
Planet Earth - BBCHD - 8:00pm 11th,12th,13th,14th July
That will almost fill up the Sky HD box.
A new firmware update is being pushed out for Sky HD boxes. Details of the fixes can be seen here but include the time loss issue I mentioned and increased stability. Good to see official Sky reps keeping users informed in forums like Digital Spy. Sometimes they do listen.
Still loving it. World Cup has been brilliant and BBC really are showing the way with their broadcasts. Been impressed with the cricket as well so looking good for Premiership next year. Was getting used to the picture quality and switched the TV on for the Brazil game earlier this week. It looked awful - pixelly, low detail, lack of colour. I was so disappointed and thought the BBC were maybe using different settings for their admittedly test HD service. I then realised I was on BBC1, not the BBC HD channel. Switched over and normal service was resumed - moments like that really hit home the difference in quality.
There are however some firmware issues. Had the video stutter twice now after watching a recording which is easily solved by powering the box off and on. No Sky+ failures yet but the time does drift on these boxes - about a minute a day. I’m sure a future firmware update will resolve this but in the meantime…
- Select Services from remote
- Then press 4, 0, 1 and then Select to enter the Installers Menu
- Select the Planner Rebuild menu option (number 7 and NOT number 8 which will wipe your recordings)
- Housekeeping should then start and once complete power down the box
- Press Sky or the power button to bring the box back on.
For me not a big deal especially when I look at the picture quality I’ve now got. Loving Sky+ also - so easy to use and totally changes how you use broadcast television. Should have bought it years ago.
Just when you though it was safe to throw away scart switchboxes as you move to hi-def you soon realise that most HD TV’s come with only 1 HDMI socket, 1 DVI socket and a component socket (although most new TV’s now come with 2 HDMI’s at least). Not much when you think of the multiple HD sources that you could have. To get round this little issue I plumped for an Octava 5 way HDMI switchbox. This works really well as a pass through device and gives long term expandability for any future HD devices I may add.
It allows for 5 HDMI/DVI sources to be connected and so far with my two sources it’s worked with no issues. Although it auto switches it also supports Infra Red selection of an input which is useful feature to have. If you do want one I can highly recommend The Media Factory who answered all my queries and also delivered promptly. Will definitely use them again. Worth noting that the Octava was pretty cost effective when compared to other HDMI switchboxes on the market at the moment.
Also worth considering is the Octava switchbox that also allows for multiple optical inputs - very handy if your amp is low on capacity. Ultimately the switchbox is more expandable and cost effective than upgrading your amp which looking at today’s market will give you one extra HDMI socket which really isn’t enough.
