I've been on a bit of a gadget acquisition spree the last couple of weeks. First up was something I've been promising myself for some time now - a decent home cinema system. Over the last two years, prices have fallen to the point where you can get a well-specced, quality brand system for a reasonable price, plus it's multi-regioned. Having the rear speakers and subwoofer really does make a difference, and it's a definite plus not to have to do DVD playback through a games console (or the PC for region 1 discs).
This did, however, lead to a different problem - having far to much AV kit that I want to connect up. My initial kludge had the DVD going into one Scart socket, and everything else into the other via a 5-way splitter. Unfortunately, this didn't help the video quality, and completely destroyed the sound for everything except the DVD. Extensive googling didn't turn up much by the way of Scart multiplexors, but I did find one that seemed to suit. Unfortunately, when it finally arrived (having first gone to the wrong address), it looked like someone had been at it with a sledgehammer, so back it went for a replacement. I now have it in and working - easily piping the output from any of 6 things into the TV, with the sound going separately into the home cinema system. I can also simultaneously pipe any channel into the VCR for recording plus there are spare (non-Scart) input and outputs remaining. It's not perfect - not all the ports pass through all the signals, and none of them do widescreen switching, but it's a vast improvement on what went before.
Finally, there's the iPod - despatched (after a 2 week wait) on Thursday, and currently in Delivery Limbo. Hopefully I'll get hold of it early this week. Meanwhile, I'm busily cleaning up song information in iTunes - far too many people submit duff information to CDDB - so I'll be ready to sync my music when it arrives. When that's done, I've a fair few more CDs waiting to be ripped...
