Boxing Day exploits

I crawled out of bed and made my way down to A&B Sound on Pembina, thinking it was going to open at 10 am. I got there around 10:10 and was surprised to see a half-dozen souls braving the cold. We began talking and I then realized that they weren't opening until 12 noon.



It was actually kinda fun lining up. The group in front of us were partying it up, getting people to take their photos since they were the first ones in line, etc.

I met four other people. One of them made a hot chocolate run and offered to get me one, which I gladly accepted and paid for. Two of them are engaged and kept on taking turns standing in line as one of them warmed up. After over an hour, I headed back to my car to enjoy the hot chocolate and warm up. I was poorly dressed with no hat or gloves since I didn't expect to be out in the cold. You can tell this was my first stab at Boxing Day shopping.


Toshiba 27AF44 27 in. Direct View Flat Screen Television


I actually wanted a $49 DVD player, but I changed my mind and bought a Toshiba RD-XS32 DVD recorder with a 80 GB hard drive for recording TV or video, etc. And, since my 14 year-old tv at home was losing its color, I opted to spend $298 for a 27" Toshiba 27AF44 flat screen tv. The Toshiba DVD recorder cost $499, and it was truly an impulse buy. One of the guys in the line up was planning on buying one and when I saw the small stack of them on the inside, I decided to buy one, even though I know that Blu-Ray DVD recorders are around the corner and will record way more data.

Toshiba DVD Recorder RD-XS32
Some features:

• Toshiba RDXS32 DVD Recorder with 80 GB hard drive delivers up to 103 hours of recording
• Hard drive allows for high speed dubbing; 12X max on DVD-RAM and 24X max on DVD-R
• Record and playback videos in MPEG-2 digital video on either a DVD-RAM, DVD-R, or DV-RW formatted discs

I have everything hooked up now. My year-old DVD player will end up in the living room for my visiting parents to use. My old TV will go downstairs. And now, I have time to see if I will have buyer's remorse about getting the DVD recorder. I'm not sure how many hours of TV I can record on its 80 GB drive, but I guess I will find out.

What's the difference between Blu-ray and DVD?

Parameters BD BD DVD DVD Storage capacity 25GB 50GB 4.7GB 9.4GB Number of layers single-layer dual-layer single-layer dual-layer Laser wavelength 405nm 405nm 650nm 650nm Numerical aperture (NA) 0.85 0.85 0.60 0.60 Protection layer 0.1mm 0.1mm 0.6mm 0.6mm Data transfer rate 36Mbps 36Mbps 11.08Mbps 11.08Mbps Video compression MPEG-2 MPEG-4 AVC VC-1 MPEG-2 MPEG-4 AVC VC-1 MPEG-2 MPEG-2