So then, the last time I wrote about what TV to get, I was set on a Panasonic Plasma of either 37 or 42 inches.

Well the wife had a think, and said no, 37 is too big, my mistake? I took her to the local Panasonic dealer and setup a side by side viewing of the 37 and the 42, hoping I could stear her in the 42″ area; what a mistake, after seeing 37″ in the flesh I was told it was too big for the room, Damn! Well it sort of made my decision I have bought and take collection shortly of a very fine Panasonic TX32LXD52 LCD screen.

LCD, yes I know Plasma is ‘better’ as the blacks are better defined and they are 42″ but hey, I was told 32″ so that is what I have bought. It has HDMI input, the same panel as the Panasonic TX32LXD500 and for £1000 it’s not badly priced.

The XBox360 should hook upto 1080i very nicely, and from all the reviews I have read the ‘52′ is the best HD LCD there is at the moment.

Let’s hope it is as good as the one in the Panasonic shop (brought it in and ran some Sky, DVD and HD on it). It looks great aside from some of the lower definition channels on Sky.

Should get me by for a few years at least, just hoping now it has no dead pixels!

Let you know what it’s like when it’s delivered, oh bought it from Empire if you would like to know as the Panasonic shop wanted £1500 for it.

Anyone who reads this blog on any sort of regular basis will know that I am an F1 fan. It however looks like that may change in 2008, the FIA (governing body) has said the following changes (plus more to be announced at a later date) will be introduced. Why you ask? I don’t really know, however the FIA have free reign from 2008 on as the Concorde agreement expires the end of 2007. 

The changes are :- 

• A standard electronic control unit (ECU) 
• Long life engines 
• Long life gearboxes 
• A single tyre supplier 
• Restrictions on aero upgrades in a season 
• Rev-limited engines 

MADNESS! F1 is meant to be the pinnacle of the racing fraternity and with these changes the F2 (F3000) cars will b quicker than the ‘big brother’ F1. I s hope the manufacturers pull off there own series and annoy the busy body FIA. Yes I would not like to see people dying driving the cars, but with all these changes I’m confident I could drive one around Silverstone without destroying it! 

Please stop messing FIA, LEAVE F1 ALONE. 

My counter changes would be :- 

• Whatever electronics you want (my road cars are cleverer than the current F1 cars) 
• Engines that are on the brink of destruction, tuned to within an inch of there life. 
• Same as above for gearboxes 
• Tyre’s by whoever you like, as long as they are within limitations 
• Whatever aero you like, maybe not allow ground force effect cars though (silly corner speeds) 
• Engines limited to 3ltr displacement, normally aspirated, whatever cylinder configuration the manufacturer decides. 
• Driver aids allowed, why make manufacturers hide the clever electronics. (Do you really think Renault did not have some form of launch control?) 

Yes the cars would go quicker, but hey the drivers are being paid a fortune to entertain, let them earn there money. 

Sorry about the rant, but really the FIA are taking liberties now. Oh while I’m ranting, please, please, PLEASE GET RID OF MAX MOSELEY, He really has no idea what he is talking about.

Testing of the new C4 (2007 WRC car) took place this weekend, here is some picies with more over on Eurosport

Sebastien Loeb is said to be happy with the way it is working s far.

I missed this earlier, one of America’s break through Rag’s to Riches comics has died aged 65; and to be honest with everything he put his body through I’m amazed that his heart lasted this long (he died of a heart attack).

He was one of the best black American stand up’s of the 70’s and also made some very funy movies in the 80’s after signing a $40,000,000 5 year movie contract with Columbia.

Richard Pryor was a long time sufferer of Multiple Sclerosis after being diagnosed in 1986. He was also a famous drink and drug user (in 1980 he famously set himself alite freebasing cocaine).

He has not done anything in a good while now (his last apearance on screen was 1997 in Lost Highway), however if you have not watched his stand up I recomend getting hold of the recently released Evolution/Revolution CD set (his early work) or the equaly genius Richard Pryor: Live in Concert.

Goodbye Richard, comedy will miss you.

Link to IMDB article

Else to put these items, here goes :-

• XBox Live Marketplace RSS Feed
• Sega announce PSP Title - OutRun 2006 Coast to Coast
• The 360 Compatibility list updated
• IBM Release spec on the 360 Chip
• New Sniff Petrol

Thats about it, have fun

P.S. Oh yeah, the zip file attached is the opensource XBox360 ISO viewer/extractor.

It seems that the VW group has put a kibosh on the Skoda WRC team for 2006. They have announced that they will not be running a factory team next year (like Citroen). That’s the bad news! 

However the good news is that they (like Citroen) will be supporting the privateer teams that are entering the championship, so semi factory then. The two teams that will be running WRC05 Fabia vRS’s are, the Czech team of Jan Kopecky and Austria’s Red Bull Skoda Team run by Raimund Baumschlager. 

Now this is sort of good news for Skoda fans, Red Bull have never welched out of motor sport funding in the past so expect them to be well funded, and Jan Kopecky’s team is based 5 minutes from the WRC team’s factory! so they should have access to the team’s staff etc. 

The likelihood of Skoda making a full factory return has not been ruled out with these two statements making it clear that they are trying to steer the rules in a more manufacturer friendly way (the same reasons that Citroen and Peugeot said they were leaving) 

“We have given our future participation in the World Rally Championship a lot of serious thought and we believe that this is the most cost-effective way in which to maintain the Skoda brand’s presence in the series,” said Detlef Wittig, Skoda Auto’s board Chairman. 

“Skoda Auto will continue to observe the development of the championship and its regulations and will decide at some point in the future whether or not we will one day return as a factory team,” Skoda’s head of R&D Harald Ludanek said. 

No news yet as to who the driver line-up for both teams is going to be, but I would not be surprised if Colin Mcrae does not get offered a drive for one of them (if not both). 

Good luck to both teams.

Well then the wait is over. With some help from Dan I have got my grubby mitts on a console; so now I can play my games! Yippee! 

I have got it all plugged in and working, so here are a few observations from an afternoons worth of playing. 

• The Dolby 5.1 in most of the games is fantastic. 
• PGR3 is brilliant no matter how many FPS it runs at. 
• Gun is good, looks like it will be a good story driven game. 
• Kameo is pretty but not played it much. 
• Halo2 runs fine. 
• Condemned is scary as hell. 
• Kong is beautiful, some of the scenery detail is awesome 
• NFS-MW Pretty, although there seems to be slight hiccups as it loads textures? 
• PD-0 not played enough but it moves fluidly and looks great 
• Call of Duty is very pretty, will play that more later 
• Tiger Woods looks pretty seems to play well enough, but apparently online play is flawed 
• Hexic great for a no cost (well the cosole is 279 pounds) game. 
• Gauntlet brilliant 

Some other observations are things like the text on a lot of the games is very small obviously designed for larger than your average 30ish inch screens. The console has also ‘crashed’ twice on me, only whilst coming out of a game back to the desktop. I’ve also noticed it makes a fair chunk of noise, now that did not bother me earlier as I could have the sound up nice and high, but the wife will kill me if I do that while she is in bed ;) 

On a plus side the integration with WinXP MCE 2005 is great, works a treat, I can watch telly on my telly using the 360, it somehow makes it cooler! ;) The visualisations for music are great as well. 

More of a proper ‘review’ when I get the time. However I’m sure you are sick of people telling you how great the machine is, and it is, the way it is all linked together at the desktop is brilliant, Microsoft obviously did a lot of research into the interface, and for the most part I think they got it right.

The ATAT song

“I’m Luke, I’m five, my dad’s Darth Vader,
chopped my hand off with his light sabre…”

Original B3ta Post - It was so quality I had t cross post it

While I’m putting dinner together (chicken for swmbo and pork for me), I’ll put together the few car based things i have at the moment.

Mini Review of Skoda Octavia Estate PD140 DSG

I say mini review, it’s not; but we have had the car just over a week and 600miles now so here is what’s good.  The DSG gearbox is possibly the best thing to come to gearbox technology since….. Well 1876 when the first Daimler Benz had one installed. The changes in automatic mode are smooth t the point you don’t feel 3rd through 6th. In manual mode the changes are instant and it seems near impossible to catch it out (although it’s still being run in so not been used in anger yet).

I say mini review, it’s not; but we have had the car just over a week and 600miles now so here is what’s good.  The  is possibly the best thing to come to gearbox technology since….. Well 1876 when the first Daimler Benz had one installed. The changes in automatic mode are smooth t the point you don’t feel 3rd through 6th. In manual mode the changes are instant and it seems near impossible to catch it out (although it’s still being run in so not been used in anger yet).The engine seems a little loud, but so was mine before it got run in properly. It does however pull strong in all gears and feels like it needs to be loosened up and will then be even better.

The puppy loves the car, so much so that she will jump into this one on her own, and has not thrown up once yet. Whether that is because the space is nice and flat and she can get herself comfy while looking out the rear and side windows, or that she likes the smooth gear changes better I am not sure

The Black Magic colour is really going to be difficult to keep clean, but hey it looks good when it is clean.

We have not found any real problems with the car yet, there is a rattle from the drivers side door area, but it’s going in to check what it is (loose panel I would think).

In other Motoring news :- Stephane Sarrazin will be staying at Subaru for the next year and Kimi Raikkonen has been crowned international racing driver of the year by Autosport magazine.

Bad week for technology, not only did my 360 not arrive, but I got word that it would be difficult to locate my choice of TV (PDP-436XDE). However that may actually turn out to be a good thing.

Since I did my research a few months ago some other plasma TV’s have come into my price range.

My current choices are as follows (in order of choice) :- 

1. Panasonic TH-42PV500
2. LG RZ-42PY10X
3. Hitachi 42PD7500
   and if the wife decides that 42 is too big then 
4. Panasonic TH-37PV500(37″ baby brother to number 1) 

Why these devices? Well they all are HD Ready, and all have HD input’s. I shall pop out and have a look at them during the week, check back for which one I choose (may even get here before the 360 ;))