I recently subscribed to the Audiophiliac blog on good old Cnet. I used to get my computer news from them many years ago. I was just interested to see what was going on in the AV world. Not that I can afford to splash out on new gadgets. I was reading this post that asks what people have hooked up to their AV receivers. In my case it would be:
- Pace Twin Freeview DVB-T recorder, via stereo phono. We watch some films and stuff in surround
- Sony DVD player, via digital phono cable to get proper 5.1. I'm using a crappy audio cable rather than a proper coax cable, but it sounds fine.
- Nintendo Wii, via stereo phono. I get adequate Dolby surround on this.
So my old Yamaha receiver is not being overwhelmed with connections. It can route video too, but only composite, so I never used that feature. I have enough connections on the Toshiba TV to use component video for the DVD, RGB SCART for the Pace and composite for the Wii. I also have the Pace feeding audio to the TV via optical digital. I've aspired to getting better quality cables, but have resisted apart from the component, but that was low end. Everything looks and sounds fine anyway. I'm constrained by having to keep things simple enough for the family to work it. They seem to manage. It's just a shame that my nice Logitech multi-remote died so that we have gone back to using multiple remotes.
I don't actually spend that much time in front of the TV. I spend more at the PC, but get to watch a DVD once in a while. The last couple of things I watched with the family were King Kong (recorded from TV), the new Peter Jackson version that was pretty good and looked excellent, and the new Merlin series on BBC1 that may be fun. There was a good documentary about Roxy Music last night, but I watched that on the PC via MythTV. I'm still on my old 19" CRT, but fancy a 24" LCD one of these days.
I'm not that bothered about getting HD. It requires too much investment and I don't think that most TV would benefit that much. I'm sure some nature programmes look stunning, but they look fairly good on our old TV. I don't feel the need to subscribe to cable or satellite and free HD is a few years away.
I was listening to the Digital Planet podcast where they were talking about Super HI Vision that delivers 16x the pixels of HD and 22.2 sound. Apparently they can squeeze the signal down a 1Gb link. So it's a few years away from the home. Maybe my kids will have it when they grow up.
