Just a quick update on my Oppo 981HD.

I’m still impressed with its general playback quality, but I have run into a significant issue. It really doesn’t like playing back DVDs recorded by my old Panasonic HS2 DVD Recorder. Its deinterlacing capabilities fail it, and there are some juddering issues.

Although there’s nothing mentioned on the Oppo site about the 981HD having any issues, I suspect it must be the same issue refered to in the FAQ for the 971H.

Not a major problem for me, but it’s worth considering if you are planning on buying an Oppo, and were planning to play back a lot of your own recordings.

Following on from yesterday’s Macworld Keynote, here are my quick thoughts about the announced products:

Apple TV

Negatives:

• Not flexible enough for the price (£199 in the UK)
• Only 720p. 1080p is inevitable, and compatible sets are now becoming available
• No YouTube – this is a huge mistake in my view
• Video content appears to come only from iTunes, which is very limiting

Positives:

• 40Gb disk and Intel processor. More power and flexibility than I expected
• The ability to sync content from another Mac. I wish I could do this easily with my Mac mini

Overall, it’s not bad, but I’d rather pay twice as much and get a Mac mini, with far more power and flexibility.

iPhone

Negatives:

• The release date is too far away, especially in Europe and Asia. The mobile market moves very quickly, and Apple (like Palm with the Treo) are playing a dangerous game if they stagger their global rollout too much
• No UMTS or HSDPA. For the UK, this is a very big deal. All the cool Internet features are going to be terrible over GPRS
• No memory expansion slot. Not a big deal, but it would be nice
• It’s not clear whether third party apps are supported. This is very important
• No GPS. Again, not a big problem, but it needs to be there in version 2.0
• 2 megapixel camera. This is going to look pretty terrible in 12 months time
• So far there’s no mention of it being available off contract

Positives:

• The interface is an even bigger advance than the Treo was. Nokia and the other mobile phone manufacturers should be seriously worried
• What looks like a serious, grownup OS in a phone
• Wonderful multitasking
• Gorgeous 320×480 screen
• Physically it looks great
• Very clever use of tilt, proximity and light sensors
• Great video and music playback

I’ve very impressed with the iPhone, but the release date and lack of 3G mean it’s unlikely to be my next device. The Nokia N95 is still in the frame for that role. However, an HSDPA iPhone 2.0 in Summer 2008 would be very interesting indeed.

To go with my recent TV upgrade, I also purchased a new 1080p capable DVD player, the Oppo 981 from CRT Projectors for £189. The reasons for buying an Oppo (which only plays normal DVDs, not HD-DVD or Blu-ray) were as follows:

• Multiregion and firmware upgradeable
• 1080p digital output of upscaled DVDs, including DCDi video processing

I haven’t owned a premium DVD player before (I own a Toshiba SD220 and a Tevion 8000), so I’d expected some significant improvements, and so far I’m very impressed.

Very configurable, nice remote, and lightning fast responses. It can’t work miracles with poor quality material, but the playback of recent discs (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire being one example) is the best I’ve ever seen. Good detail (although not a rival for HD, despite what people say), but the most impressive thing is that the motion is silky smooth, with few artifacts that I could notice.

The only issue that I’ve encountered is that it failed to mount a DVD a couple of times (it just kept spinning away without recognising the disc). Opening and closing the DVD tray fixed that problem.

Anyone expecting true HD performance will be disappointed, but if you have a 1080p set and a good sized DVD collection, I doubt that you’ll regret buying an Oppo 981.

Following on from the issues with the Goodmans set, I decided to bite the bullet and buy a 46 inch Sony X Series LCD.

I’d wanted one of these for a long time, but could never justify one as they’re one of the more expensive sets out there (just over £2500 online as I write), and have a few issues that I wasn’t happy with:

• It’s a Sony, and recent things like the dodgy HDMI on my Sony projector, PS3 delays, and PSP firmware updates haven’t impressed me
• The 46″ X Series LCD has a silver surround, and the optional black plastic surround costs about £150, which I find insulting for two pieces of plastic
• 1080p only over HDMI, not component or VGA
• The VGA input only accepts signals up to 1360×768

Knowing all the above, I still took the plunge. This was for three reasons:

• The display always looked good when I checked it out in shops (as long as it was being fed HD material)
• The feedback on AVForums was the best that I’d read for any LCD TV
• Christmas was approaching fast, and I didn’t want to be without a good TV over the holidays

Having now had the set for a couple of week, I’m absolutely over the moon with it. Other than the issues I mention above, it has no problems at all. In particular:

• Great blacks and colours
• No buzzing or banding
• Good viewing angle
• 1080p over HDMI at 50Hz and 60Hz, with no overscan
• Massively configurable through an extensive menu
• Despite its cost, the black surround is a big improvement over the default silver surround
• Very good sound quality (although I mostly use a Denon receiver and KEF speakers for my sound)

Just before Christmas I decided to upgrade my home cinema setup, starting with a 1080p LCD TV (to replace my old 43 inch Pioneer Plasma).

This Goodmans set looked like a bit of a bargain. I managed to get it from LX Direct for about £1040, once various discounts had been taken into account. Not bad for a 42 inch 1080p set, and initially I was pretty impressed.

Good points:

• It wasn’t bad looking, and the build quality was OK for the price
• The surround was black, which I much prefer over silver (less reflections)
• It seemed to handle standard definition feeds quite nicely
• It was happy to accept 1080p at 60hz over DVI with no overscan (nice with my Mac mini)
• 1080p over VGA from the Xbox 360 was handled very well
• Colours and blacks were quite good
• No dead or stuck pixels

As I explored further (and followed the relevant thread on AVForums), the following problems became apparent:

• The volume of the sound went very high (useful), but the increments were too far apart
• There was a buzzing and crackling noise from the backlight (changing the backlight level affected the noise), which could be clearly heard across my living room
• The set had “vertical banding” that could be seen on TV footage with significant horizontal panning
• The optimum viewing angle was quite narrow
• The RGB SCART sockets weren’t RGB, although to be fair, the TV handled composite signals very well
• The DVI and HDMI ports seemed rather picky about resolutions and refresh rates (especially the HDMI). If you’re not too bothered about overscan (on HDMI) or forcing 50Hz vs 60Hz, it wouldn’t be an issue, but I’m picky about these things
• No builtin Freeview, although I have to admit that this wasn’t really a big issue for me

To cut a long story short, I gave up on the Goodmans, and decided to try out a different set.

I spend an awful lot of my life online (too much if I’m honest), so having a reliable ADSL router with builtin wireless is very important to me. Over the past five years or so, I’ve been through a range of routers, never quite finding the perfect device. I’ve just picked up my fifth router, and will discuss it in a moment, but first, some brief comments on my past devices.

1. A PC running Smoothwall, and then IPCop, connected to a 3Com wireless access point and a Speedtouch USB ADSL modem: This was back in about 2001-2002, and while it worked pretty well, it was very complicated compared to the integrated routers we have these days.
2. A Draytek 2600G: Expensive, but well built and was far easier to live with than the PC solution. Unfortunately support seemed to dwindle, and mine started freezing for ten or twenty seconds at a time, which I couldn’t remedy, despite upgrading to the latest firmware, and doing a factory reset. Which reminds me – it was very picky about accepting firmware upgrades. Often it would just refuse to accept a new firmware upload. Very good in the early days though.
3. A Zyxel 660HW: Cheap, and handled wired connections very well. Pity that its wireless was slow and unreliable.
4. A Belkin 7633: I was tempted by this because it had a very good reputation with ADSL Max services here in the UK, due to its Broadcom 6348 chipset. Wireless was supposed to be less than great though. Ended up very impressed with both the wireless and ADSL Max performance, but it seemed to freeze up occasionally, and wasn’t happy with talking to my Xbox 360 over wireless through a switch (wireless connection to a Belkin wireless bridge, connected to the Xbox 360 through a NetGear switch). No firmware updates for almost a year either…
5. My latest aquisition is a SpeedTouch 585, purchased from DSL Depot for the bargain price of £30 inc VAT and delivery. Basically it’s a similar chipset to the Belkin, but it hasn’t frozen up yet, and plays nicely with my Xbox 360. Wireless is good, and it seems far more configurable than the Belkin, although the user interface is quirky to say the least. The only issue I’ve had is that the DHCP didn’t cope when I tried to change the IP address of the router (it kept on giving out its old address as the default gateway), but it wasn’t that big a deal to change my IP addressing to match its default setting, and I suspect I could have fixed the issue if I spent long enough fiddling around with its command line interface.

When I bought my Mac mini earlier this year, I bought the Apple Wireless Keyboard and Mouse so I could easily control the Mac mini from across my living room.

My experience with these bits of kit has been less than impressive; there’s a noticeable lag when making any input (especially bad with the mouse), and occasionally the keyboard and mouse have to be re-paired with the Mac mini.

My patience has worn out, and I’ve now paired a wired Apple keyboard with a wired Microsoft mouse, connected to the Mac mini via a cheap 3m USB extension cable. The extension cable is usually hidden beneath my TV stand, but it only takes a couple of seconds to retrieve it or store it, and the result is infinitely better than the old wireless solution.

If your room isn’t too big, I’d recommend this solution over a wireless keyboard and mouse. It’s not as elegant, but it’s cheaper and more responsive.

Last week my latest fitness toy arrived – a Kurt Kinetic Road Machine

Basically it’s a trainer for my bike. It allows me to ride indoors when the weather is too horrid, or my muscles are too sore to make running pleasant.

I’ve fancied a trainer for quite a long time, but didn’t realise until recently that good quality trainers are not that expensive, and also fit mountain bikes (I ride a hardtail mountain bike with road tyres).

I did some research into the various trainers available, and came to the conclusion that I wanted something reasonably quiet, that felt at least vaguely similar to riding on a road. This seemed to rule out turbo trainers (too loud), and magnetic trainers (the resistance and feel are quite different from road riding). The heavily computerised trainers were also ruled out as being too expensive.

Looking at the fluid trainers, the Kurt Kinetic Road Machine seemed to have the most consistently good feedback, so I placed an order with the Planet X, who are the UK distributor. The kit I bought included a computer to attach to the handlebars and a spare tyre, and cost £196.50 including delivery. A CycleOps Climbing Block was also purchased from Wiggle, to lift the front wheel level with the back. Brief impressions below:

• Firstly, the build quality is very impressive. I can’t see how you could possibly break this thing, and why they offer a lifetime warranty.
• It’s supposed to be quiet, and I have heard people claiming to use them in flats. Well it’s not bad, but I certainly wouldn’t call it quiet, and wouldn’t want to live downstairs from someone using one. No problem in my garage though.
• It feels pretty similar to riding on the road, except there’s no opportunity to rest, so ten miles on the trainer is noticeably tougher harder than riding on the road.

Eighteen miles is my longest ride so far, and the only downside I’ve found is that even riding in an unheated garage in November, I get very hot, very quickly. I don’t think I’ll be using the trainer in the summer, but then there’s no excuse for not getting out in the fresh air then.

To make things more interesting, also I picked up an Ipod nano from the Apple UK Refurbished Store. £65 delivered for a black 1st gen 2Gb nano was a very good price. To go with that, I bought an XtremeMac SportWrap from Amazon UK. I’m very impressed with both of them. Long rides seem to go much more quickly with podcasts and music as company.

Overall, I’m very happy with this set up, and would buy it again without hesitation.