I've been using Eye-TV with my Macs for about three years, brilliant, and can be controlled with the Apple-Remote. Automatic storage of the recorded content, easy retrieval, can be streamed around the house, easy to convert to iPod, etc. Full SD resolution, or HD-digital in areas where that is transmitted (check that Eye-TV has units compatible

WAV is a useless format if you'd like to enjoy the benefits of Metadata, and is also needlessly fat, compared to lossless formats. At the poster above who heard a clear difference between CD and other formats. It is incredibly important to even the volume output on both sources, while playing back. That's more critical than using the same DAC

1 - 2 - 3 -- that's the power consumption relationship between old style CRT, LCD and Plasma. Now that manufacturers have been given much more stringent power consumption levels to comply with, we may expect this to improve somewhat. The "heat is not wasted" argument above is specious - though it has been used by lobbyists working hard

Yes, Expoman, stated and actual rates vary quite a bit. What some seem to miss is that the consumption you indicate, for standby, multiplied by the number of homes in the UK, amount to quite a bit, at a time when energy abundance is a thing of the past. So expect gov't to take a long hard look at energy profligacy.

@Phil London: Took it as obvious that it was understood those relationships were between CRT/LCD/PLASMA, and with the sets on. Here's the scientist warning about the requirements for two nuclear plants, should present flatscreen adoption rates continue. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2006/aug/13/energy.nuclearindustry You write I shouldn't

Turning it off at the powerpoint makes a big difference. It's been estimated that if the current rate of plasma and lcd adoption continues in the UK, the isles will need two nuclear powerplants to run televisions alone. A CRT-screen consumes about half of what an LCD-screen draws, while a plasma adds another 50% to the consumption of an LCD. It

The EU will seek a ban on Standby-buttons and functions, to preserve electricity. (In the course of the lifetime of a DVD-player, 85% of the electricity is consumed by the standby-function.) Here's an industry rep desperately seeking to defend the Standby-button. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7346313.stm

Thanks, Tournedos. Yes, controlling the centre-channel signal is not very difficult, and it should be possible to include this in an upgrade. BTW - always be careful with using "not rocket science." Here's a true story. A manager from a leading European telecommunications company was in Russia, where they were going to enter into a venture

Ah, I get it. You're thinking of passive systems that just pipe the signal on? Today's home theatre processors perform quite a lot of calculations on the signal, particularly those that perform measurements of the room, in order to achieve the best possible sound, with an absence of room nodes, phase-outs, etc. And that takes a lot of processing

Well, we do speak of surround sound processing, and the hardware is called surround sound processors ... it's not the number of speakers that is being referred to, but the work performed by processors applying algorithms to digital files, before these are converted to analog signals that are passed to the speakers. http://www.hometheaterhifi.com