Year: 2005

Denon 2910

DVD2910_small
I’ve finally succumbed and bought a new dvd player. My old player (Sony 725) was getting on a bit and I was annoyed that I couldn’t play mp3’s, ripped dvd’s on it plus the fact that £30 jobs out of Asda had a better picture. Progress, eh?!? So I sniffed around and went for the Denon 2910…in black of course.

It will play practically anything you can throw at it. Firstly, the picture is lovely and that’s on my ageing Sony CRT wide-screen. However it does come with progressive scan and all the necessary support for a future plasma/lcd investment. Well I can dream, can’t I? Another reason for choosing this model is that the audio playback is superb and it would allow me to replace my Marantz (now for sale on eBay as would the old dvd player if it wasn’t for the fact it’s worthless). The player also comes with DVD Audio and SACD support assuming either format actually takes off.

The current verdict is that it was a superb buy. It has played dvd-r rips with no problem at all (Team America screener if you must know) and the audio is as good if not better than I had previously. DVD playback is also much improved. The only disk I’ve not tried is a RCE disk but as I’ve none in my collection, who cares. I’ve even managed to update the Pronto with the new device. Joy.

 

Cheats never prosper

Bungie (and I guess Microsoft) have finally acted with regards cheaters on the Xbox Live service by banning thousands of users who cheated in Halo 2. I say finally…Microsoft have acted before when people tried to access the Live network with hacked copies of games (PGR2 where the hacked cars were faster than the standard cars) but there has never been a real cull of people using Xbox Live. Until now.

The banning seems to have been due to two reasons – cheating in games and cursing including racial taunting. The cheating has really affected Halo 2. Using modems with stand by buttons players were able to host the game and then stop the upload to any clients connected while they ran around the map getting flags, dropping bombs etc. Happened increasingly frequently but thankfully the banning should curb it’s use. The second type is all to common, especially form Americans. Every second game usually has an American running his mouth off. To report this you can use the feedback service i.e. user x was cheating, user x was swearing but I guess it takes a fair number of reports before a ban, temporary or permanent is introduced. More info on the banning can be found in the weekly Bungie update.

This is great news. Xbox Live was better than multi player on the pc as the amount of patches and cheats in use in the pc land meant gaming never felt fair. Xbox Live brought that feeling back. I’m off to play some Halo.

It’s been one year…

…since I picked up the keys for the new house. This has been the quickest year of my life so far but also one of the most enjoyable. The move has been a real change of life for us and looking back I wish I had done it sooner.

Since moving I’ve done some gardening, some more DIY and also become far more relaxed at home as we no longer need to worry about neighbours, drunks and people being sick over the car. Looking ahead I’ve got some goals I want to achieve by end of year 2…decorate hall (it’s massive, well for me anyway), fill in some cracks on the outside walls, organize garage, develop garden some more and at the tail end of this year or start of next year it will be double glazing time hopefully. Can’t wait 🙂

Shocked

Just had The Sun and The Mirror reporters visiting our house. It turns out the family that is missing in Benbecula used to stay in our house (5 years ago). It brings the tragedy even closer to home and makes the small damage the house got last night seem meaningless. It also makes you wonder how the press got this address as it wasn’t the previous owners but the ones before that are missing – irrelevant but annoying all the same. My thoughts go out to the family and their relatives tonight.

The Storm

Last nights wind’s were strong. Very strong. Our house suffered a bit of damage but thankfully not too much. Those were some of the strongest and most consistent winds I’ve felt in a long time. Thankfully a friendly roofer came and fixed the damage so we shouldn’t let in too much more water! I say friendly – he was all out to fleece us for as much as he could get but that’s tradesmen for you.

Now the weather’s changed to hail and snow. Joy.

Macworld 2005

Some nice new announcements from Apple. The most interesting for me is the Mac Mini. Looks just like an Apple product should, and would look great as a pc for the living room. However price is an issue as for the spec you get and by the time you add in decent ram and wireless options your looking at over £600. However it’s still very tempting if your looking for a second machine. And if you’ve got a pc and want to share your keyboard, mouse and monitor with your new mini, buy this.

The iPod Shuffle is Apple’s new flash player. The design is good, if a little long, and weighs less than an ounce (22.1 grams). Price also seems reasonable. However the market is flooded with flash players so it’ll be interesting to see long term how this performs. Pity we didn’t see anything in the way of a video playing iPod or even a wireless one. Maybe later in the year?

No doubt blogs and gadget sites will be going gaga over these products today and tomorrow. There’s a lot of Apple love out there. There’s also too many of these. Enjoy.