What credit crunch? Club launches £35,000 cocktail | Money | The Guardian
It’s a sad reflection on what’s happening to our society, I think.
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Archive for December, 2007
HOW MUCH?!
Saturday, December 8th, 2007But this is HDTV. It’s got better resolution than the real world!
Friday, December 7th, 2007
New toys are fun. Especially new toys with pretty lights on them. I’ve been toying with the notion of upgrading to Sky HD for a while, and in a fit of pique the other day, I did it.
I tried ordering through the sky.com website, but it wouldn’t work properly for me. I’ve been with Sky for over five years now, so I was eligible for a discount (of a sort). The website wouldn’t honour this, so I ended up having to phone up. Within a matter of moments, it was all set up and booked. I ordered on Wednesday, and arranged for a morning installation today.
I was off work today, so it was good timing. 8am, on the dot, the installer arrived. He decided to replace my dish and LNB, which he duly did. He then produced the new HD box, and pretty soon the new box was whirring away. Less than an hour later, he was all done and leaving, and I was now staring at some manatees swimming about on Discovery HD.
I later had to go out and get an HDMI switcher, as I’d run out of HDMI inputs on the TV.
So, initial impressions:
The Good:
The box is quite stylish, and fits in fairly well. It has a WORLD of outputs on the back, and most stuff just swapped straight over without much issue. There’s a few others, like LAN, USB and eSATA ports, for future use. As a newer box, it’s capable of Sky Anytime, and has more storage to use – my old box only had about 20 hours of recording, whereas I think this has around four times that. The HDMI output is great, and it does a good job of upscaling stuff. I can also now fiddle with the audio delay, which should get rid of the lipsync issues I had in the past. Picture quality on the HD channels is stellar, although some (Sky One HD) flip in and out of HD. As a simulcast of the main channel, it only shows in HD what has been filmed in HD. Everything else is upscaled. No biggie though, as more content is being produced in HD, that’ll change. The EPG is fast, and responsive, and the new low-profile remote isn’t bad too.
The Bad:
It’s so damn noisy! The box has at least two fans in it, which are running constantly. The hard disk in it (apparently a Maxtor from what I’ve read) is really noisy, and I can hear it clunking away from the other side of the room. There’s still not a massive amount of HD content available yet, Channel 4 HD apparently launches next week, and the BBC are adding more, but right now it’s mostly Discovery and National Geographic. Not a big problem, as I do watch those channels a lot. The fast-forward is a bit unresponsive too, with quite jerky playback. Also, the noise issue crops up again, as you can hear the hard drive seeking as it reads. The service and box is still a wee bit pricey, but that’ll change too.
On the whole though, I think it’s a good bit of kit. It gives me some things I didn’t have (Anytime and more recording space), and the HDMI output is nice. I think this box also has more life in it than my older Sky+ box will, so an upgrade wasn’t a bad idea anyway. The overall picture quality seems better anyway, as in general the picture is more vibrant and sharp, even though I was using RGB. It’s nice to finally get some real HD content though the TV though. I’ve got Later… with Jools Holland recording right now, so it’ll be good to see that in HD, with 5.1 audio!
Sound
Thursday, December 6th, 2007I went to see Duke Special last night. Another great gig, as ever. I got to use my new ear plugs too. I’m pretty damn impressed. They feel a big weird at first when I first put them in, but they soon match your ear temperature, so you don’t tend to notice them.
Duke Special’s gigs aren’t especially loud, so I thought it was as good a place as any to try them – if I didn’t like them, I could always take them out!
As it was, they worked out quite well in the end. They were comfortable, and just worked. I heard no distortion, and the music came in clear and balanced.
After the show, I took them out, and my ears felt fine. No ringing or anything. So I’m really pleased.
Plunk plunk plunk
Tuesday, December 4th, 2007I finally did it. Yes, I bought a banjo! Well, it’s a ‘banjetar’ – basically, it’s the body of a banjo, but with the neck of a guitar, i.e. six strings. Tuned in standard E, it’s played like a guitar too. Or at least the chords are. Banjos aren’t really for strumming, bit if you get a bit of finger picking going, they sound the same.
It’s fun to play, as it plays like a guitar, so there’s not much to learn. Just pick up and play. I had to set it up, as out of the box it wasn’t set up at all (probably for transport). Setup was simple though, as a found a guide on what to do. I followed that, and it was playable. I had to adjust the bridge a few times, but I think it’s about right now. It’s fun to play, if a bit loud! It’s also quite heavy, but the back is a big chunk of mahogany, so that’s no surprise.
A good buy though, and a worthy addition to my collection of guitars!
