I thought I had got a good deal when I bought the Sony NS355 DVD player today well under 100 euros, but when I was back at home I realised this thing did not have any s-video connector. Call me picky, but I will not take composite video when there can be s-video and digital audio quality available (or take s-video when there is the DVI option, as with my next television, *sigh*). Happily, they offer a return policy.
The operation actually started with the annual pre-Christmas shopping & spending spree, where I first acquired the LotR/RotK extended edition dvd, then started experimenting with the Dolby Digital and DTS sound formats this release supports (ok, I was also spending some good time all teary-eyed with the actual masterpiece as well). After starting to think about those damned scratches in my Buffy second season collector’s disks (another *sigh*) I then proceeded to make backup copies of some films. And there it became obvious that my old Thomson DTH 5000X does not support any format of DVD-/+R/RW recordings. Its error correction and file format support could also be better. But: this Sony was not the solution, I have to try something else. Panasonic, Toshiba and Philips are currently strong candidates.
Various types of MP3 players are also something that I’ve been reviewing with interest, and it seems that iPod is still the strongest one there is, at least if design and ease-of-use are important for you. It is just pity that Amazon.com is not delivering into Europe; they claim it is for manufacturer’s guarantee reasons, but I suspect that European market is split off for other reasons…
DiGRA 2004 Financial Assembly was also passed, with some interesting discussions. I took some photos in the Other Players Conference in ITU/Copenhagen, and they should be available now here.
frans goes blog 