Looking at the new Denon 3808 myself. It is a freaking monster, supporting all the latest technologies with just about double up of every connection you'll ever need, and a lot of neat features such as wireless networking which finds and plays your shared music collection (not requiring a mediacentre solution), able to set up different zones so you can f.ex. listen to a cd in the livingroom and a radiochannel in the bedroom at the same time, just to name a few. Downside is that it's nearly £1.200, but it is tempting. Oh, so tempting.
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I wish you hadn't posted a link to that Denon receiver. Now I want one! And will have one! Or the even better 4308. For the price you are getting a lot of hardware, plus upsampling of analogue and digital signals to HD is a great feature to have for passing older games consoles and DVD players through the system.

But for the moment I can live with my Sony DTS receiver. It might only be 5.1 but it still sounds good.
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If you can't afford an expensive receiver (+ speakers) yet, a good, quality pair of headphones can be a nice substitution (provided you have a decent amplifier to power them). In fact, there's a lot of subtle detail in music that you can only hear with a pair of cans. Only downsides to them are that you can't really 'feel' the bass, and prolonged wearing of headphones can be rather uncomfortable.

About the SACD issue, it seems strange to me that they'd add the feature to play the format in one firmware update, and remove it in the next, barely a week later. Kind of doubt it's some sort of ploy though - after all, how many PS3 owners actually used it to play SACD? There weren't that many to start with, I think.

Maybe removing some lesser-used features is a way for them to lessen resource usage? Or perhaps it actually caused some of the problems that people were experiencing after the 2.00 update? I guess we'll never really know.
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I've already got a pretty good setup with floor standing Eltax front speakers, and centre, Eltax Bi-polar rears and a nice 12" sub, connected up to a Sony receiver. And it sounds great. But if I want support for newer equipment then I will need to look into upgrading my receiver to something new, and the Denon one looks amazing.
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I still have my Bose 5.1 sound system, which is truly amazing. I have a Pioneer receiver, but planned (already 1 year ago) to get one of the Denon's Teho mentioned. But I really don't need on of the bigger models, as I only would need 1 HDMI input and 1 HDMI output, because I have my Auvisio HMDI control center.

Only thing that would be great, is to transfer also the sound via HDMI, no need to use optical cables anymore. But my HDMI control center also supports optical, SCART and Ethernet (1 input for each, and 4 output), so I only have to plug my devices to it, and have 1 single cable that goes from there to the receiver. And channels can be switched via remote control.
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Got a decent 5.1 set in the living room. It isn't particularly good for music, but it does provide enough shakes for both movies and games. I'm considering upgrading it sometime though for a set that can handle music better. Probably a pair of floorstanders, coupled with a 12-14 inch subwoofer, and separate sats for surround sound. One argument against doing this is the fact that I'm living in an apartment with neighbours in just about every direction. So, unless I soundproofed my home, such a sound system would probably go to waste. On the other hand, watching DVDs and BDs without sound on full blast just isn't the same.


Has anyone played the Uncharted demo? It looks absolutely terrific, and the gameplay is a very decent mix of Tomb Raider combined with Resident Evil 4-esque gunfighting. What impressed me so much about this game is how 'alive' the scenery actually looks ... there's just so much detail in there, it's amazing how Naughty Dog managed to pull it off.

This will definitely be another must-have for me, which would put my PS3 game collection on a total of 10 already. I need to stop buying all these games ... but I can't help it. Must ... have ... more!
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Annoyingly Activision seem to be using a single server to provide their in-game news for Guitar Hero 3. At present it's announcing extra song packs available through PS Store - great except looking at the store the packs are nowhere to be seen. Annoyingly checking the US store all the packs are available there.

I really can't see how, with the rising cost of developing a game, game publishers can afford to treat European gamers as second-rate customers.
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Its because the Americans think they invented everything!

Which is amusing, as the whole world knows the USA was invented by the UK!!!
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I like the Uncharted demo, but it's getting tough very fast, at least with my gaming skill. Oz preordered it and got a t-shirt, the game will be released in approx. 2 weeks. So when he finishes the game, he can borrow it to me.
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Nice thinking. Let Oz spend his money, and then you can enjoy the games.
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