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my a/v crap

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I just got a new compact digital camera (a Fuji F31fd) which produces the best shots (from a compact, that is) that I've ever seen. So I decided to hop on board the "here's pictures of my TV" bandwagon and include some pictures of what movies and games look like to me. OK, so they're not 100% accurate, but they're pretty!

Pictures!

Cars Trailer (BD, 1080p):

Aeon Flux (HD DVD, 1080p):

Lilo & Stitch (French PAL DVD, 576p):

Pirates of the Caribbean 2 (BD, 1080p):

Mr Bean's Holiday (HD DVD, 1080p):

Black Snake Moan (HD DVD, 1080p):

Open Season - no, it was a promo freebie, I didn't buy it (BD, 1080p):

Mulan (Australian PAL DVD, 576p):
(Notice the KDL-40W2000's Y/C delay - reds out of the lines - at work here. It doesn't seem to look as bad in real life).

Ren & Stimpy Adult Party Cartoon (USA NTSC DVD, 480p):

Bioshock (X360, scaled by the console to 1080p):

Zelda: Twilight Princess (Wii, 480p):

So you know what you're looking at, here's my setup:

HDTV: Sony KDL-40W2000

Sony's HDTVs aren't perfect and the Wide Colour Gamut means they can't ever be truly calibrated to studio-like accuracy, but they feature what I think is the best implementation of Samsung's lovely S-PVA panels that I've seen as of yet. I had to go through three of these 1080p beasts to get one with a good panel, thanks to the infamous clouding issues.

The 40W2000 accepts 1:1 pixel mapping when its fed a 1080i or 1080p signal, and doesn't bugger around with the incoming video too much, so what you see on screen is very close to what's on an HD disc. My own 40W2000 hasn't been professionally calibrated, but I managed to borrow a friend's Spyder2 so it is calibrated to an extent. Not as accurate as a full-on ISF job, but a hell of a lot better than Sony's out of the box presets.

Audio: Yamaha AV59 pack

I'm not an audio expert, which is why I don't pass judgment on audio (much). I eventually tired of boxed-in "TV sound" and bought this 'budget' 5.1 solution. It's made up of a Yamaha RXV359 receiver, and their NSP110 speaker/subwoofer pack.

SD DVD: Panasonic DVD-S97 (Multi-region hacked)

A pretty nice "affordable" SD DVD player based around the Genesis FLI2300 chip, which properly handles Film mode activation for both PAL and NTSC movies and when all else fails, falls back on Faroudja's DCDi jagginess smoothing algorithm. This player can upscale to 1080i, but I don't use its upscaling functions and instead just use the deinterlacing (so I output 480p or 576p to the TV).

HD DVD: Xbox 360 HD DVD drive, connected to an Xbox 360 Elite (USA)

I finally got rid of my Toshiba HD-A1, which was a good player, albeit a slow one, when my brother bought a 360 HD DVD drive. Although it's noisy, it's fairly fast, and does the job nicely - even if we're deprived of HD audio for the time being.

Blu-ray Disc: Playstation 3 (Region A)

A Japanese PS3, connected to the TV at 1080p/60, for playing discs back from Sony's latest proprietary format.

Nintendo Wii (USA)

Just as it says. Hooked up to my 40W2000 via Component, outputting 480p/60.

Sega Saturn (Japanese)

Connected via Sega's RGB SCART cable, sending 480i/60 to the TV.

HDMI Switch: Joytech Tri-link Switcher

My 2 HDMI sockets are full, and this brilliant £30 box adds another two.

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