Product Review Section

In which Ford explains the workings of a Bambleweeny 57 Sub-Meson Brain and Arthur leaves a confused comment.

I've an economic collection of appliances at home. It eschews surround sound but it pleases me no end. Call me old fashioned but I like the sound coming from the direction of the picture. I've only got two ears anyway so stereo speakers work fine. Likewise, they can keep their H.D. and Blu-Ray: it's the old "whiter than white" soap powder routine and I'm not buying into it. The Sony Bravia ads are laughable: do they really expect us to buy a new television based on some pretty pictures when those pictures just looked as pretty as they did on the set we already own? It defies logic.

When I first viewed my apartment and saw the white walls, a little light switch went on in my brain. All credit to Phil and To-ne for planting the seed of an idea that germinated and now I watch everything blown up to 100 inches and there's no screen to pack up when I'm done. I can't recommend Projector Point enough and I'm downright chuffed at my decadence every time I switch on. Roll on Saturday and David Tennant's big head on my wall...



Dampening the party a little is my Sony SVR-S500 hard disk recorder which feels like it was rushed through testing. Some menus let you switch between them directly but others don't so you don't build up an intuitive feel for navigation. The E.P.G. updates noisily at 0300 daily and you can't change it to midday when you'd be out and not trying to sleep. Worse, you couldn't view a program's description until you selected it for recording (which is a bloomin' long-winded way of identifying repeats) until last week when I got an unexpected software update in the daily download and this bug is now fixed. I didn't even ask!