Opinion

It happens less these days as the market is awash with LED LCDs, but nothing beats the warm feeling I get during calibration when I know the TV at the end of my measurement probe is a plasma.

Death by firmware update is getting to be a very real occupational hazard. Not just for me, but the AV receiver industry as a whole. You see, I recently reviewed the awesome Denon AVR-X5200W and during the four-week period on test it changed quite dramatically. Twice. Thanks to three major firmware updates and one feature add-on, the product that left the Stevenson Ranch might as well have had a different model number to the one that arrived.

The end of the world (of home cinema) is nigh. I have seen the omens and portents, and the shape of the beast is that of a toaster. To be precise, it’s a toaster that carries a database of bread products and, buoyed with a knowledge of all things baked, will serve up perfectly browned toasted products whether you pop-in a frozen bagel or a slice of Hovis. And it’s networked to ensure an up-to-date repository of bready knowledge, and to keep its firmware at the cutting edge of, er, toasting technology.

I don’t normally shout at the TV, and if I do it’s only to encourage proponents of major sporting events, such as Foxy Boxing. It’s rarely an outburst at the factual information programme BBC News at Ten. But on the launch day of the BBC’s most forward-thinking initiative since iPlayer, the online arts platform The Space, I found myself in tooth-spitting form.

It’s recently come to light that the buying public don’t like 3DTV, don’t connect their Smart TVs to the internet and 89 per cent of them are actually stone deaf. Now, a quick straw poll around the HCC office would suggest these figures are a little off the mark, but you can’t argue with the research. After all, these surveys of consumer behaviour form the basis on which TV manufacturers develop new products and new features for the year ahead. My email inbox is positively awash with survey results at the moment, and one guaranteed conclusion of this research is that 100 per cent of grumpy old AV columnists will get incensed.

My home cinema system is just not looking good enough these days. Despite deploying the very latest hardware, mostly by not answering the phone when makers want their review samples back, its image is less impressive than it was some 10 years ago.

Regular readers of this column may find it hard to believe that I have gone green. I mean I have heard of being environmentally friendly, I am aware of carbon footprints and CO2 emissions, but I was never going to let any of that get in the way of my lifestyle. Previously, I made Jeremy Clarkson look like a tree-hugging hippie.