Sony Wega

Whatever person or persons told you that toys will not make you happier was either lying or broke. I picked up a 42″ Sony Grand Wega about a week ago. And let me tell you, it is fantastically great. Greatly fantastic even. The display looks good even when the curtains of my big picture windows are open. The screen door effect is only a problem with text that has been scaled up from the crappy SDTV image.

One nitpick is the onscreen display. I wish it was more transparent and I was able to reposition it. It’s very distracting when flipping through channels.

I would definitely recommend this TV to most people. I have a couple friends that have the same TV (42″ and 50″) with 1 LCD chip and they have had no complaints whatsoever. The 1 LCD chip version of the Wega was discontinued earlier this summer and I was able to purchase the newer Wega with 3 LCD chips. The colour seems to look better with better black levels and contrast. There is a good overview here.

My place still sounds like crap though. There is this vibrant picture emanating from the center of the room with a tinny sound kind of barely squeaking out. My receiver is not 5.1 aware, so only the TV is outputting sound at the moment. Eventually I’ll have to pick up a sound system.

I’m not sure what’s next on the shopping list though. A sound system, HD-PVR, and XBox 360 are all on the list.

The 360 launch titles are really hurting. There are a only a few announced titles that I’m interested in, but none of them will be available at launch. There are a bunch of EA titles, Kameo, Project Gotham Racing, Call of Duty 2, and Perfect Dark Zero. If you’ve played NHL ‘93 and Madden 2001, really you’ve played them all. Plus I prefer the NHL2Kx series anyway. I’ve always liked the Gran Turismo series over Project Gotham. I will probably play CoD2 next week on PC anyway, so that’s not really influencing my decision. And I can’t seem to get excited about Kameo and Perfect Dark Zero.

Kameo is the only game that really looks next-generation to me and fun to play at the same time. Firstly, there are hundreds of characters on the screen at the same time. Character animation is a task that is highly amenable to parellization and it seems Rare has been able to pull that off in spades. It also uses the three main visual upgrades (motion blur, depth of field, high-dynamic range lighting) you will see next-generation very well to enhance the gameplay experience.

Colours bleed from light sources into other objects. Your character is sharp, crisp, and in focus while objects in the foreground and background are blurred. That looks fantastic and really puts the focus on the importance of the main character. Very subtle, but very important. Fantasy RPG is not really my thing, but hopefully this game is excellent.

On to the HD-PVR. I’d rather not have another component sitting in my living room. The Wega does have a CableCard slot and HDMI input. I’m not sure if Shaw supports CableCard or if I would have to buy their whole terminal box. I’d prefer to use a CableCard with a PC connected to the TV. Preferably a Mac Mini with Front Row. Apple doesn’t sell Front Row with the Mini yet and I’d like to wait until the switch to Intel hardware.

Finally, on to the main point of my post. I want to give away my old TV. It is a 20″ Quasar. It…umm…works. It…umm…has a remote. The remote has…umm…two AAA Duracell batteries in it. I dusted it off. It would be good as a second TV to put in your kitchen, den, or next to your treadmill.

Email or call me if you are interested. All I ask for in return is good karma. Well, maybe you have a friend you can set me up with. Blondes preferred.

Update: Petter is the new owner of a Quasar.