Aside from Twitter virtually taking over any spare free time I have, I’ve also been buying a few toys. The most recent is a Blu-Ray player to replace my old HD-DVD player. The ‘Panny’ BD35 as it is known has received rave reviews online for it’s superb picture processing abilities and such a machine at a shade under £200 was too hard to ignore. You can find my review in the erm, reviews section!

"It is not the sword. It is the man"

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, myself and Deena did just one thing. No, not that you dirty minded readers! We spent three days watching the entire Season 1 boxset of Heroes on HD DVD. I was initially unimpressed when it first aired in America. I saw the first six episodes and gave up. What started out as such a promising show felt just too slow and dull. As the show progressed it gathered fans at an incredible rate. I’ve not seen this much talk about a US Series since LOST came out, and after a single season, that turned out to be dull tripe.

So we have just watched the finale, and yet there is a ton of content still left to be watched, including the 72minute unaired pilot episode. Universal fully utilised the HD DVD format to the max and it shows with their U-Control feature. Picture in Picture extras, Character Connections, Artwork Presentations and Helix Reveals are all selectable whilst you watch an episode. At key moments the U-Control logo pops up enabling you to access the additional information.

The HD DVD boxset is rammed full of goodies including:

• 50 Deleted Scenes
• The Making of Heroes
• The Special Effects
• The Stunts
• Profile of Artist Tim Sale
• The Score
• Mind Reader Game

I’ve got to admit that the show got a lot better right after I lost interest (Episode 6). I have never seen such a well written show ever and I don’t think anything can compare to Heroes. There’s less action bits and a lot more spoken dialogue than what I expected compared to most US shows and it works well. The way the characters encounter each other is superbly scripted and the acting is top notch. I won’t go into the nitty details of the show, but some of them just failed to live up to expectations and their potential never fully realized. The family of Niki, D.L and Micah fall largely into this area, with Mohinder close behind. Given where the plot was heading towards the end of the season I guess not everyone could be squeezed in. Great stuff! Looking forward to Season 2 now starting soon in September 2007.

Red ring ‘o’ death…as if Xbox 360′s weren’t bad enough

It’s no secret that I truly love the startling detail and features that the next generation optical formats give us. It’s also no secret that I have opted for the HD-DVD format rather then Sony’s Blu-Ray. I have done this mainly because all the classics that I truly love are all on HD-DVD, whilst the action popcorn flicks tend to be on Blu-Ray. I also like the fact that the standalone HD-DVD players are coming down price wise at a startling rate, whilst Blu-Ray players remain at a slightly more expensive price.

Given that I already own the Xbox 360′s HD-DVD player, I always wanted a standalone player the moment prices became affordable. Lately the price of the second generation Toshiba HD-E1 player has crashed, most probably due to Toshiba’s recent announcement that their third generation players are on the way. This morning I took delivery of the player, and will detail my experiences with it for the next two days. You can check out my review here.

It’s a bit large…

Yesterday I took delivery of my new 32" Samsung LE32R87BDX (big mouthful thar) HDTV. I have been agonising over purchasing a HD screen for ages now but finally jumped on board after the recent purchase of my Xbox 360′s HD-DVD player. While I was day-dreaming away in my office at work, the delivery man phones up saying that he’s just delivered it at my home. I almost got knocked out by an Australian backpacker as I jumped onto the bus and dashed home…to find the biggest box I’ve seen in ages. Took me a solid 10 minutes just to drag the box up to my room!

Upon unpacking the screen, it’s just hard to describe how gorgeous the thing looks in it’s lovely reflective finish, which sadly also makes it a fingerprint magnet. HD video on it looks utterly crystal clear and so defined, once you turn off the post processing features that are enabled by default. This thing is gorgeous. Now for those who will tell me to wall mount it, I’m afraid it’s not possible on these walls….they’re made of something that isn’t your standard household masonry. Suffice to say that drilling into these walls is a mission and a half and I will end up with a huge amount of broken drill bits – I speak from experience.

Sadly I had to ditch my twin 19" Widescreen TFT’s that I use with my PC, just so I could fit that HDTV on my desk. So I’m back to a single 20.1" Widescreen for the PC now. Not good, it feels really odd to work with. Anyway, it’s a Bank Holiday weekend (Monday is a public holiday) so I’ll be spending it with me girlfriend chilling out and watching HD-DVD’s on me new tele \o/

A cheap HD solution for the masses

Woo, been a while since I wrote any solid content for the blog. To be honest I’ve been incredibly busy with settling into my new position at work amonst other things. Spoilt by some of the HD quality film trailers/game trailers on the Xbox Marketplace, DVD’s have started to look poor by comparison. I just cannot watch a DVD anymore without spotting how bad its video quality is in comparison. I have been holding off purchasing the Xbox 360 HD-DVD player for quite some time now but have finally purchased the thing.

Not a lot of people know that it can be easily used in Windows, so I decided to write up a quick article on how it could be done. PR has recently reviewed his HD-DVD drive on his blog and likes it too!

A little more complicated then one would think…

I’ve been trying to make sense of this for sometime now, and only finally understood it. Microsoft have tried to get one over Sony in the HD (High Definition) war, and to be honest they’re hammering them hilariously. Although MS forgot to mention that 1080p wouldn’t be as simple as most people would have thought. The techy geeks knew it would be a complicated matter, and to be fair – it bloomin is. Depending on the method you’re using to connect the Xbox 360 to your TV set, you’ll obtain various results while watching films and playing games. I’ve been staring at a forum for what felt like hours last night and finally got my head around it. 360 with component cables:

• Xbox 360 games will be upscaled to 1080p, and games which are 1080p native will run without a hitch.
• HD-DVDs will run at a maximum of 1080i, which is due to the AACS DRM implemented into HD-DVD’s.
• DVD’s will only play at 480p, due to the CSS inside DVD’s, which prevents upscaling any higher…bummer.

360 with a VGA cable:

• DVD’s, games, as well as HD-DVD’s will display in full 1080p. Sweet!

Microsoft has been very quiet about this, and it’s obvious why. They know a lot of people use Component cables to connect the 360 to their HDTV, and to have DVD’s playing at 480p is quite frankly pathetic. However most people will already have separate DVD players anyway, so this situation isn’t that bad. MS were quite foolish not to have seen the HDMI bandwagon coming when they released the 360, and even bumbling giants Sony saw it. I wonder what the video quality will be like on the HD-DVD drive coming next month in November for the 360?