Stuck in the Living Room Dreaming of a New TV

Imagine if normal was a real thing.
The OLED 4K TVs I like, either the LG OLED55C9PLA 55" or the Panasonic TX-55GZ950B 55", have come down in price to around £1300. That's still more than I'd like to spend on a TV but they're gorgeous and we haven't yet made the jump to 4K. The Panasonic has the edge supporting the newer HDR10+ standard for High Dynamic Resolution and better display of blacks in the details. I'll keep the old TV because no-one is really making passive 3D displays any more and I adore Avatar in 3D.

We've been getting by using a PS3 and a 2nd gen Apple TV as media centres. Since we moved the living room around we no longer have an aerial or wired internet to the TV, so no live TV channels and no iPlayer.

Disney+ arrived and is fantastic. We're enjoying the Mandalorian, we've started The Simpsons from the start and there's a good selection of movies. Unfortunately the app didn't stream well from an iPhone to the Apple TV, so in lieu of pulling the trigger on a new TV I bought an Apple TV 4K. I saved a bit of money by buying a refurbished one from Ebay, but it comes without a year's subscription to the Apple services so it was a bit of a false economy. As it's the 4K model it's future proofed against me ever actually buying a new TV.

It's great. It has games on it, which include Jetpack Joyride and Rayman Adventures, both of which I think I'd already bought on the iPhone, and a good selection of free games and apps. There's even a Wii style tennis game using the Apple TV controller as a motion sensor racket.

It has Disney+, Amazon Prime, Netflix, Sky News and CNN News and BBC iPlayer, plus the ITV, channel four and five catchup apps which I doubt we'll use.

We're still using the PS3 as a blu-ray player and are finally working our way through our extensive and mostly unwatched collection. Ben has now mastered all of the Little Big Planet games on the PS3 and I'm playing Portal 2 with him. Irina has Animal Crossing on the Switch which mostly occupies her.

When the PS5 finally comes out I might make the jump to the PS4. At the moment I'm still loving the PS3. Anyone want to play the Modern Warfare 2 co-op missions?

One confounder is that when VR is ready, and it so nearly is the Occulus Quest is great fun, it would be nice to have a single VR/gaming/media system instead of the multiple boxes I have or might have. Sony PlayStation is most likely to deliver that although their VR isn't ready yet and I'd want a 4K disk player as well. I like consoles, I like a system that lasts years, I'm not jumping to a PC and having to debug my media player. Oh, the Apple TV has a really nice screensaver and I still have some good music on their system.

I still have work for the UKAEA on the BLUEPRINT fusion reactor design software and that's going fine. Delia is decorating Irina's room and listening to podcasts about something called a Yoni.

We're mostly coping with the isolation. Happy Sunday.


"God" might be the product of evolution. They're how the unconscious mind visualises and interacts with everything. And what the conscious thinks it believes is irrelevant, maybe."

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