So we finally saw our first movie on the big screen Plasma we got over the weekend. And its was "First Blood" no less. It was quite an experience. I've also been watching some HDTV, regular TV and TiVo content and have the following observations.

• The DVD experience was not so much because of quality which was excellent on my older CRT but because of the size. Man, the 50 inch does make a difference! Instead of squinting and trying peep into the screen you just sit back and relax. You actually "see" the film instead of just "looking" at it.
• The HDTV experience is just too good. The large screen size and the clarity is just outstanding. However, it may be a bit too much. Human faces in close-ups, if not shot flatteringly in soft light, tend to look too bumpy and unnatural -- even though they are completely natural but our eyes don't expect to see all those details and faces and the brain perceives of them as fake.
• Regular Analog TV (non-HDTV content straight from the cable-box but broadcasted by the station as an analog signal) is pretty awful. The colors bleed and the low resolution bumped up by the TV to its native resolution compounded by the large size of the TV makes the broadcast look quite bad.
• Regular Digital TV (non-HDTV content straight from the cable-box) is decent but not that good.
  
• TiVo suffers from the analog problem. One would really have to get their TiVo upgraded to series 3 where possible to enable HDTV storage for the TV to be really useful. Essentially, you need to get rid of TiVo for all your favorite programs and use Comcast's DVR.

Conclusion: The TV is still a bit ahead of its times and if most of what you watch are movies and those shows that are available in HD then you are fine. However, you will have to use your cable company's DVR instead of TiVo's which might be a huge issue or might not be an issue at all based on how much you love your TiVo. For me it is a huge issue obviously.

Yes, finally couldn't resist the $800 off from Best Buy on a 50" Panasonic. Not the best in the World but good enough for the price. However, it was a nightmare getting it home. First, it won't fit in the car vertically and cannot lay the sucker down. We had to open the box and tilt it on one of the back seats while laying the other one flat. It was quite an adventure. Getting it inside the apartment from downstairs was an even more challenging task. Sheru and I finally managed to get it in.

However, much to our chagrin the piece was defective. We got a rainbow band every once in a while toward the left edge of the screen. After trying for over a day we finally decided to return it on Sunday. Thankfully Best Buy had another piece in stock and we took it with the pedestal downstairs and into the car. I couldn't believe we had to repeat the whole nightmare. However, we somehow managed to get it back. It's been running well since yesterday so far. Let's see how it goes. Hopefully better luck this time.

Happened to pick up the new Shuffle in-ear headphones with the old mini by mistake this morning. The new headphones are much better: much more fuller sound, more bass, less tinny. Excellent.

When I woke up around 6.00 am the first thing I did was to switch the computer on and let Aperture continue building its previews. After building the remaining thumbnails for the 11k photos it went on to 'process' previews and the sluggishness of it put the thumbnail previews to shame. It took over 5 hours to build all previews. It was somewhat faster after that but not merely enough.

== 4.00 p.m. ==
Printing support is decent but not as good as Adobe Lightroom. Of course it is much better than iPhoto which is pretty much useless. The options are just not there to do enough margins. Presets are fine but they don't store printer settings which makes them sort of useless because you also have to select the printer settings again and again.

Biggst drawback of all is the adjustments area. You don't get to store an adjustment preset that spans across adjustment settings. So if you always sharpen and much with vibrance you need to adjust the image twice. Sort of lame.

== 8.30 pm ==
Apple finally made Aperture 1.5 available as a demo download. I've been attracted to Aperture simply because iPhoto is pretty primitive and doesn't suite my needs exactly. However, just to prevent myself from having to deal with another tool, I've tried hard and told myself that the step $300 price is what is going to keep me away. With the free demo version it is not an issue anymore and I cannot help it. I download the demo version about an hour ago and spent some time reviewing some of the online tutorials. I know that at the end of the month I will be paying Apple three hundred dollars. I know it but I am doing it anyway.

I've started importing my iPhoto library (about 11,000 photos) at 8.51 pm. I choose to duplicate it in the Aperture library. It is working hard on it now and it says it needs about another hour. I would be impressed if it gets everything in by 10.00 pm and is up and running without a glitch.

== 10.30 pm ==
All photos were imported around 10.25 so took about two hours. In true Apple fashion Aperture decided to simply not create any smart folders for me. The performace is so terrible that had I not known about the preview creation issue I would have probably quit now.

== 11.30 pm ==
Liking certain things but getting annoyed with others. Its been chewing up anywhere from 120 to 160 % of the CPU. Thank God for dual core.

Just got mine day before and it is so unbelievably cool. It is a gig of storage in about 1 inch by 2 inch and .3 inch think. It is so light you don't even feel you have it. It was up and running in less than 10 minutes including opening the box, which BTW, was just as pretty as the player itself.

Apple has done it again. If you though the iPod was overrated all you need to do is try using this this amazing little thing.