zerolight

So, 1 day back from SA and a new gadget. What’s it like? Surprisingly good. I nearly didn’t buy one, but I’m glad I did. It’s certainly eye-candy in terms of looks, with a lovely hi-tech shiny look to the consoles casing. Once up and running the interface is simple, yet elegant. The same can’t be said of the PS Store where you can download demos, videos, etc… it’s simple, yet, well it’s simple… leave it at that.

The only disappointment on the hardware front is the pad, which is the worst I’ve ever used. The triggers are convex instead of concave… which results in your fingers insisting on slipping off the triggers. So you have to press harder than normal to keep a grip. Add to that the compact size of the pad and it just leads to arm and hand fatigue. This is lessened somewhat by using your middle fingers instead of index fingers on the triggers, though this feels so odd that you find yourself reverting to index fingers again.

The games I’ve bought are Motorstorm and VF5. First impressions of Motorstorm are very very good. It’s beautiful, smooth, and very hard. I love it. It’s a lot of fun, surprisingly deep for an off-road arcade racer, and has top notch physics and handling. Definitely the best launch game on the system, and one of the best next gen games on any console. VF5 is again a beautiful looker with a smooth framerate. Disappointingly though, you can’t choose a preferred resolution for the game, so it defaults to the dashboard resolution. Not a big problem, though games tend to run better at 720p whilst movies and the dashboard are better at 1080i. My one gripe after a short time with VF5 is around the controls. At times, pressing the buttons did nothing. Button lag? A bug? A one off? I don’t know, I’ll boot it up again tomorrow to see if it’s still there. It’s certainly a gamebreaker… so the jury is still out on VF5.

I’ve not tried any media playback yet, but like the 360, it only plays certain formats. Unlike the 360 you can’t stream though, unless you install Linux on the PS3, which I’m not inclined to do. When you first register your PS3 and select an online ID it makes mention of the Blu Ray Disc offer. A google suggests that the first 500,000 registered users get a free copy of Casino Royale on Blu Ray… so here’s hoping. For now, I have no Blu Ray Discs so can’t comment on performance. I’ll wait for the R2 version of T2.

All in all, very happy. It’s keeping me away from Crackdown on the 360 at the moment, which is telling as Crackdown is superb. I’m unlikely to be lured back to the 360 in a hurry, that is, until Forza 2 hits the 360 in May. Motorstorm rocks. Who said the PS3 didn’t have a killer app?

Update: I’m not seeing any button lag in VF5 today, so that must have been a one off. It’s a lovely game too, but very complex.

BBC HD showed the Arsenal / Liverpool game today. It’s my first real taste of a sports event, in HD, on my own TV. Very impressive it was too. Comparing the Standard Definition broadcast with the HDTV broadcast showed a marked improvement that doesn’t quite come across in still shots (all TV is broadcast at 24.5 fps with a little motion blur applied to simulate smooth motion). Photos in this HDTV flickr set.

The nice folk at Robert Whyte did me a pretty good deal on a Sony 40V2000 LCD in exchange for my Philips 9986 which has been faulty (although not according to Philips, since day one). Initial impressions are very good. DVDs are far nicer on the Sony than they were on the Philips. The Sony would appear to have a better scaler, as well as class leading colour rendition. The result is a very natural looking picture. Not something you often see from an LCD displaying standard definition sources. NTL doesn’t fair quite so well, the bigger screen size highlighting the artefacts present in NTLs standard definition signal. Though it thus displays a little more noise than the Philips here, the NTL picture still benefits from the Sony?

It’s been a couple of months since I last heard from Philips. I’ve been hung out to dry.

The Philips director, whom I’ve been dealing with over this matter, started out on this whole debacle as a nice guy trying to help. He even sent out some of his colleagues to look into the issues I was experiencing with the TV. Over the course of the weeks and months that followed he became less helpful and more aggressive.

One excuse followed another, with ridiculous claims as to the cause and that in fact the TV was functioning correctly. Each claim I debunked. Finally I sent photographic evidence of the problem (documented elsewhere on this site) and explained in detail what the problem was, such that it was undeniable. Again he came back with more painfully idiotic excuses before essentially threatening me not to take the action further.

Every single reason they gave for the issue was laughable and without foundation. I personally believe that Philips felt that repairing my TV would open the flood gates to more requests for repair as the fault exists on all PF9986 LCDs, not just an isolated few, and this would cost them money. It’s especially sad given that a firmware update might well have resolved the matter.

The PF9986 was Philips flag-ship TV. It cost a lot of money. It should have been fault free. Philips should have rectified the fault or replaced the set the minute the fault was reported. Instead they have a poor after-sales service, and are quite happy to leave the customer hanging with a faulty TV. I’d never buy from Philips again.

Three and a half months. That’s how long it’s been since I notified Robert Whytes and Philips that there were issues with the PF9986 HD LCD TV. For almost half that time they had the TV in their workshop. Yet the fault still exists.

The fault, in case you’ve not been reading my blog, has to do with the way the TV displays a 1280×720p signal over component. It does a fine job over VGA, but over component it shifts the image off the side of the screen. Philips say that all you have to do is use the cursor on the TV remote to bring the image back onto the screen. Unfortunately, they don’t provide enough adjustment to do so, and you’re left with a 1cm wide strip of the picture missing on the right edge of the screen, this in addition to the unfortunate borders which you must live with if you buy an 9986.

The borders are one thing. I knew that when I bought the TV. But losing some of the image, even just that 1cm wide strip off the right side, is very poor on a ?