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PLASMA BABY

In apparent contradiction to the dour anti-consumerism of my previous post, I have recently acquired a plasma television (Panasonic 42"). To quote The Doc: "It appears my hypocrisy knows no bounds". 

My hip pocket, on the other hand, most certainly does have bounds, so I was happy to get something half-decent for under $750. Of course, it isn't quite state-of-the-art: you could easily pay twice as much for an LCD of the same size (or even more for LED) -- not to mention that 3DTV is just around the corner. But speaking personally, I can't really get enthousiastic about current obsession with ever-bigger screens and higher resolution. I mean, like everything else, you get used to it pretty quickly anyway. So if it's big enough to watch comfortably from the sofa (distance is approx 3m -- which is the "recommended" distance for a 42" screen), then I'm a happy camper.

Unfortunately, our current outdoor aerial doesn't allow us to get any channel except SBS (an amusing reversal of the usual problem: "I can now getta ONLY S ah B S ah!"). But for the time being we don't really care: most of our entertainment is either DVD or internet-based -- and most of the worthwhile programs can be viewed on the channels' websites.

WIRED FOR SOUND (+ VISION)

With the new TV in place, it was imperative to find a wiring setup that would allow the computer screen to be shown on the TV. Enter HDMI: the standard cable format for digital tv, which is also compatible with the DVI cables used to connect computer monitors. Some research showed that my iMac is endowed with one of Apple's annoyingly non-standard "mini-DVI" ports, so I needed an adapter of some kind. Now, one of my biggest gripes with Apple is that they sell these adapters for extortionately high prices (and then compound things by changing the format from one model to the next), so I was delighted to find a third-party mini-DVI-to-HDMI adapter for only 10 bucks on eBay (cf 45 bucks for a similar cable from Apple). I also picked up a 10 metre HDMI-HDMI, to transfer the signal from the computer at one end of the room to the TV at the other. Finally, since audio is not transmitted through DVI, I needed a 10 metre stereo RCA cable to take the sound from the computer to the TV. These cables were also available quite cheaply from dealers on eBay (about a quarter of the price in retailers like Bing Lee). So now I'm all cabled up, and I can watch youtube clips (or whatever other video material I might stumble upon on the internet...) in glorious high-resolution 42".

Just for good measure, I also picked up a Sony DVD player. It's amazing to me that you can now buy these for about 70 bucks -- not much more than I paid for all the cables just mentioend. It plays all regions, which is a must since my DVD collection is pretty much evenly split between regions 2 and 4. It also plays discs with formats like .AVI -- which would be handy if I happened to be someone with a large collection of downloaded material.. 

OZ, SEASON 1

To break in the new tv set up, I decided to have a look at this show. One of the earliest HBO drama shows, it ran for six seasons from 1997 to 2003, so as usual I'm a little late to the party. It's a prison drama, set in the fictitious Oswald Penitentiary in an unspecified state of the US. It features the usual mix of prisoner stereotypes and dark themes, and is pretty full-on. But it's also quite entertaining and probably worth watching for fans of The Shield or The Wire. And with only 8 episodes, it goes in quite quickly. One of the highlights in Season One is the "master-bitch" relationship between white-supremist Vern Schillinger and vulnerable newbie Tobias Beecher. 

It's probably a sign that I've watched too many of these shows, but there are quite a few familiar faces: Laguerta from Dexter is there, as are a couple of the gangsters from The Wire. And you may recognize prison manager Tim McManus as hapless Lamar from The Firm (you know, the guy who sat in his backyard with the sprinkler going back and forth across his trousers).