Red Project

After discovering (to my great disappointment) that the restoration of my Beogram 4002 was no longer economically viable I restarted my search for a red turntable. The obvious choice was a red version of Pro-ject's multi award winning Debut III turntable. The Debut Series has been awarded 5 stars by What Hi-fi and reviewed well in Hi-Fi Choice.

Having tried most retailers around Brisbane that stocked Pro-ject turntables and having no success I turn to the Manufacturer, who I have to say couldn't have been more helpful.

Pro-ject put me in touch with the Australian distributor International Dynamics who informed me that they could order a red version of the turntable on their next shipment. The only reason they aren't brought into Australia is that the retailers won't risk having a turntable of each colour on hand so they don't order any colours.

Once they'd placed the order with Pro-ject they contacted my closest retailer and arranged pick and payment from their store. The price was also quite reasonable, RRP for a standard black table is $399 and I was expecting quite a significant difference to this as the coloured versions retail for more than black in the UK. It was a pleasant surprise to discover that the price would only be $449.

The only painful part of the process now is waiting for it to arrive, as there are none in Australia I have to wait for the next shipment out from the UK which could be a month away, but all in all it's a small price to pay.

So if you're looking for a new turntable and want one to match your decor I would highly recommend getting in touch with International Dynamics.

Froogle to you too!

I recently discovered Froogle (as I was randomly surfing around when I was bored), Google's answer to the world of shopping. According to their website : -

Froogle is a new service from Google that makes it easy to find information about products for sale online. By focusing entirely on product search, Froogle applies the power of Google's search technology to a very specific task: locating stores that sell the item you want to find and pointing you directly to the place where you can make a purchase.

As Google's spidering software crawls the Internet, it automatically identifies webpages that offer products for sale. These are the pages Froogle searches when you enter the name of an item you want to find. Froogle also includes product information submitted electronically by merchants.

So as a good little consumer I've signed up and started adding things that in some point in time I was/am instered in purchasing. They even offer a wish list that you can publish so that you can give hints to others what to buy! The only real problem is that about 90% of the content is American. I've found a few Australian stores but at this stage not all their products are being indexed... well what can you expect it's only a beta!

You can see my wish list here.

Happy Froogling....

The System Updated!

I've been a bit lazy with my Current System page but I've finally updated it and you can find it here

Digital TV Signal on the Rise in Brisbane

Recently I've noticed that the strength of the digital transmission (at least in Brisbane) has increased over the last couple of months.

Typically (especially on channel 9 and channel 7) any recorded show would have 2 or 3 dropouts in any hour period. These would be loss of audio or severe MPEG blocking randomly within a show. (In the worst instance it a show would lose audio every minute or so)

I am please to say that this trend has almost disappeared in the last month, indicating that the signal for Digital TV seems to be on the rise.

Want a great 50" without the Plasma Cost?

Samsung's SP50L7HX 127cm DLP Rear Projection Television has just dropped in price to $5999. This TV has to be seen to be believed. Previously I haven't been a big fan of anything TV related that Samsung has had to offer, however with this unit they have come forward in leaps and bounds (although that saying conjures up images of the Pixar's Bounding short ever time I hear it now).

Even with a fairly ordinary Lennox $99 DVD player it still managed to impress with great levels of detail in the newly remastered Starwars movies.

The screen in setup in such a manner that it almost appears to be a Slimline Plasma mounted on a sleek stand. It's really a testament to the levels at which Rearpro Technology can go.

Multi-Channel Music Musings

Reading back over some of my old What Hifi Magazines looking for a review of Anthony Gallo's unique speakers. I stumbled across a review of Multi Channel Music setups and the photo introducting the speakers got me thinking.

Why do dedicated multi-channel speakers systems have a Centre Speaker?

Surely a mulichannel audio setup would be best served with an array of matched speakers?

Just a thought.

NXT gets Cubed

British speaker Manufacturer Mission have further refined their NXT panel offerings from the FS2 Series to produce the new M-Cube Speaker system.

The new system comprises 5 small cube speakers around 9cm cubed with a matching subwoofer at 32cm cubed. The system isn't available in Australia yet so I haven't had a chance to listen to the speaker system yet. However all reviews suggest that the speakers have to be heard to be believed. The review in the latest What Hifi states the speakers are "Small, perfectly formed, and with excellent sound quality, M-Cube is just the ticket to unobtrusive home cinema heaven" and gave them 5 Stars.

The design of the speakers is outstanding and they come in Black or Ivory and is construced from extruded aluminium. They also come with 5 different fabric mid sections to allow them to be matched with any decor.

Funky Beats

As I'm getting ready to go on my long car trek I was starting to put a CD together of my favourite Funky Tracks.

Chris Joss - Discotheque Dancing
Katalyst - Passing of Peace
Ramsey Lewis - Do you wanna
Dynamo Productions - Get if Together
Greyboy - Got to be you Love
Ruben Steiner - espangnolade
Zepher Timber - Abstact Fusion
Moby - Run on
Marc Moulin - Into the Dark
St. Germaine - Rose Rouge
Katalyst - Fusion (Remixed:Blunted Stylus)
Rhibasome - Get Ready
Ramsey Lewis - Do What You Wanna [Mr. Scruff's Soul Party Mix]
Jamiroquai - Litte L

Only 2 More Sleeps!

Ok I've been bugged enough to get my Birthday list up. (apparently the list of DVDs wasn't enough)
So here goes. (I'll get around to putting some more stuff up here....)

DVDs....
The Wish List (it's pretty close to up to date)

Games and Stuff....


Car Stuff....
MD Case for the car.
New steering wheel similar to this.


Hifi Stuff...
Jaycar MiniSub

Harmony Remote from Logitech.

IXOS XHV704 (1713) Component Video 3 RCA to 3 RCA

Bike Stuff...
Cycling Jersey



Music...

JONES, SHARON AND THE DAP KING DIPPIN WITH
RUSSELL, ALICE UNDER THE MUNKA MOON
POLYPHONIC SPREE TOGETHER WERE HEAVY
MUSIC WELCOME TO THE NORTH

What an Incredible day!

After being restrained and keeping my DVD purchases down I've succomed and purchased
The Incredibles yesterday (on it's release).

Having thouroughly enjoyed the movie at the cinemas, I must say seeing the movie again exceeded my expectations. The retrostyled animation (which is by far Pixar's best animation) suits the style of the movie perfectly and has one of the coolest soundtracks around.

This movie is a must see Pixar release, even if it's only to see the scene where Edna displays her wares. It's definately a brilliant test DVD, especially the scenes with the Omnidroid.

The Incredibles will be moving straight to my Best Test DVD list.

Addiction... Thy name is Burnout 3

I've never got around to getting a racing game for the latest generation of consoles. I was fairly addicted to Ridge Racer on Nintendo 64 but I've been fairly sceptical about many of the racing releases since.

When I went to trade some of my older titles in for a new set of Konga's and Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat I ended up with more trade than new game and under presure I reached for the cheapest game that I could remember wanting.

The result was Burnout 3: Takedown for X-box. It had review well in just about every review that I'd seen but had never got around to buying it. Mainly due to being wary of games that do well in every review (e.g. Halo 2 which I never really got into and was recently traded for Kongas)

However, with Burnout 3 it resulted in almost instant addiction. From the outset you start unlocking new elements and from then you're hooked, just one more track, just one more car, just one more award. The graphics are great, the soundtrack is pretty good (with some familiar artists such as Franz Ferdiniand and The Von Bondies) and the racing is frantic and engaging.

The most disappointing thing about it's addictive gameplay is that Vanessa is completely hooked. One of the challenges in the Burnout World Tour (see also Career mode) is Crash for Cash, where basically you drive your car into an intersection with the aim to smash as many vehicles as you can. Vanessa has barely been able to put the controller down since she started. So much so that she's now over twice as far through the game as I am and have to fight to get my X-box back!

Damn your addictive gameplay Burnout 3.... I'm off to by another X-box! :)

Have I forgotten how to blog?

Although it appears that I have become severed from my blog! I have managed to work out how to blog again.

A lot has been happening since I last posted, most recently we became owners of a new camera. We're heading off on holidays in just over a week and have been planning a trip along the Great Ocean Road in Victoria. Our last camera, a Pentax which Vanessa brought back from a trip to New Orleans, is well and truly on it's last legs and is past being useful for anything other than a paper weight.

I was keen to get the latest Lumix from Panasonic. I had played with the orginal Mega Zoom camera from Panasonic and was really happy with the pictures that it took. The latest offering in the range is the DMC-FZ20 a 5 Megapixel camera with 12x Optical Zoom and Manual Focus. About as close to a Digital SLR as you can get.

After a bit of research we decided we didn't have enough time to do full research on a new top of the line camera and decided to go for a happy snap option. The winner in that department was the Pentax Optio s30 which Vanessa is Very Very Happy with!

Jazz goes Digital.

In something that seems fairly ironic the newest available digital radio channel in Brisbane is Dig Jazz. Now you can enjoy endless Jazz tunes with all the clarity of your CD collection.

dig JAZZ is available on free to air digital TV on Channel 201. dig and dig JAZZ may also be available on pay digital TV, check with your provider. Listening to dig's music stream on Digital TV gives you very high quality sound - almost CD quality. And, just as on the dig website, there are no interruptions - just great music.

dig JAZZ is available at a higher quality than the main dig channel on the dig website. They use a technique called multi-bitrate streaming, which automatically uses the highest amount of bandwidth that your connection can handle. The maximum connection speed for dig JAZZ is 128kbps. 1 minute of audio streamed at 128 kbps is equal to downloading 0.9229 Megabytes. If you have a broadband plan with a download limit you may wish to keep a close check on your usage. Most broadband providers have a usage metering service; contact your ISP for more details.