Entertainment | William Hook's Blog

Tag Archive for 'Entertainment'

Logitech Harmony 1000 Universal Remote

Published

on 5 January, 2009

. 4 Comments

In June 2007, I purchased a Logitech Harmony 525 remote from eBuyer. Simply put, it’s a universal remote. It takes all your five million existing remotes and crams them into one simple remote that can control pretty much anything via IR. However, since I recently got a new TV, I wanted the 525 in my bedroom for my use, so I suggested to my dad that he get another one for the TV downstairs. One week later, the Harmony 1000 arrived from eBuyer.

The 1000 is a rather high-end universal remote that can control up to 15 devices. That might not seem a lot, but think about it, if you have a TV, projector, screen, AV receiver, BluRay player, HDDVD player, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, HTPC, DVD recorder, and a DTV/cable/satellite box, well…that’s already a lot of devices, and that’s only 11. Throw in a dimmer for your lights, and that brings it up to 12 devices - for a dedicated home cinema setup, 15 devices is more then enough.

So, the 1000. It’s Logitech’s top of the line model, and the first thing you notice about it, is that it’s not shaped like the average remote. This is both a good and bad thing. You kind of need two hands to control it, but I think it’s a good size, and it’s very light too. I was expecting it to be heavy, but it’s not at all heavy. It also has a 3.5″ touch-screen, which is a very unique feature, and a very useful one too. The touch-screen is used for activity-specific controls, however there are still your usual physical buttons. To the right of the touch screen, you have volume, channel, back, mute, previous, next, and the usual up/down/left/right/OK pad. Below the touch-screen is the Activities button, and on the top left is the power button. On the side is a USB port, and on the back is the flap for the battery, plus a small speaker (which is pretty useless, since it just beeps at you sometimes, but you can mute it). The 1000 also feels a lot more solid then the 525 does. The 525 feels like I could easily snap it in half, whereas the 1000 feels very solid.

Continue reading ‘Logitech Harmony 1000 Universal Remote’

I really want a Sony Bravia VPL-HW10

Published

William

on 29 December, 2008

in Blog

. 1 Comment

I’ve always liked projectors since I first got to use one back in 2000, during the Sydney Olympics. My dad was given permission from his office at the time to bring home one of the work projectors over the weekend. Actually, he managed to bring home several different models over several weekends, and (bear in mind that this was 2000, when we still had a CRT TV, and a VCR) I hooked it up to the VCR and fed the video output into the projector. It was incredibly immersive watching the Olympic games on a massive screen, and I also hooked up a friend’s PS2 to one, and played GT3 on it. It was impressive driving around on a huge screen, and I became hooked. However, I’ve never actually owned a projector because they cost so much, and the price of bulbs is quite a lot.

Now, bear in mind that the projector that I used back then had either a 640×480 or 800×600 resolution (I can’t remember exactly, but it was one of those), and was designed for office work - plus, this is almost 9 years ago, so the technology has come forward a lot in the time. However, you still need to spend a lot of cash to get a decent unit, even now, in 2008 (well, 2009, since it’s a few days away). I’ve seen a few displays of projectors in stores, but I’ve only ever seen one HD projector in action - a 1080p Sony Bravia model at my local Sony Store last year (2007), which at the time cost a whopping £7000. The quality was stunning though, when showing a BluRay disc, and I felt even more compelled to want one. But seriously, 7 grand? No thanks.

I often read Engadget HD for news, and noticed that Sony have recently released a new model, the VPL-HW10, which is a full 1080/24p projector, and you can get it for as low as £1500-£1800. I know that’s a lot of money, especially for a TV (of sorts), but bear in mind that our 40″ HDTV cost close to £1000 last year, and even Sony’s high end 52″ LCD TVs cost between £1200 and £3000. So, such a good quality projector that can probably give an image double the size of a 52″ TV, and for £1500 is a pretty damn good price in my eyes. Plus, after seeing a blog post by someone who actually purchased one, the photos he took of the projected image are, simply put, jaw dropping. I’d say that it actually looks BETTER then our 1080p TV does, and that’s saying something, especially considering our TV is on the higher end of Sony’s mid-range TVs, and that I’m only saying that after seeing some still photos. I’ve not seen this thing in action at all. Take a look, and have a read of the article:

Take note, especially, of the photo of Cristian Bale driving the Lamborghini. You can see pretty much all the detail there is to see. I seriously am impressed, and I really, really, seriously, badly want the Sony VPL-HW10 projector. Now all I need is a way of aquiring that amount of money, and getting my parents to say yes to putting one into our lounge.

Sky HD

Published

William

on 17 December, 2008

in Blog

. 3 Comments

Last Friday, on the 12th of December, I had Sky HD installed in my bedroom. I had actually booked it over a month before - Sky had an offer in October for a £75 Sky HD box with free installation (if you’re doing multiroom, otherwise £30 installation), so I decided to go for it and get it installed. Obviously they’re busy, as they didn’t have a single day available for installation during November.

I previously had ghetto-Sky HD installed in my bedroom using a Firewire based DVB-S2 tuner, however since my MacBook has no Firewire, I sold it, and decided to get the cheap Sky HD box. Anyway, a technician arrived on Friday (and, I will add, he looked suspicously like Hamish Blake, which was weird), and got to work. First of all, he drilled a hole in the wall downsairs, next to the master phone jack, and installed a wire going outside, up the wall, and into my bedroom. For those who don’t know - the phone line is used for ordering pay-per-view programs on Sky, as well as to make sure you’re not giving the box to a friend to use. If you take out a multiroom subscription, you’re essentially getting a second box for only £10 more a month. Presuming you have two HD boxes, Sky don’t want you giving that second box to a friend so you can both have the full Sky package for a total of £77 per month - because if you EACH take out Sky, it’s a total of £114 a month (for two HD boxes with all programming).

Of course, there are a few ways you could get around this. If you’re sharing it with your neighbour, you could simply give them the box, and run the telephone wire from your house into the box. Unless Sky actually came and checked, they wouldn’t know any different, however if they did find out, I can imagine you’d get your service cut off or you’d be fined, so…don’t try it.

Anyway, back to my box. The installer guy then removed the old satellite cable to my bedroom, which I had had installed last year for my ghetto-Sky-HD solution, but it was only a single feed, so he replaced it with a dual-feed cable. He also replaced the LNB (the thing on the end of the stick attatched to the dish), as it was looking a little worse for wear from the sun. I also suspect he did it because when he pulled the cover off to access the jacks on the LNB itself, the cover itself snapped in half because it was so brittle from the sun. Anyway, he came back inside, did a few tricks on the box, and within about half an hour, it was up and running with Sky HD!

It’s pretty much the same thing that we’ve had downstairs for the past year, so I’m not going to go into any detail, but I must say that the box itself is nice and quiet - it’s an “Amstrad” branded box, whereas the one we have downstairs is a Thomson box which I purchased off eBay last year. The one downstairs is okay, but it crashes sometimes (I generally have to do a hard-reset about once a month), and the fan inside it basically never stops, and hasn’t stopped since I upgraded the HDD inside it with a 500GB drive last year. It’s also quite a noisy fan, so you notice it when you’re watching TV, even with the volume turned up a bit. I’m tempted to butcher the box a bit to fit my own quieter fan, but I’m not sure if that’s a good idea, because I’m not sure if the box would work with the fans unplugged. If you unplug the CPU fan header on a PC, it complains, and I can imagine the Sky HD box would do the same.

I’m not that fussed overall about it though, as you do get used to it after a while. However, I’m very pleased at how quiet this new box is, as it’s in my bedroom and I like to sleep in a *quiet* place.

Anyway, that’s all up and running and I’m very happy with it so far, and I’m even happier at the fact that Sky switched MTVN HD on yesterday, so there’s FINALLY some good quality HD music showing. Well, there’s not that much at the moment but I’m sure it will get better after a while. I wish all the channels would go HD, even if they’re just showing SD material - the difference between the SD music channels and SD content shown on MTVN HD is amazing, since they absolutly kill the bitrate on SD channels, sadly. You can especially see it if you switch between Channel 4, and Channel 4 HD, during the 7pm news. The HD channel looks loads better, despite it still being SD.

In other news, I finally upgraded to WordPress 2.7 on here and several other places that I manage (with a little help from kudos, because I always break something). Also, I’m going to London for a couple of days from Saturday, to see the Stereophonics live at The O2. As usual when I go to London, I’ll most likely have both my iPhone and laptop with me, so I’ll still be reachable. Just maybe a bit slower at replying. In preperation of the trip I also decided to pick up a cheap laptop slip-case-thing for my MacBook, as I don’t really have anything else that’s good for transporting it in, other then a messenger back which is 1) designed for 15″ laptops, and 2) missing.

Anyway, this post is too long, so that’s it for now.

Eagle Eye

Published

William

on 21 October, 2008

in Blog

. 0 Comments

I went down to Birmingham today to the IMAX, to see Eagle Eye. I must say, I went to see it not expecting much, however I was greatly surprised - overall, it’s a fantastic movie and the huge IMAX screen really brings it to life - the initial chase scene is pretty amazing, and you really need to be awake when you watch it to notice everything.

The plot is pretty simple, however there are plenty of bits nicked from other films. If you’ve seen War Games, xXx 2: State of the Union, or Die Hard 4, some parts of the film will be familar.

Overall, it’s definitly worth a watch, so if you can, see it at the cinema!

(Trailer)