the flatscreens and the media centres of this world

Frosty Jack · February 11, 2010

After deciding to stick around in one place for a while, I got this beast of a Panasonic Viera.

Don't normally buy things like this. Felt like 10 years progress in an afternoon.

Waded through anecdotal advice against plasma, and found credible reviews online that explained the modern sets don't have the problems, like burn in, that the early ones did. Once doubts about plasma were overcome, feature wise there was nothing comparable to this in LCD or LED in the same price bracket so I went for it. Full HD 400hz 42". To me the image was smoother and colour looked more natural than the LCD sets around it too. Could've just been how they were set up in the store I guess. Unlimited budget I probably would've gone for LED.

Watched last nights match from the laptop over hdmi. and it's quite stunning really. Get a good quality stream from Veetle or one of the best Sopcast ones and it's indistinguishable from TV signal, given there's no way of watching most matches here, it's a godsend.

Now i'm in the process getting some kind of box to plug into it.

Again, against advice i'm going for the much maligned apple tv, not because of what it does by default but so I can install this:

http://www.atvflash.com/

which adds so many features it more or less transforms the device, external storage, install any application, web browser etc etc.

also getting a keyboard and mouse with it, and the end result is basically a mac mini for 180 quid all in (US store), but with the unique things it does out of the box, rental, wireless streaming of library, though albeit without a dvd drive. does anyone have any experience with atv?

i expect most of you got on this train long ago, but i've been living like a gypsy for a fair while, and forgot what it was like to watch tv shows on something other than a laptop screen.

Hassony · February 11, 2010

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