I went to the local hi-fi shop, and I do mean old fashioned expensive hi-fi type of place, great for advice though, and asked for a demo of a Sony home cinema system, only they didn’t stock any.

Not sure if they sold any Sony gear at all but the salesman was dead set against Sony home cinema anyway. He asked what was my budget and I said the budget for a Sony home cinema system. Needless to say he said that wasn’t enough and that I needed to spend twice that, about $1,000. No chance of that. He said he’d rather advise me to play the TV through an amp and speakers rather than waste money on Sony. A bit prejudiced.

I thought I’d try playing the TV audio through the regular stereo and it worked fine. Not exactly 5:1. I’ll get a sub-woofer to add a bit of oomph and that should do it.

I had a look at eBay to see whether anyone was selling iPhones in the UK and there were several going for about $770. They appeared to be locked down with AT&T though so I don’t know how anyone’s going to use it.

I also saw an iPhone knock-off which I couldn’t resist bidding for and won. It was relatively cheap – $150 – so I regard it as an experimental gadget more than anything else. The good thing was that it is unlocked for all networks, apart from 3G, so all I have to do is stick in my T-Mobile sim and it’ll work (Ha! Ed). But what will work? What operating system is on it? How do I get music on it? Sure isn’t going to be with iTunes.

Should keep me off the streets while I wrestle with it’s O/S and syncing software. If it’s one of those half baked mobile versions of Windows my expectations will not be high. 

Quote of the day

‘The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing at the right time but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment’ Dorothy Nevill