Capt. Mondo's World o' Mondo-ness

Purchased a (Small) HDTV Set
I've had my eye on a 42" Samsung DLP HDTV set for some time now, but even though it has been getting steadily cheaper as becomes "last year's model", it is still out of my comfortably affordable range.

So when I saw a floor model of a 20" LCD set go below $500, I decided to go for that instead.

I picked it up today from the local store of The Source (once formerly known as "Radio Shack") in the Beaches, after first spying it there earlier in the day while Vanessa was having a lesson at the Oxford Learning Centre (where she is receiving extra tutoring for reading). While Radio Shack/The Source has never had much of a reputation for being cheap, the one I ended up going for was a floor-model unit that was on sale.

It is a Centrios, one of the new brands that has popped up in the burgeoning breed of non-CRT TV manufacturers. It is likely a system made by a larger manufacturer but without all of the bells and whistles. I'm the type who likes those bells and whistles however, but the price was right, and I figured it would make for a good entry-level system until I can afford something substantially larger.

I also picked up a Philips progressive scan DVD player while I was at it too.

The TV and DVD players ended up being surprisingly good purchases. The colours are amazingly sharp and clear, it takes YPbPr inputs from the DVD player, and has a very wide viewing angle. The biggest single difference from a regular TV is the wide-screen 16:9 screen ratio, which makes a huge difference when watching movies designed for it. It is not perfect however -- the sound is unsurprisingly tinny, the blacks are not as black as they ought to be (though that may be fixable by further tweaking), and it does not have more advanced inputs, like HDMI for example. The DVD player is simple and straightforward, but was pleasantly surprised to discover that it readily plays back any standard MPEG file, so in theory I can cram straight video files onto a disc and be able to play them directly. I only tested this out on one of my home-made discs, which passed the test and worked flawlessly.

The kids gave it the thumb's up after watching "Monsters Inc." on it, and after I put them to bed I watched most of "The House of Flying Daggers", its vivid (and often computer-enhanced) colours coming through dazzlingly on the screen.

Nice to finally have an HDTV set a full 15 years after I did my Masters thesis on the regulatory background on this technology. I remember predicting that they would appear in most households a lot sooner that this one appeared in mine. Still got the grade though. ;-)