HDMI

A few weeks ago I bought a new media streaming device (along the lines of Apple TV, but as Apple's service is shockingly poor in the UK, I decided on this). Anywhoo, I connected it via HD Component cables, that was after all how my old one connected, even though it didn't play HD content.

Got my first HD content to watch on it the other day - Band of Brothers, all ten episodes - and I have to say, not overly impressed. Quite grainy in places and not stunning overall, in fact not much better than my previous machine, which as I already mentioned, did not do HD.

So I fiddled with all the settings, tried, 1080p, 1080i and 720p - nothing.
In the end, I thought to hell with it all and let's just try it with a HDMI cable (I had a spare one or five lying around). Perfect first time! I couldn't believe it, 2 hours of messing about for it to be the cable I was using.

So now I am running the TViX in all it's HD goodness through the HDMI connection. Of course this leaves me with another problem, 2 HDMI ports and 3 devices to plug in: HD TV, Blu Ray Player, TViX (and an XBox 360 at some point - well I live in hope). My initial plan was to buy a switching box, which is all well and good and would probably set me back £50 ($100), but then I found the Denon AVR-3808CI on Steve Lacey's blog. It does everything you could ever want, and whilst it is overkill for my immediate needs, I have wanted to get a seperate Amp for ages. So all in all, a good find me thinks.

Now all I need to do is pay for it all...