Fungii.com

Sony KDS-50A2000

My old 27" Sony Trinitron from 1990 was starting to show it's age as of late. Most notably by displaying a series of horizontal bars across the screen that were driving me crazy. Although they were only visible, mostly, in dark scenes and in areas that had about 20% brightness. I thought it might be some kind of interference or a ground loop, but after much experimenting with different video sources through different inputs and different power outlets, I was unable to make the problem disappear. Oh well, 16 years of service for one TV ain't bad.

So I did some research on TVs and while I would have liked to get the 40" XBR2 LCD model, I ultimately decided to go with the 50" SXRD rear-projection model. It was cheaper, had a bigger screen and had a native display of 1080p. I went to Future Shop and got their 12 months interest free [somewhat] payment plan. They actually charge a $60 financing charge, so it's not totally interest free. The price I got it for was $2535, a bit less than the $2999 MSRP. [I printed out this forum thread and when I showed it to them, they agreed to sell it to me for that price] I managed to get it to fit in my Vibe and drive it home, although I had to lay it flat because it was a few inches too tall.

I tried scanning for HD channels using the TV's built in tuner, but all I got was one, Discovery HD. It looked great, but obviously I would like more than one HD channel. So I went to Shaw yesterday and picked up their HD cable box/PVR. Now I get about 10 HD channels. Not bad, but I hope they get more soon. Standard definition channels vary greatly in picture quality, some are fine and some are completely unwatchable. Anologue or digital [480i] doesn't seem to matter much, I guess it all depends on the source. DVDs look great, not as good as the HD channels, but much better than any 480i TV channels. Although you can notice differences from disc to disc. Spiderman2 looks sharp and crisp, but Apocalypse Now looks kinda soft. DIVX stuff through my RJ-Tech unit looks pretty good, much better than on my old TV, although it varies from source to source. The last episode of Heroes looked fantastic.

I've heard of the green blob defect with these TVs, but so far I haven't had any problems of that nature. I also did the LPF fix, although I can't say it made any visible difference.

I also had to spend a small fortune on cables. Two component cables for my DVD players. Then another component cable for my PS2, although I'm not sure that was worth it cause PS2 games look rather shitty on this set. My cable box came with a set of component cables, but by that time all my component inputs were spoken for! So I had to purchase an HDMI cable to get it connected. The guy at Future Shop was trying sell me an uber-expensive Monster Cable HDMI cable, but when I decide on a cheaper one because cabling shouldn't make that big a difference with digital signals over a short run, he threw a fit, literally. Totally spazzed out. Anyway, I went with the cheaper cable and it works fine, although it's too short and I have to keep the damn box right by my TV now.

Vulcan

I went for a drive out to Vulcan today. It was a nice drive, took about an hour and fifteen minutes each way. I managed to figure out how my cruise control works and it works quite well! It's nice to just set the speed you want and not have to push on the pedal for hours at a time. I just have to get used to dropping out of cruise when the speed limit changes so I don't get nailed for speeding. On the other hand, it does maintain a fairly constant speed, so you won't get nailed for speeding when you drift over the limit going down a hill. My Vibe seems to be driving nicer lately. I'm not sure if it's just because I'm getting used to it or because it's almost "broken in".

Mission Impossible 3

Just finished watching this movie and could not fucking believe how incredibly bad it was! Holy shit, I've seen some bad movies as of late, but this one takes the cake.

I heard of the non-stop action, which would have been good enough for me as a mindless action flick, but none of it is exciting or at all interesting. The second movie wasn't that great, but it did have some memorable set pieces. The motorcycle chase, the rock climbing intro, the fight on the beach, a lot of over-the-top melodrama but it was fun to watch. This is movie is fucking dismal, not a single set piece worth remembering. The helicopter chase through the windmills? Fucking stupid, the chase copter could have just flown above the windmills and shot down at the lead copter. The attack on the bridge? It's been done before and better -> True Lies. That scene has no drama to it, no build-up, they are driving along fine and then kaboom, everything starts exploding. As if that wasn't bad enough, they top it off by Ethan shooting down a jet with his machine gun. Fuck that was stupid. Over the top action is one thing, but when you start doing shit like that you're just insulting the audience. I thought the fulcrum scene in Shanghai would be cool, but it's not at all interesting, just Ethan swinging on a wire from one building to the other. That's fucking it, big fucking deal.

The camera work in this was atrocious, whenever a boring scene came up, they would shake the camera like crazy, trying to make it more "exciting". It just made the scene unwatchable. The bad guy played by Hoffman was the only remotely interesting character in this movie, but he doesn't get enough screen time. The plot drones on to a predictable, unimaginative conclusion. The first two movies in this series weren't perfect, but they were watchable and fun. This sad excuse for a movie is not.