.:M@tyBoy:.

I purchased a LG DVD player for divx/xvid capabilities as my current player is very outdated. One of the features of the new DVD player is HD-Upscaling and the sales person at Harvey Norman asked if I required a HDMI cable. I was shocked to see HDMI cables from $80 - $300, as my DVD player only cost $120.

Later I did some online research and found that Australian consumers are being ripped off. I recently purchased from Play-Asia a 1.5m HDMI cable for less then $10 delivered. The cable works great and the cheapest I could find it in Australia was $20-$30 from eBay or $50 from Dick Smiths.

I am pretty sure that Australian retailers like Harvey Norman, JB and Dick Smiths are relying on Australian consumers thinking “I just spent $3000 on the LCD screen, its only another $100 for the cable” or they are trying to deceive consumers with statements like “24 carat gold-plated connectors ensure the best signal quality”.

Signal quality is more likely to be impacted by the length of the cable. The average consumer probably requires 3m or less of cable and I sincerely doubt they will see any significant improvement in “signal quality” between an entry level cable and the more expensive “gold-plated” cables.

Hopefully the price of HDMI cables fall once more people adopt the technology. In the mean time I suggest you do your research before purchasing a HDMI cable inside Australia.

It is 1:00pm and I have just dragged myself from bed onto my chair at home. I have to admit I did not think I was that tired but given the opportunity I have managed to waste almost the whole day in bed. My wife unfortunately had to work today, as she works for Melbourne University. Melbourne University refuses to observe Labour Day because the workers who were building it went on strike. Just one of many protests in its history. So the students and teachers still have to attend on a public holiday, although I expect most of the students probably don’t go anyway.

This is something of an oddity to me, how can they choose not to recognise a public holiday. Labour day was primarily a fight for improved working conditions and an eight hour day (eight hours for work, eight hours for recreation, and eight hours for rest). By not recognising this holiday Melbourne University is basically saying, we prefer to overwork our staff and underpay their efforts. Talk about holding a grudge, I think it is time they got over the fact that a few building stones didn’t get laid that day and start to think about the long term benefit that strike had on a nation.

You know, water falling in drops from vapor condensed in the atmosphere, it seems that many people in Melbourne have simply forgotten of its existence. I couldn’t help but smile when everyone got up to look out the window, as if the whole concept of rain was ridiculous. I have to admit it has been some time since we have seen rain in these amounts and for some reason the recent storm activity has been really relaxing, but I feel this is mostly because the rain was taking my attention away from stressful issues at work.