You're a beautiful woman probably...

I've recently been re-watching the stunning TV series Rome on DVD and was sad to remember that, after two seasons, it was considered too expensive to keep going. Visually it's absolutely magnificent - there aren't many TV programmes that can transport the viewer so completely into a different time and place. The beautiful interiors of some of the villas take the visual side of the story a big step beyond earlier depictions like the otherwise excellent I, Claudius. I have both seasons of Rome , but not on HD discs. Such is the quality of the lighting and the DVD transfers that, on my Sony S-350 Blu-ray player and 40W5500 TV, it's hard to tell the difference between the upscaled DVD image and a Blu-ray. Performances are generally excellent, particularly Kenneth Cranham as Pompey, David Bamber as Cicero, Polly Walker as Atia and Lindsay Duncan as Servilia. For me, this portrayal of Rome works much better than, say, the film Gladiator because it isn't so "po-fa...

Six months after buying a Blu-ray player (and recently joining the "full HD" TV club) I thought I'd share my opinions with anyone reading this. Plus points: 1) On a full HD TV, most films and programmes look and sound better than they do on DVD, considerably better than they do on Freeview TV, and slightly better than on BBC or ITV HD. 2) Given the right kind of connection and TV, a Blu-ray player will “upscale” your DVDs to 1080p (the highest HDTV standard available in the UK ) better than most DVD players 3) Blu-ray players are now available at a similar price to DVD players (unless you think that £40 is enough to pay for a DVD player) Minus: 1) The choice of Blu-ray discs is still small 2) There is usually more than £3 difference (i.e. what I would consider a reasonable differential) between a Blu-ray disc and the equivalent DVD 3) Blu-ray discs can be slow to load and navigation is often more awkward than on DVD. This is hard to forgive, as disc designers hav...

I'm feeling a little bit guilty about splashing out on a Blu-ray player, since I'm still waiting to hear the results of my job evaluation that may mean a cut in salary. Blu-ray discs are still much more expensive than standard DVDs too. However: our two-and-a-half year old Cambridge Audio DVD89 has been playing up, showing shadows on light parts of the picture and what looks like randomly increased contrast (the dark parts of the picture suddenly look too black). I've also been trying to use it as a CD player and, despite favourable reviews of its audio quality, have found it cuts off the first couple of seconds of each track on certain CDs. Obviously that's enough to ruin the "musical experience". I first had the idea of replacing the player when I saw that there were Blu-ray players from Sony and Panasonic that got glowing reviews - at under £200. Apart from the fact that I'm now sceptical in general of reviews in hi-fi magazines , at least they weren...