Archive for January, 2007
Take a 40″ Samsung F71 (LE40F71BX) 1080p LCD TV and mix it with a XBOX 360 - the result?
Frankly, pretty damn good. It’s often dependent on the game in question but so far it’s difficult to not be impressed with the combination.
For those of you thinking this will be ultra amazing, you may be a bit dissapointed - the graphics were pretty good but for me personally, they didnt hold a patch to a PC game running at full 1080p resolution. I haven’t played with the XBOX enough yet to give any meaningful blurb about it apart from the sound is amazing and the screen holds up really well when running games.
I also noticed the LE40F71BX is now available for around £1200-1300 which is reasonably annoying - but I think i’ve had a few hundred quids worth out of it so far 
After seeing the TV my parents are now on the big screen hunt and despite my arguments they are probably going for a 42″ Pioneer Plasma (The Pioneer PDP 427XD). Reviews are pretty good and since they’ll be doing the TV thing more than any PC stuff I can understand..
Link to PDP-227XD
January 24th, 2007
It’s shame you cant borrow a TV for a time. We have a debate going about the pros and cons of the Plasma versus the LCD. I’d love to be able to actually run a Samsung Plasma along side the F71 and actually test the differences. In shop demos are always poor with ill informed staff and a total inability to display screens side by side.
You also need prolonged use of a product to really give it a proper test. Magazines are fine but I dont think they have enough time to really put a screen through it’s paces. For instance, the F71 has awesome picture quality on standard definition when playing movies, dramas and such but it does fall down slightly when viewing studio content such as the news.
Now, if I was Engadget I could use my clout to borrow one - but alas im not!
January 15th, 2007
I got the Media Centre up and running on the Samsung F71. It looks lovely. I used the Hiper Media case which is awesome. It’s the size of an average DVD player and houses the entire system without issue.
The only issue is the coolermaster low profile CPU heatsink which whirls away and makes far too much noise. The best way to counter this was a quick trip to Maplins to purchase a 12 to 7V converter (£1.99) for the fan which reduced the noise by half and obviously the fan speed.
Here’s current pics (tv is pushing out standard def..):
January 15th, 2007
I should be getting the “Hiper Media Case” from the guys at xcase.co.uk. It looks like it’s going to be a decent addition to the AV setup as it’s pretty slim. I also had to get the shallow CPU heatsink/fan for a P4 as the current one is far too big for the new case.
I already have a Windows Media Centre PC but the case is pretty bulky and my choice of power supply etc created a higher noise level than I would of ideally liked. Given that I bought a ton of new kit this case was actually pretty cheap (49 quid?) and it will slot well with the other stuff.
Although the current PC (P4 2.5Ghz/1.5Gig Ram/250GIG IDE/MicroATX MSI) isnt great I want it primarily for the media centre aspect. I may however upgrade a few things as the Samsung F71 has a lovely picture and thought of playing some PC games on it makes me dribble a little bit
I’ll post some pictures of the rig once Im done
January 12th, 2007
This is just something I’ve been experimenting with as a bit of fun, it’s in no way proven nor optimized but I thought i’d share it. Essentially it allows a series of images to be shown and when the mouse is hovered it will slightly scale them and if clicked they will move. A demo at the moment but it has some interesting possibilities for future stuff we are doing.
Javascript based image zoom
Ta ta
January 11th, 2007
The Sony NS76H HDMI DVD upscaler is a really good piece of kit. The one I bought plays alternate format (divx) and suprisingly XviD (which is not stated on the spec sheets). The upscaling seems to work very well and I suspect, given the quality on some stuff that it also attempts to upscale xvid/divx as well as dvd’s. The remote control is ok but it’s frustrating in that you cant display what mode the player is pushing out content in. For instance, I cant tell what upscaling mode it is using for media and this would be nice. Overall, a good piece of kit and a nice price.
January 8th, 2007
The TV arrived. It’s amazing. A really good choice for all the things I wanted to do with it. I think the Panasonic 600 series may have made a better TV in general but overall for movie/tv/PC use this thing is truely amazing - no question. Using Google earth via this screen is like a new type of PC expierence!
One of the problems with regards to buying this kind of kit is that you quickly see the flaws and where you need to “upgrade”. This being said I bought a Sony NS76H HDMI DVD upscaler (this is a bit of fun as I dont expect a huge amount of difference but the price wasnt too bad) and I also got a Sony HDMI AV Amplifier and a set of Sony 6.1 Suround sound speakers. One would think that this is it and I hope so - I cant imagine purchasing anything further for Video/TV until the price of Blu-ray comes down and the war between the two formats is more…. done. I think blu-ray will dominate but who knows..?
January 3rd, 2007