Not what Dad had.

Well I was going to mention the arrival of the TV, but I think that's covered :-)

I will mention though the Phillips DVD player I bought about 18 months ago simply because we wanted to play discs from any region.

I'd found that for instance, Peter Mayle's a year in Provence, despite the fact it was panned by the critics in the UK (what do they know) we loved it and wanted a copy. However in region 2 there was only this rancid cut down edited together version basically just bunged across from the unsatisfactory VHS release. *BUT* you could get the full untouched unedited version in region 1 (which really doesn't seem fair been as we paid for it in the first place!)

A long winded explanation of how we came to have the Phillips payer, which with a little clever jiggery pokery and pressing of buttons in combinations you would never normally hit could be set to region 0 (in other words play any disc from anywhere)

So not only could it play year in Provence but all sorts of weird TV bargain priced series I discovered while poking about in the dark nether reaches of Amazon..

This model had 'upscaling' which although I had no real idea what it was, was that years DVD 'must have'. Of course our TV didn't accept the phantom 'upscaling' so it just worked in bogstandardscaling.

Fast forward to today, I just happened to pop a copy of MUSE's Absolution tour DVD into the machine, just to have a quick test you understand...

*WOW!* Obviously upscaling(C) was working with resolution+(R) and Autoview(R) and all being processed through it's Metabrain(R) and it might be gibberish, but as has been pointed out, WHAT gibberish, it looked nothing short of incredible. A real genuine leap forward.

In years to come it'll be left in the dust of course, but right now I'll just enjoy it.

Maybe there might be something to this 'it's not what dad had' technology after all....