So then, after waiting a couple of weeks and having to contend with the nightmare that is Marks and Spencer home delivery service, I finally took delivery of my new Sony Bravia 503. And, as expected, it’s pretty fucking awesome.
Apart from Mrs Dabooka insisting it’s too big for the house (it’s a 40” model, but we do have a small abode), installation went without a hitch. Well I say installation, what I really mean is plugging the various wires in. The process of activating the various “advanced features” has been a bloody nightmare and I’m quite knowledgable in such matters. In this area, Sony have created a consumer electronics clusterfuck of epic proportions. What should be a simple menu selection or two has been made arduous to the point many people simply couldn’t or wouldn’t even bother trying.
First, registering the unit. This used to a freepost card to some unknown business park in Droitwich or wherever, but now in the age of the Internet (and it is Internet enabled unit) it’s all done online. Brilliant! Except for having to fire up the laptop as it won’t let you register the telly directly. And then toake matters worse, to find the code you need, you find yourself trawling through the XMB as there’s no manual (Sony now provide an i-Manual which is stored onboard a ROM chip somewhere deep inside. Purely for your ease and convienience you understand). Once that’s done, back on to the laptop and register another account with Sony MegaCorp. What’s that you say? Can you use your Playstation Network account? Don’t be fucking cretinous, that’d be too fucking simple wouldn’t it. I think they have my registration details 4 tines in various databases now. Anyway, I digress. So that’s the unit registered. So just a simple firmware update (via their site, laptop and onto a USB drive, as there’s no live update as on the PS3. There is over the air updates, should you choose to leave your tv and internet on all night for a week or so) to let it pick up video on the DLNA nas drive on my network and it’s all done. And still no .mkv support so don’t get excited.
All of which compared to setting up the DivX element was a piece of piss. That needs you to download a install software (boot the laptop up again) to upload ANOTHER code to turn on DivX VOD and other services. As the software simply fails to install, this remains incomplete as at this stage I was well on the way to throwing it out of the fucking window.
Except as Mrs Dabooka pointed out, it wouldn’t fit.
