Evening all
There’s only two hours to go before the big event, so I before I shut down the Mac and dig into a drink or three, here (in no particular order) is my fantasy 'wish list' of new developments for home entertainment in 2009. What about you?
1. Panasonic to deliver a Freesat-enabled TV with a PVR built-in. I like these Panny TVs, but it's insane that you can't record on them, nor transfer your HD viewing to an external box. So Panasonic, let's see a Freesat TV with, ooh, 500GB built in and two tuners.
2. An end to misleading advertising claims like 'see it all in glorious HD'. I'm sorry Freesat, but a few hours of new content per day on just two channels doesn't constitute 'seeing it all' to me.Toshiba's 'world's first upscaling TV' claim is even more ridiculous.
3. Bigger hard-disks on, ooh, everything. An Apple TV with a terabyte. A Sky+HD box with the same. An iPhone with 80GB or so, and a Touch with 120GB. And more effort put into making each of these products run more reliably and more quietly.
4. Everyone involved in the design and manufacture of TVs to sit on their hands, take a deep breath or two and realise that many a punter is already deeply confused by notions like HD-Ready and HD-Ready 1080p. Throwing out yet another new standard (Ultra-HD, 4K TV or whatever you choose to call it) isn't really going to help. Instead of chasing pixels, let's chase other aspects of picture performance for a while – more contrast, better colours, smoother motion, less noise, more powerful processing, that sort of thing. What about it?
5. Someone, somewhere to turn out a competitive AV receiver that sounds great with music. I've heard a lot of good things about the new Arcam, but it's beyond the reach of most. What about a decent £500 design that does the lot? It can't be that hard, it really can't.Chuck out anything we don't need, leave in what counts…
6. On that subject – everyone to fit more HDMI inputs to AV receivers now, please. Two or three just isn't enough. I've used up all four on my big Denon and now find myself needing more, although I'll freely admit I'm not your average punter…
7. Fox to release the Star Wars Trilogy on Blu-ray. No, not the godawful new ones! Ideally, I'd like them in original, unmolested form, with the so-called digital upgrades available as a menu option.
8. Sony to develop an HD-audio output firmware upgrade for the PS3. We've established (after long debate on this website and in print) that in practice it doesn't amount to much whether you stream your audio from your Blu-ray player as PCM or decode it on the player to DolbyTrueHD et al – but let's be honest, most AV amp owners want to see their receivers swing into decoding action, regardless of whether the end results are actually better or not.
9. Apple to offer Lossless as a download option on the iTunes store. True, we'll all need to be using properly fast broadband for that to make any sense, but still.
10. And finally: an end to Profile 1.1 Blu-ray players, coupled to dramatic increases in disc-access times and overall reliability even in Profile 2.0 kit. If Blu-ray is going to thrive, it needs to provide a user-experience as modern and exciting as its picture and sound performance. Currently, it doesn't – in fact in some circumstances it can be positively agricultural, as labour-intensive and time-consuming to operate as VHS or laserdisc. Don't get me wrong, I like the format a lot, but this really isn't good enough!
That's it. Fire away, and Happy New Year, everyone!
Andy
There’s only two hours to go before the big event, so I before I shut down the Mac and dig into a drink or three, here (in no particular order) is my fantasy 'wish list' of new developments for home entertainment in 2009. What about you?
1. Panasonic to deliver a Freesat-enabled TV with a PVR built-in. I like these Panny TVs, but it's insane that you can't record on them, nor transfer your HD viewing to an external box. So Panasonic, let's see a Freesat TV with, ooh, 500GB built in and two tuners.
2. An end to misleading advertising claims like 'see it all in glorious HD'. I'm sorry Freesat, but a few hours of new content per day on just two channels doesn't constitute 'seeing it all' to me.Toshiba's 'world's first upscaling TV' claim is even more ridiculous.
3. Bigger hard-disks on, ooh, everything. An Apple TV with a terabyte. A Sky+HD box with the same. An iPhone with 80GB or so, and a Touch with 120GB. And more effort put into making each of these products run more reliably and more quietly.
4. Everyone involved in the design and manufacture of TVs to sit on their hands, take a deep breath or two and realise that many a punter is already deeply confused by notions like HD-Ready and HD-Ready 1080p. Throwing out yet another new standard (Ultra-HD, 4K TV or whatever you choose to call it) isn't really going to help. Instead of chasing pixels, let's chase other aspects of picture performance for a while – more contrast, better colours, smoother motion, less noise, more powerful processing, that sort of thing. What about it?
5. Someone, somewhere to turn out a competitive AV receiver that sounds great with music. I've heard a lot of good things about the new Arcam, but it's beyond the reach of most. What about a decent £500 design that does the lot? It can't be that hard, it really can't.Chuck out anything we don't need, leave in what counts…
6. On that subject – everyone to fit more HDMI inputs to AV receivers now, please. Two or three just isn't enough. I've used up all four on my big Denon and now find myself needing more, although I'll freely admit I'm not your average punter…
7. Fox to release the Star Wars Trilogy on Blu-ray. No, not the godawful new ones! Ideally, I'd like them in original, unmolested form, with the so-called digital upgrades available as a menu option.
8. Sony to develop an HD-audio output firmware upgrade for the PS3. We've established (after long debate on this website and in print) that in practice it doesn't amount to much whether you stream your audio from your Blu-ray player as PCM or decode it on the player to DolbyTrueHD et al – but let's be honest, most AV amp owners want to see their receivers swing into decoding action, regardless of whether the end results are actually better or not.
9. Apple to offer Lossless as a download option on the iTunes store. True, we'll all need to be using properly fast broadband for that to make any sense, but still.
10. And finally: an end to Profile 1.1 Blu-ray players, coupled to dramatic increases in disc-access times and overall reliability even in Profile 2.0 kit. If Blu-ray is going to thrive, it needs to provide a user-experience as modern and exciting as its picture and sound performance. Currently, it doesn't – in fact in some circumstances it can be positively agricultural, as labour-intensive and time-consuming to operate as VHS or laserdisc. Don't get me wrong, I like the format a lot, but this really isn't good enough!
That's it. Fire away, and Happy New Year, everyone!
Andy
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram