The New Hardware Thread

[dvdx2]

Just received my Panasonic TX-50CX802B. Paid ?1499 for this from pcworld, and thank goodness for teh THX modes because i was losing patience fast with the sony's which kept coming with gamma that trailed off terribly in the darker area's blocking precious detail...

This set is magnificent and easy the best thing i've had, better even than my previous panasonic st50 plasma. Scales extremely well, much better than i thought it would, and oozes quality.

You really do get what you pay for.

Sounds good. I'd be interested to see how the new panny sets compare to their old benchmark plasmas like the VT/ZT. I wonder if the gap is closing, qualitywise. (Although nothing ive seen with my own eyes come close to my VT65)

[PaTaito]

Sounds good. I'd be interested to see how the new panny sets compare to their old benchmark plasmas like the VT/ZT. I wonder if the gap is closing, qualitywise. (Although nothing ive seen with my own eyes come close to my VT65)

The most impressive thing is the scaling...

Was playing last of us on ps4, and i sat there thinking it looks every bit as sharp as it does on a 1080p set even with four times as many pixels. Processing for 4k come along no end this year.

Streamed 4k stuff is fantastic obviously.

[charlesr]

Not really new hardware but it's going to feel like it. HDD died today after 5 years of being on. Hard to believe a new one is only ?45 for 1TB. So it was a Win7, updated to Win8 and then Win10. Doing a fresh install of Win10! Took 4 hours to dl the iso on my laptop

Everything is backed up on Sugarsync and a 2nd drive so hopefully nothing essential has gone missing. Was hoping it would live long enough for 1TB SSD to be viable, but never mind

[speedlolita]

Guess you mean a 2.5" drive? I paid ?45 for my 2TB many years ago before the flooding happened.

[charlesr]

Unfortunately in a shop.... Had to head to PCworld (don't tell anyone). Didn't want to wait for online delivery.

[charlesr]

Hmm. Plugged the backup drive in and it won't recognise it exists (in disk management).... It's there in bios

[gunrock]

There are some volume types that a non-professional/business version of Windows won't mount. Had this when I moved from Win2k Professional to Vita Home Premium.

With TestDisk you can modify the volume type sometimes and once disk check has run it works.

[charlesr]

TestDisk can't see it...

[charlesr]

Rebooted a couple of times and it's there in disk management now. Weirdest thing.
And all my data is still there. Which is nice.
New HDD is very quiet.

[gunrock]

Just got a 1GB Seagate Hybrid drive, a 120GB Kingston SSD, a USB 3.0 PCI Express card and a EVGA GTX 750Ti FTW superclocked video card. Also bought a second-hand QX9650 Core 2 Quad. Not really for gaming, but for Bluray trancoding and a OS upgrade on my ancient system.

[charlesr]

1GB lol... Anyway, what are these Hybrids like? Various reports said they make no difference. Others say amazing.

I'm all set up again. Fiddly things like allowing the squeezeserver spotify helper app through the firewalls were tedious, but fresh install was definitely awesome. Boot is way faster (not that that happens often).

[speedlolita]

Hybrid drives are a stupid idea that nobody wanted.

[charlesr]

Don't sit on the fence dude. Speak your mind

[gunrock]

Hah good spot on the gigabyte/terabyte goof!

No idea what the difference will be but we shall see. Didn't cost substantially more than a non-hybrid drive.

[briareos_kerensky]

Hybrid drives use a small NAND-based memory to cache the most used files; the files are on the mechanical part though. They don't reach SSDs in speed but are usually faster than HDDs in start up and shutdown because they are optimised that way. With the price drop of SSDs and the relative low cost of large HDDs, they have become increasingly rare. Some laptops use a similar technology, where the NAND (SSD part) and HDD are physically separate but it works the same way.