Toshiba 2009 Product Showcase Comments

"stop you having a heart attack when it cuts to the commercials". Had to laugh at how accurate this is. Yes its off topic, but neverless the annoyance of this hazard of watching tv needed mentioning. Really winds me up the way commercials desperately attempt to ram their product down your throat with speaker damaging high volume normalization. Its forced me to switch channels to bbc everytime an advert comes on.

@james1000: Really winds me up the way commercials desperately attempt to ram their product down your throat with speaker damaging high volume normalization

Something you'd think the ASA would sort out, but not very likely I suppose, when was the last time you can remember any public sector organisation doing anything useful. And that means you FSA as well, oops sorry going OT there.

What's with the VHS decks? Didn't tape go out with the ark? Cell TV looks good, but to be honest it's all just gloss - I'm much more keen on RGB LED local dimming, "instaport", Dolby Volume, Auto View, Res+ and the frame blanking tech for image smoothness - makes much more sense to me than interpolating ever more frames. 2009 is shaping up to be an awesome year for TVs.

@james1000/Keith
Yep, this gets me too!
Makes you wonder, if the broadcasters seem unable to control the output volume /dynamic range then how is effectively a 'kluge' going to solve it. - and, of course, we have pay for software too!... Hmmm, maybe it's another profit conspiracy ;-)

@Keith

Still off topic, but this might interest you (or not).

http://www.asa.org.uk/asa/focus/background_briefings/TV+Ad+Sound+Levels.htm

Good find that Jesper. That said, unless Im missing something "The new TV ad sound levels rule will come into force, after a grace period of two months, on 7 July 2008" seems to have been as much use as a chocolate fireguard. Noisily irritating ads trumpeting their product still prevail, which means I still have to AVOID and BLANK them at all cost. I dont mind ads helping to keep the tv license fee down, but I do mind communistic tactics sledgehammering naff products into my skull.

Well that lot left me completely underwhelmed.

The though of browsing a few Intel widgets on my TV via a 'netbox' doesn't get my juices flowing. It needs a full blown built-in browser at least. A cheap networked PC connected directly to the TV seems a better bet to me unless the netbox is going to be very cheap. Ha! Dream on.

Streaming and recording up to 8 HD channels at once is impressive no question. But who the hell has got time to sit and watch all this stuff? They should build it into the bottom of a bed so people can lie for 24hrs a day in a semi-comatose state watching squillions of channels at once. Thats innovation.

The tellies are nice, the DVD players are old hat and DVD recorders are ten a penny and about as exciting as a dishwasher.

They could have just slipped in an odd HD-DVD deck just to get the pulses racing again, they will, in time.....! I also reckon ABBA will get back together this year, what do you reckon?