This is like the 999th post beginning with the word “new”.

So, without telling me, dad went ahead and ordered a new TV about two weeks ago, and then on about Wednesday he started to “hint” that there was a package coming, and on Friday he told me to wait inside the house for a delivery, which eventually came (thanks to Citylink…) at 5:45pm. Two boxes - one for the TV, and one for the HDD/DVD Recorder. I know that we already have Sky HD, which can record, but the DVD recorder is actually a good idea - it was only £20 more then getting a normal upscaling DVD player (they had a special offer on with the TV), so it was worth it, basically. Anyway, it arrived, and I set it all up and so on (thank god for HDMI - it’s so much easier then the old three-component-wires-and-an-optical-cable method), and then turned it on. I get greeted by the usual “scan for channels?” message (this time it asked me twice, as there’s a DVB-T tuner in it as well as an analogue tuner), and then finally, some TV. The digital channels look okay, except the quality is quite bad. So, I plugged in the Sky box, turned it on, and that looks better with BBC1 then the TV’s tuner, but still not fantastic (this thing really shows where the bitrate on the channels is crap - BBC Four is especially bad!).

Switch over to BBC HD, and HOLY……..the quality is AMAZING. Seriously. It’s just fantastic. And BBC HD isn’t even the best. I watched Lost tonight and the detail is superb - I thought it looked good on my PC, but Sky’s broadcast is definitly better.

So, without further delays, enjoy the pictures!