2007 — 13 Feb: time for a change of car?
Well, this is exciting. We were wandering past AutoForum yesterday afternoon, having just paid the paper bill, when the eyes of She who must be adored alighted on a low mileage recent Peugeot 1007 in my favorite colour. So we've arranged a test drive this afternoon. Providing a) it fits in our garage, and b) they don't offer us too raw a deal in trade-in value for our little Toy with its 5,300 miles, sat nav, air-con and all, we may just have a deal.
I'm not for one minute suggesting that its neat sliding, electrically-operated doors swung it for us, as they don't have any hinges.
However, in an unrelated incident, my poor little "Churchill insurance" nodding head dog (which She flatly refuses to let me put on the back parcel shelf under any circumstances, even as an ironic post-Modern statement of some ilk) broke his neck support when I accidentally knocked him off the top of the left hand loudspeaker while closing blinds, drawing curtains, and shutting the little window against what's become a remarkably cold set of gusts last night. Were I superstitious, I suppose this might constitute an omen, rather than an excuse to sniff the Uhu while attempting repairs.
Mind you, I think I can just hear the faint sound of an unbought Mac receding into the distance!
It's what the web is good at
Having read a wide range of reviews, we cancelled the test drive. As a minor consolation prize, and moving from the garage, as it were, into the living room, I appear to have set about obtaining a Helios DVD player which has some interesting characteristics and abilities...
Plus, it's cheap! And black. And shiny. But — for me — it also has a unique selling proposition, which is where I quote from a recent review: Now if your TV already comes with a good scaler or you have a dedicated scaler you can still find value in this player as it can output 480i and 576i from the HDMI output. This keeps the signal in the digital domain so that your TV or dedicated scaler can upconvert the exact signal that is encoded on the DVD.
The only other way to pull off this particular trick (that I'm aware of) entails modifying a DVD player (several hundred dollars) to offer an SDI output, plus springing for the extra cost (several hundred dollars) of adding an SDI input to my video scaler. Neat!
Did I mention I loved Meccano?
Click here! as they say... meet "Spyke".
