In the Future

Well guys, since no-one seems to be reading this any more I figure it's not wasting anyone's time if I do a post about stuff I'm gonna buy and indeed stuff I have bought.

Since my PC and desk now function as my entertainment system, and I have a widescreen 1050p monitor, I decided to make use of those pixels and seriously upgrade my media centre.

Firstly, I bought a LiteOn DH 4O1S Blu-Ray Disc Reader to allow playback of the dominant consumer HD video format. It's in the system now, though I can't yet watch any Blu-Rays (More on that later).

Next, I decided to upgrade the control system. Now, I do have a wireless presenter mouse built into my desktop mouse. That method of control does work of course, but it can be tedious to mouse ball over controls from my bed.

So I got CyberLink's IR USB remote control. It works great - controls DVD(/Blu-Ray) playback, TV Centre Pro (Helpful, since the mouse and keyboards for that are jacked) and iTunes. Basically, I'm set.

Incidentally, Need for Speed Carbon (Yes, I did buy it) is great on Wii and works really well with my steering wheel shell.

For those of you wondering, my first Blu-Ray movie is The Simpsons Movie - easily one of my favourite films of all time. 2007 was a great year for movies. Bear in mind, Spider-Man 3 (Another of my all-time favourites) and other truly great films came out this year as well. Even made for TV Movies were better than expected (Yes, I do love HSM 2. So sue me.). It was also a great year for games between Mario Galaxy, Halo 3, CoD 4 and of course Portal. This year shall go down in entertainment history.

So what am I buying in the coming future? Well, first I'm going to get a Sapphire HD 2600 XT graphics card with 256MB of GDDR4 memory. Besides bumping games performance (Like making Halo 2 at least seem playable) and providing access to recent games like Unreal Tournament 3, it has HDCP. With that, I will be able to watch my Blu-Rays (My monitor is also HDCP-compliant).

Games-wise, Medal of Honor Hereos 2 is next on my list (I'm moving to renting games unless I really want them from now on, thanks to my £10.99 per month LoveFilm account which is also supplying me with additional HD content in the form of Blu-Rays). February 8th can't come soon enough.

I'm also buying an Xbox Live Vision Camera £50 set, the one which comes with a headset, 12 months of Gold and 2 Arcade games. It's outstanding value. I more interested in the Gold subscription, games and the headset to be honest, but the camera will be nice to have.

Then, a month later, I'll be grabbing Game's £209.99 Xbox 360 Arcade Bundle and putting the hard drive from my brother's Premium in it. He's buying an Elite. The Premium will go in the living room, mine will go in the upstairs TV room (My dad won a 20" HDTV at work).

So once I have that and I can play 360 just about whenever I want, you can expect my GamerScore to go up a fair bit. Possibly I could take it to above 5,000 before we leave Cambridgeshire.

I'll also grab a GameWare Play and Charge kit as I continue my ongoing fight against Double-As.

Then, in mid-June, I will make the biggest purchase I ever have. At long last, I will be buying my MacBook. So hooray for that.

Anyway, that gives you an idea of where I'm headed in the coming months. You can probably expect me to gush at length about most of those products and, indeed, I advise you to be prepared for more Blu-Ray love than anywhere else on the internet which doesn't swear allegiance to PS3.

Jens Out