Well it has been awhile since my last post, mostly because I’ve become bored with our blog. I guess I’m just an attention whore that wants lots of comments and discussions on posts which I do get at the other forums I frequent. But anyway, that’s my excuse for the lack of posts.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
It was a good movie and is definitely worth watching. It won’t be winning any awards, but if you grew up watching the Turtles and playing with the toys and video games you will like this show. I hope they make a sequel to it.
Incidentally, the cast had a few names I did not expect:
Winters/Yoatl : Patrick Stewart (come now, everyone though that voice was familiar)
April O’Neil : Sarah Michelle Gellar
Karai (oh hot hot) : Ziyi Zhang/Zhang Ziyi (ugh, bleah, vomit)
Narrator : Lawrence Fishburne (Morpheus)
My Monday Vacation
So I took leave this Monday (oh damn I need to fill up the stupid form now) to spend time with my cousin and aunt. He came down for some shoulder operation and is here till this Friday for physiotherapy. We went to Sungai Wang and Low Yatt to hang out.
The bugger bought a PS3!!!! ARGH!!!!! FUCK!!!!! Okay yeah. They’re selling unmodified PS3s for RM1500. This is the 20gB version, the 60gB version is at least RM2000. Not worth it though unless you really want WiFi. Since I still have loads of PS2 games to finish I’m not buying one yet, especially since there’s no modded version yet. Tempted to get the Xbox 360 though, about RM1000 now.
I did play a bit of Resistance Fall of Man on the PS3 and it did not make me want to puke my guts out. Could advances in graphics finally mean I can play First Person Shooters?
I just bought a measly 512mB of RAM for my PC and a new case. Incidentally, did you know that a 512mB DDR chip costs as much as a 1gB DDR-2 chip. Sucks I tell you. Anyways, this weekend its modding time for me, time to soup up my old computer.
Thinking of upgrading my graphics card at PC Fair this Friday. I use an AGP slot so my options are limited, but the cards are pretty cheap so I’m planning to get one with a DVI port at least, maybe 2 if I can find one.
The madness of PC Fair is upon me!!! Must spend!!! Any graphics cards suggestions?
My Migration
From the looks of it, its possible that my 1st of September trip will be postponed. We found out that its better for us to apply for a Fiancée visa so there’s no problems when I apply for Permanent Residence. Unfortunately we can only apply once my fiancée gets citizenship, somewhere around June/July, which means that I can’t buy my ticket now.
I’m spending some time sulking about this, but what the hell, might as well do it right.
Plasma LCD and DLP
As I posted in the shout out box yesterday, I’m thinking of buying an HDTV for my fiancées birthday and for our apartment in the States. I’m going to go with at least a 42 inch model. Not going to buy it right away though, I’ll take a month or two to do more research and get a good deal. I know she’s partial to plasma, but it’s all the same to me.
Plasma basically has the best picture and contrasts, its cheaper than LCD at sizes 50 inches and up, is heavier than LCD, uses more electricity and suffers from image burn in. There’s also a flickering issue that would probably give me headaches.
LCD is basically the same as the computer monitors we know and love, cheaper than plasma at below 50 inch sizes, uses less electricity, lighter, less heat, no burn in but has ghosting issues.
DLP is basically a tiny LCD projector in a gigantic case, the bulb lasts about 1-4 thousand hours before popping. It’s the cheapest of the 3, has the worst picture of the HDTVs and has issues playing in bright places. However it is the cheapest of all, I could actually buy a 60 inch model. It has all the ups and downs of LCD.
So far I’m not that impressed with plasma, particularly because of the burn in, they say there’s technologies to compensate for that now, and the flickering. This whole crap about picture quality is bullshit except to only the most hardcore videophiles. They say LCD has trouble with displaying ‘true blacks’ I haven’t noticed this. Ghosting is a non issue as far as I can tell as well, maybe with models from 3-4 years ago it was a problem but not anymore.
The lifespan of LCD and Plasma is roughly the same, about 60,000 hours. If you watched it for 7 hours a day that’s 23 years. DLP is noticeable shorter, but you have to replace the bulb every few thousand hours (which you can’t do for LCD or plasma, once they die they die).
All in all, I’m going to get an LCD or a DLP, I’ll only buy a plasma if there’s a really good deal on it. All I know so far is that it must be at least 42 inches. I have no idea which brand yet, but I’m partial to Samsung. Looking at reviews for USA only brands like Olevia as well, they’re actually good too. Ultimately its LCD, DLPs I’ve seen so far have crappy picture that even I can notice.
I’d appreciate advice if you guys have any ideas, so far I’m sticking to Amazon.com for my retail needs.
Conclusion
Well I can’t think of anything else so that’s it for today. Now I suppose I should get back to work… |
At 10:44 AM,
Oh yeah which is the best brand to buy for graphics cards? Ram suggested MSI, what do you guys think? I use Forsa right now. Either way I love Nvidia so no ATI for me
At 8:23 PM,
The best thing to do, even if you aren't going to buy yet, is to go to those big electronics places like HSL and see different options and different brands.
Not too long ago my dad bought a 42 inch LCD TV (Sharp Aquos, RM 8500) which is the (then) latest (and supposedly best) LCD TV in the market.
Originally, he was gonna get a Panasonic Viera Plasma (Retails at RM 13 000 when we were looking at it)but when we actually LOOKED at it next to an LCD, the color quality, sharpness and intensity blows a plasma out of the park. Essentially, the best thing about a plasma is the response time, its very short so that when you're watching F1 for example, the wheels won't look like a total blur. The best LCD's are about 2 seconds behind plasmas. The difference isn't that big, and it would have mattered to my dad if it did because he watches a lot of sports.
My dad and I did a lot of research on LCD's and plasmas and we were pretty much ready to hand over the check for the Viera until we got there and had a good look at all the tv's from different brands.
The fact is that once LCD's catch up in response time with the plasma, plasma's are pretty much obsolete. LCD's are cheaper to produce than plasmas and usually retail for less.
But, there are plenty of LCD's that cost more than plasma's (not just above 50 inches) because of all the features that might be included. So make sure you take a good look at what comes with the tv instead of just a good viewing experience because you may be paying a hell of a lot more money just for bells and whistles you don't really like or need.
We definitely don't regret our LCD, essentially we turned down the plasma because it really looks as though it has a gray overlay over everything in comparison. And do NOT be thrown off by brands like 'Sharp' or uncommon solutions. Some of them are the best, even we never expected we'd go for that brand in the end.
You know, when a model hits 6 months, its already considered 'old', so you might wanna hang around for a bit if you don't need it immediately. Better choices might come out soon.
At 8:39 AM,
I'm going to be gender biased and say that I am absolutely SHOCKED that a girl know stuff about TVs ^_^
Well yeah I'm basicaly looking around now. I still need to sort out our expenses for the next few months before deciding if my mad birthday present is going to put us out on the street.
Basically the 1080p format TVs (plasma, LCD and DLP) are all the rage right now which means that the 720p models are going for real cheap, I could get a 42 inch Aquos at half the price you paid for it (No way your model is 1080p at RM8.5k).
Basically I'm going to go with LCD in the end. All the different models have different picture quality even amongst plasmas or lcds. I'm going to try to find one with PC inputs that has a decent picture at 720p.
Ghosting is the thing that happends with LCDs when there's fast moving images but its all but invisible at 8ms or less. No problems with LCDs anymore in that department unless buying a really outdated model.
The reasons I dropped plasma are my fears of image burn in since I will be playing games on it. DLP is good and cheap, but I've read too many horror stories about the bulbs popping and having to wait ages for them to fix it (each bulb is about RM600).