RS232

I thought it might be nice to spend more money I don't have (what credit crunch?) on a new TV. Forty inches of South Korean 1080p LCD goodness. Having hooked it up the the V+ box, once the initial happiness of the upscaling wore off, I was hit by a twinge of disappointment that Virgin Media, like Sky, broadcast their HD output in 1080i for understandable service maintenance reasons. Cue Statler and Waldorf style booing, and a quest for 1080p media.

You'd think in the modern hooked up and jacked in virtual life it would be relatively easy to find material, but alas not. Movie trailers are easily viewed online through the PC, but I'm not looking to hook the PC up to the TV. Looking for downloadable content that could be written to a DVD leads me to all manner of Divx and Xvid and Mpeg4 and h/x264 files that then lead on to a ridiculous number of Googles to find out what the hell they are and how to play them. As it turns out it's redundant as the collected wisdom seems to be that once the resolutions get to 720p and beyond it's not so much about the file format but the carrier so standard DVD/DivX players won't output it anyway, even those with HDMI ports and upscaling ability. Which really only leaves Freesat and Blue Ray. Freesat is still in it's infancy and it's reasonable to expect a 12 month gestation period while advanced decoders, probably with hard drives in, get to market at a decent price. Blue Ray, despite now being confident and out of nappies, is still an unstable little toddler. While a format war is never a good thing, particularly for early adopters on the losing side, this latest HD DVD v BRD one had a rather disturbing outcome. Not so much for the format that won, but the manner in which that victory was achieved. A format war decided by the industry that controls it as opposed to the consumer is a worrying turn of events. When the winner is the more expensive and as yet is not a finalised standard then early adopters on both sides end up as collateral damage. The only sensible BRD player is a games console with a pad that promotes chronic finger fatigue.. so no, Blue Ray and even the PS3 may well be the future but they're overpriced and underwhelming right now.

Guess I'll just have to stick with 1080i for the time being, oh, and if anyone sees the Wii component cable in stock anywhere, give us a shout.