Went over to see my dad yesterday. He has just bought a big plasma telly and had a man come to install it. Well. Very nice telly, somewhat botched installation. The reason that he got the big screen was to watch stuff through the satellite decoder. So the installer man had wired this in via the arial; thus losing all the quality, widescreen and stereo sound. Sigh. I spent half an hour or so putting things to rights. Even now we can't quite get it to work properly without snipping some pins in a SCART cable. Don't ask.

It never ceases to amaze me how we can design, build and manufacture such advanced technology and still foul it all up on the last little bit. The man installing the plasma obviously did not know how to install it. The person who designed the TV user interface was either having a day off, or a laugh. And the fact that you can't get two devices from the same manufacturer to co-operate without applying surgery to cable is just plain bonkers. But there you are.