HD heaven & SL hell

HD heaven
Last week was a shock to the bank balance. I took the plunge to buy our new HD television, getting the Sony Bavia 40" KDL-40Z4500 from the Electro-Centre. I realised that prices at some places were going up after the January promotions, other places were running out of stock, plus I figured prices would only go down in the summer when they're about to replace the model. Having ordered it Tuesday night we received it Friday afternoon.

Friday evening was setting up the 40" monster connecting the Sky box, PS3, Wii and DVD/HD recorder. Watching Blade Runner Blu-Ray was amazing picking up details I'd never seen before and colours so rich, it was like a different film. The demo of Resident Evil 5 looked amazing as well with a deeper level of detail. I tried a normal DVD connecting via the HDMI lead and the picture quality again impressed.

A couple of disappointments though with one of them almost rectified. The Wii image was a little blocky but this was through the Scart lead and Wii's don't do HD really. Although you can buy an HD component lead, reviews say it doesn't make that much difference. The picture quality of Sky was really poor though compared to our old Philips. The colours and detail were way off and was left thinking whether Sky HD had to be bought to compensate. We must have tried every picture setting to improve it but after some web search did I find out that we should have set up the Sky for RGB output instead of PAL. I wouldn't say it matches the Philips but its a vast improvement.

The Picture-and-Picture (PAP) feature is well cool so you can see two sources in two screens with the ability to switch between for sound. So whilst I could be playing a game, Kerry could watch her Crime and Investigation channel!

The little details such as the glowing Sony badge on the telly and the remote are worth mentioning. In the dark you can light up the remote control in its mesmerizing blue colour.

I'm now trying to figure out how to use the DLNA function. Instead of buying the hardware of a media centre you can, in theory, connect the HD telly to your internet router then connect your laptop to view photos, films and hear music. I've downloaded a shareware of Mezzmo which can connect to PS3s as well.

SL Hell
To help pay for my degree education, I'd taken out 3 year's of student loans. Until last week I'd been deferring to pay off since 2000 and had almost got used to ignoring them for life. The shock of seeing the deferment limit was now under what I was earning put me in a bad mood for a couple of days. With the inheritance money, I paid it all of in one go, all £6250! The only benefit that I should be grateful is being debt-free (apart from the mortgage).