Going High Definition
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When I want a new toy that will have to last for quite a long time I usually take my time to explore my options and compare things into oblivion. A good example is a new television. A big fucking television. I've been wanting to buy one for a very long time but I never seemed to be able to find what I want. Now that I'm living in Sweden and a very, VERY cold winter is coming up I guess it's an excellent time to make a decision. Right now I'm on the brink of going to a store and buy one but I figured it would be great to use my blog to get some opinions on my TV of choice. So here it is: the Sony 55" Grand WEGA SXRD Rear Projection HDTV KDS-55A2000. Let's take a look at this beast!
720p or higher?
For quite a while I've been looking at many available 720p television sets. They offer a 1280x720 pixels resolution which is probably fine for a while. However, with Blu-Ray, HD-DVD and of course the mighty Playstation 3 around the corner I started wondering if it might be a good idea to go all the way and find a so called 'Full HD' screen that can handle a 1080p signal and display it in a native 1920x1080 pixel resolution. For a long time this seemed an outrageously expensive thing to do. Until I saw the Sony KDS-55A2000 in a shop in Stockholm.
This TV seems to offer everything I want at a somewhat affordable price:
- 1080p native resolution and therefore PS3/Blu-Ray max. resolution ready
- ability to use a computer with it in this resolution
- a big fucking screen size
- excellent contrast ratio (1:10000!)
- Super fast pixel refresh (2.5ms!)
- excellent color (SXRD kicks ass in this department)
Why choose this Sony?
Size is, of course, an issue with this TV. It's however the only issue I can think of. Being the movie buff that I am I'm happy to sacrifice some space for a truly cinematic experience. The only LCD that could match the quality of this TV I could find is a Sony Bravia 46'' panel which costs almost twice the amount of money which I think is way too much. Plasma's at 1080p resolutions? I don't even want to mention how much those cost. A projector? Even more expensive. I set my maximum budget at $3000 and this baby manages to stay just below that price. Since it's a projector I will have to replace the bulb every 6000 hours. This will however result in a 'like new' experience everything this happens.
All in all this HDTV seems to be the set of choice given my budget and my wishes. However, I could of course have missed an excellent alternative that one of my readers may be able to bring to my attention. So... what do you think?
At 22 September '06 - 18:11 Matt Brett wrote:
BTW, the Xbox 360 will be supporting 1080p by the time the PS3 hits the market. It was announced this week at the Tokyo Game Show and will come in the form of a software update.
At 24 September '06 - 06:46 Michel Bozgounov wrote:
Computer screens are diferent matter…
But TV? No, thanks:) I don’t like television; with Internet, you can select what you would like to read/watch; with TV, it’s rarely so…
But good luck!
SONY always was one of the best choices; hope it’s the same nowadays:)
At 25 September '06 - 05:45 weefselkweekje wrote:
And considering how the recommended viewing distance is 5-6 times the screen diagonal, you must have a pretty big living room :)
At 25 September '06 - 10:27 Marco wrote:
I don’t expect to watch all that much PAL television on it. In fact I wouldn’t even mind if the thing didn’t have a TV tuner at all
Also, my room isn’t all THAT big but I’ll place it at the narrow end of a rectangular room so it will be ok.
Finally: I actually preferred the smaller 50’‘ version but for some screwed up reason Sony isn’t selling that model in the Nordic countries. In fact I think they’re not offering it anywhere in Europe.
At 25 September '06 - 17:48 Montoya wrote:
At 25 September '06 - 23:21 Marco wrote:
How do you know that? It’s not even out yet!
I’m interested in it because it runs Linux and it will therefore probably be a really good replacement for my aging xbox mediacenter setup I’m using right now…
At 26 September '06 - 01:15 Montoya wrote:
At 26 September '06 - 04:57 Marco wrote:
Well yes maybe it’s kind of odd. But then again: for $600 you’re not gonna be able to buy a 1080p ready HTPC with a blu-ray drive in it that happens to run PS3 games as an additional bonus as well
The only thing it doesn’t do compared to a HTPC is recording TV which is just about the only thing I’d never do with it anyway.
At 26 September '06 - 21:29 Montoya wrote:
http://www.hdblu.com/reviews.htm
At 01 October '06 - 07:30 BOK wrote:
Regarding the bulb: 6000 hours takes a couple of years when using it every evening, besides you can still use the old ans smaller tube for watching the news and TV-series, right?
At 25 October '06 - 15:38 GRID8400 wrote:
(btw I have a LG 50” plasma and still it isn’t big enough hahahaha. you really really get used to the size pretty fast.)
http://grid8400.nl/nucleus/index.php?ima..
At 11 January '07 - 15:59 You wrote:
You also, in your LinkedIn page, suggest you advocate web-standards, inasmuch as you propound XHTML and Web Standards (your own words), yet you have a blog about “Almost Valid XHTML”, spouting, and presumably encouraging support in, the view that standards don’t matter because it’s too hard for you to be able to cope with.
Furthermore, you suggest in your most recent blog that you’ve just lost your job in Sweden; may I say “well done” to my Nordic brothers? I could not put up with such a pompous, contradictory sycophant as yourself. When you learn your own mind without disgorging quotes from other sites and are able to pay attention to the industry of which you pretend to be a part (if you think that’s a non-sequiteur then you seriously need to change profession; perhaps try covering tired songs in a pathetically bad manner) perhaps you may be of value. I’ve no doubt that there’s at least a small part of everyone of use to the world; when I see your attempts at “design” and “development”, coupled with your pathetic excuses as to why they weren’t accepted by the wider world (of course, it couldn’t possibly be that your efforts didn’t warrant merit; it MUST have been poor judgement) it makes me realise you have nothing of worth to give. Worse, you try and persuade the ignorant that you do.
It is a crying shame, and I mean that most sincerely, that people such as yourself are allowed such recognition. You teach linux? :-
sudo kill -9 `ps auxc | grep -i marco | awk ‘{ print $2 }’`
Tell me why that’s better than kill or killall and earn yourself a lollipop.
I’m not sure why you deem it necessary to delude yourself and those around you as to your abilities; it’s not so harmful when it’s in vitro, such as this; it worries me that you quite obviously believe your own shite, to the extent that you will tout yourself as capable of things that, if you were to look carefully at yourself (and even the examples you give online), you quite clearly are not. I may only presume this stems from some horrific insecurity or an innate tendency toward being the best. no matter how unfounded.
You seem to fool a great deal of potential employers/clients (either they cannot see your inadequacies, do not understand what is required of the role they are advertising or accept the verbal effluent you exhort) so I have no doubt you will be in yet another undeserved position soon enough. Good luck, and I hope you and all those in accord (if you think AJAX is a semantic acronym then this includes you) will be weeded out of this industry.
I don’t know you personally, but you seem like the type not to allow this post to stay up, especially as you’re currently job-seeking. I think I know you well enough, however, to know you will have to look at this yourself before making that decision. Developer? You make me laugh.
P.S. Don’t get me started on “Designer”....
At 12 January '07 - 02:30 weefselkweekje wrote:
At 12 January '07 - 04:59 Marco wrote:
I’ll happily leave your post up. Indeed you don’t know me. Somehow yet you seem to have a problem with me which you felt you had to share with me and the readers of this site without having the guts to leave your name and info so readers will know who you are.
My ex collegues and ex employers will do the talking when it comes to whether I’ve got what it takes or not. Not some anonymous coward trying to slander me on my own website. I just hope for you that typing that long post made you feel better about yourself.
At 12 January '07 - 18:05 Marten wrote:
Now today I choose to not defend Marco point for point (I’m not that bored). Instead, let’s take a stab at seeing what type of person this anonymous coward is, shall we?
First off, the use of English.
I must say I’m mildly impressed. For a non-native speaker the choice of words and the semantic complexity is reasonably advanced, although the practiced eloquence can’t really cover up most of his more amusing dutchisms. ‘May I say’ was a pretty striking one that made me snicker. Nice try though, next time go for ‘allow me to say’.
Of course I said ‘his’, since the staccato attack is quite typically self-absorbed male. Females would actually get personal. If you would’ve written that Marco smelled funny I would’ve been confused, now: not so much.
Age, hmm, tricky.. the usage of words seems to suggest someone who has been chatting online for quite a while, but since he probably had no life to speak of in the first place, I would guesstimate an average Joe would need 4-5 years fulltime to get here from ‘schoolbook english’.
So 25-27 year old dutch male, so far.
Next up, the unix quips. I cannot help but get a little misty eyed thinking back to when I was so clumsily stringing together unix commands myself. (wax on, wax off, little grasshopper). Proficient unix admins would immediately spot that this commandline has a decent chance of committing suicide by killing its own controlling terminal (you’re suggesting sudo after all..) Since you are using such a script-kiddie approach to process management anyway, may I humbly suggest you try out psdoom? In it, I believe, is a shot gun with which you can take out processes and part of the ceiling in awesome 2.5D graphics. A perfect graphical simile of your actions so far! Try to stifle your ‘omgwtfpwned!’, though, ok? People are trying to sleep here.
Sadly, since I myself stopped accidentally killing my own kill process back in 1996, I’m going to have to take a few years off your projected mental age for that one.
Or was he just learning?
Yeah, he probably is.. getting tired of a no-skills-needed position as toilet scrubber at Mr. Ho’s Chinese Take-away and learning something to a real job? Commendable!
Ooh.. sore point I’m sure, but I’m betting 10 bucks that he’s never had a real job. Why? If he did, he would have learned that in public profiles, CV’s and LinkedIn pages, you do two things: 1/ you embellish a BIT. 2/ you do NOT lie. If you lie about your job skills, you will probably get asked for jobs in which you will crash and burn within the month. Which is why – drumroll – most jobs have a month startup period! As far as I know Marco hasn’t been fired once for making claims he couldn’t back up with actual work results. Nuff said about that one, eh?
With these new adjustments I’m now thinking male dutch student, mental age between 23-26 years old. Probably a nerdy no-girlfriend world-of-warcraft type.
Next up .. did ANYONE here buy the whole “I don’t know you personally” bit? No? I didn’t think so either. Let’s see.. on a total stranger he wasted:
- 4 hours reading the weblog – 2 hours researching who this Marco guy was, how good his songs sounded (hey how did you get those?), what his linkedin page looked like. – 1.5 hours writing up the rant
No wonder he doesn’t get out much.
Additionally, this piece seemed to be entirely composed of listing the items Marco does, stitched together with various synonyms for ‘you suck’. Not really that interested in actual, arguments, proof, point and counterpoint, are we? In a real argument (even in obsessed monologue style) you would at least list some of his plus sides too, only to cut them down with razor wit.. oh wait I spot the trouble there, never mind.
Or.. maybe.. maybe he actually does know Marco quite well. Of course he’s just an uninteresting side figure in Marco’s life, but it seems quite appearant that Marco plays a major role in his. Jealous or angry in some way it seems. Did Marco fail to notice his true genius when he messaged him that one time? Did one of his weblog themes end up higher on some score list than his?
No no, I’ve got it, he is probably some spammer that got burned by his antispam systems for movable type. It would completely explain the idiot script kiddie unix stuff, the anger management problems and the failure to make even a modestly sensible verbal assault. Just like a spammer to not (be able to) look too closely at their own moral standing.
Well, Marco? Any idea? Dutch male spammer, 23-26 years of mental age, probably glasses, spotty, technical background, world of warcraft and no girlfriend?
P.S. Please, for the love of chemical chance, look up complex adult-sounding, multisyllabic words before using them. Try Wikipedia. It has pictures! Or if you’re really determined, pull up some examples from Merriam-Webster, which could prevent you from looking like the verbal equivalent of a peasant dressed in the clothes of the aristocrat he’s just mugged.
At 03 April '07 - 20:58 Kato wrote: