2012 — 17 November: Saturday
Rather than contemplate the potential for a rapidly escalating conflict in the Middle East, I spent part of yesterday evening pondering how best to reply to a perfectly innocent enquiry about an aspect of my A/V system.1 Specifically, my Netgear media player, and how it fits into what I kid myself is my Grand Unified Theory2 (of home entertainment). Or, at least, home entertainment technology — the minor detail of what actually gets played back on the various lumps of kit (and whether it's worth the investment of time, and effort — or even constitutes worthwhile entertainment) is a whole different discussion...
The enquiry came from my chum Geoff who remarked, in part, "I've currently got various ways of getting audio and video out of my computer and into the appropriate AV device, none of them satisfactory. They all seem to want to apply their own layer of organisational semantics; none of them particularly relevant to my own usage. The Netgear box might be the sort of thing I'm looking for".
I sympathise with that "satisfactory".
For example, I have not been able to play video material from my PC on the Kuro 60" plasma screen at the same time as having both my PC screens in use. This is because, if you please, of the three hi-def digital video outputs (DisplayPort, DVI-D, and hdmi) simultaneously available on my graphics card, two of them (hdmi and DVI-D) are deemed to be "legacy" and only two legacy digital video outputs are supported at the same time.
I need two such outputs for my twin-screen desktop at the PC desk — and I'd rather have those twin screens for my Win8 desktop than the 60" screen at the other end of the room — so I've tried every combination of the three (and even thrown in an "active" DisplayPort to DVI adaptor) but been defeated (after fleeting momentary success) every time as there also seems to be an hdcp issue at my plasma screen that I won't bore you with.
I've just invested...
... 89% of £1 in a beautiful piece of music written in 1948 by John Cage — "In a Landscape", played by Stephen Drury. I heard a different performance of it for the first time on the wonderfully-named Clemency Burton-Hill's breakfast show earlier this morning, and it's been haunting me ever since. The only other Cage I'm aware of hearing is a piece or two for 'prepared' piano well over 35 years ago, back in my record reviewing days. This is the first time3 I've owned any. I may just leave it on "repeat" for a while.
Or, maybe, "invest" in three additional variant performances!
A little further...
... digging in Wikipedia casts a not-quite-complete light on my 'incomplete' 1995 William Orbit CD:
I seem to have another rarity on my hands, as it were. And having just scanned my physical CD, I can also report that the Wikipedia entry only deals with the later re-issue. So if I want to hear the 3-minute version of the Cage track it will be off to Amazon MP3 downloads4 I go again. Tea first, methinks. Or even a bite to eat. It's 13:04 and Mr Postie's only offering was a silly piece of Toyota marketing. Not very well disguised, either.
As twilight descends
Right! Nearly time to saddle up and trickle over to Winchester to say "Happy Birthday" to someone who, like me, detests getting older and unwiser. Then the evening awaits... as it were. [Pause] Back... and still the fireworks continue. What's wrong with these people?
The last time I watched "Music and Lyrics" was the day it was delivered. Sadly, by then Christa's health was such that we neither of us gave the film our full attention — it's actually nowhere near as disappointing as I thought at the time which, as a chum often remarks, "only goes to show".