Trouble with losing access to your blog for a week is that you completely lose the will to live.  Um, i mean the will to blog.

So i’ve neglected to mention the fun with the TV and the 360, i’ll probably talk about that next and describe it as if I’ve only just unpacked them.

Whilst it’s just happened i’ll skip forward and berate a cable i’ve just received.  It’s this XCM component cable introduced to me by gizmodo. I want something like this because my TV only has 1 set of component connections, and I have both a 360 and a wii wanting to get at them.  I was originally going to connect the 360 to the VGA port to leave the component for the Wii, but that ended up a no go, I found the VGA picture less viberent, and it turned out that my TV doesn’t treat the VGA input to its image “enhancement ” filters.  So as seen as giz had mentioned this component switch i figured it would be OK, but sadly the picture from the 360 through it just doesn’t look as sharp as with the original microsoft one.  You can see some ghosting and if you look really close at the image you can even make out a little static buzzing around.

With the 360 being more deserving of the component connector than the Wii I really don’t want to stifle it’s image quality for the sake of only a minor improvement Wii wise.  So I guess it’s back to composite for the Wii, poor thing.

There are other, more pro looking switches for component, but they can cost upwards of 70 quid.  And then there are other cheapo ones that look a little on the unbranded side, i wager they will looks just as bad as this one.

Hmm, hope i can get a refund on this cable.  Damn, maybe I should have waited for the xbox 360 elite and the next version of my TV which will have 2 HDMI’s.

A guy I sometimes do some web application work for is gifting me a TV. As crazy as that sounds. They are getting me a 26 inch R7 Series Samsung, it’s a really sexy looking TV with this flawless shiny bevel. There’s an R8 series that has just been released but it isn’t easily available yet and I can’t be bothered to wait.

I’ve also ordered an xbox 360, came across a good deal at HMV.co.uk, for just 290 quid, you get that boxed version with HD plus Pro Evolution Soccer, Gears of War and Crackdown. Which are all games I want. To top it off I used a coupon code that gets you 5 quid off. Bargin!  Found it at Hot Deals Oh yeah, bit annoying, the HMV site doesn’t accept coupon codes if you’re using safari, just doesn’t react.  Silly

What a lot of wires.

In anticipation I’ve gathered all the cable’s I will need, and what an insane mess of connections it is too. I’ve got a Mini-DVI to DVI adapter (required because apple put a silly mini dvi port on the iMac), a DVI to HDMI lead, a Wii Component cable, an XBox 360 VGA cable (so that I don’t need a component switcher) and an extra long interconnect to get the sound to my amp.

Is it me, or is the futher along the old timeframe we get the more wires we are dealing with. It’s hardly progress!