Guide of Halloween

For many people, Valentine's Day is a day they both look forward to and dread. Many people spend weeks and months worrying about buying the perfect Valentine's Day Gift - they worry that this years Valentine's Day gift should outshine last years, or should be a better Valentine's Day gift than their partner's friends will get. However, there are many Valentine's Day gifts that are both special, but also relatively simple.

A Gift Basket

There are many places online that sell gift baskets as Valentine's Day Gifts. However, the key with buying a Gift Basket as a Valentine's Day Gift is to ensure its unique - don't go with the standard toiletries basket, find a basket that will appeal to their interests, or better yet, make one up yourself!!

Jewelry

Jewelry often seen as a bit of a cop-out present - over the years it has become very cliche, but done properly it can still be a thoughtful Valentine's Day gift. If you do buy jewelry, the most important thing is to make it special. Perhaps a romantic engraving would make it a perfect Valentine's Day gift, or perhaps getting something slightly unique would be ideal - a necklace with charms on that relate to her interests could become a Valentine's Day gift she will never forget.

A Weekend Away

One common comment I hear is that partner's do not get enough time together, away from distractions and day-to-day responsibilities. A weekend away can be a great Valentine's Day gift, although it can be difficult to pull off. There may be many things to organise - someone to take care of the children, booking somewhere that your partner will like, where you can spend some time together, but in the end it could well be worth it, and be a really special Valentine's Day gift.

Something That Appeals To Their Interests

Valentine's Day gifts do not have to be sentimental, so long as they are thoughtful. For the adventurous type, an experience gift could be just as special a Valentine's Day Gift as something romantic. If your partner is into rock climbing, a climbing weekend together will both give you the chance to spend some time together, and also be a thoughtful Valentine's Day gift.

Hopefully you will find something in here for your partner, which will let you buy the perfect Valentine's Day present this 14th February.

Are you stuck for ideas, gifts, cards, poems or inspiration for Valentine's Day? http://www.14february.info is your ultimate Valentine's Day Resource.

Jennifer is a Fellow of the Institute of Legal Executives, holding the LL.B with first class honours and having over six years of experience as a lawyer in private practice. She now works for a private company in the Midlands and, in her spare time, writes for various websites including http://www.14february.info.

Samsung LN37A550 37-Inch 1080p LCD HDTV
From Samsung

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Product Description--March 24, 2008
Samsung's 550 Series is a perfect  way to step up to Full HD 1080p resolution. A fast 5 ms response rate produces smooth-motion scenes for sports and action movies, and a dynamic contrast ratio of 30,000:1 makes for deep blacks and crisp lines (15,000:1 in 32-inch and 37-inch models).  Superb connectivity and networking  with a USB port and 3 HDMI 1.3 ports with Consumer Electronics Control (CEC) means these HDTVs play well with all of your other electronics. Easily enjoy MPEG and JPEG files stored on external devices by connecting through the side-mounted USB 2.0, turn your LCD into a full-scale home viewing gallery, or connect your MP3 player for a dynamic audio experience.

Customer Reviews

Great TV2
TV is great but the list price is not $1199. Samsung has it listed at 1099.99 on their home page. So recalculate your savings

Best 1080P TV on the market 5
I looked and did research for months to find the best quality 37" 1080P LCD TV and everything points to this model. After using this TV in my home office for 2 months I can verify all the positive reviews on this unit.

Sound is excellent if you room is not your main living room. Picture is crystal clear and all of my guest say the same thing " Holy $#$ the picture is amazing"

Remote is a bit large and kind of useless if you have a cable box or direct TV like i do.

Mount this unit on the wall in a spare room not your main room and you will be completely satisfied. also purchase a protection plan because this baby gets hot.

The 5 year plan plus TV shipped was under $1,000

I have a Hitachi 60",Sony 55" & 22" HP LCds and this Samsung blows them all away.

Love it.5
We have it for about a month now. I went to a local electronic store determined to buy a Sony m-series 37", but after standing in front of the array of TV's, this one won my heart. Excellent picture quality. White is bright and pure, color has nice contrast, black is deep. The piano-black framing was simple, classic and beautiful. The remote has good size and useful buttons, easy to use config, and easy to hold. The pause between channel swiching is acceptable (I think Sony takes half a second too long, which is the biggest issue I have with Sony.). Everyone in my family loves this TV. At the time I bought it, Amazon's price was significantly lower than any of the local store on-sale prices. It took about a week to arrive my home in southern CA. I thought this was an excellent buy.

Samsung LN37A550 LCD Shop

Product Description

THE NEW BRAVIA LCD TELEVISION CONTAINS PICTURE ENHANCEMNET TECHNOLOGY AND VIRTUAL DOLBY CREATING A FULL SURROUND EFFECT FROM JUST TWO FRONT SPEAKERS. WITH THERE SLIMLINE NEW LOOK FINISH THEY ARE SUITABLE FOR ANYWHERE IN THE HOME.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #144 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Sony
• Model: KDL40W4000U
• Released on: 2008-04-30
• Dimensions: 40.78 pounds
• Display size: 101.6

Features

• SONY 40" LCD TELEVISION IN BLACK
• 3 X HDMI INPUTS
• 1920 X 1080 PIXEL RESOLUTION
• 2 X SCART SOCKETS
• IN BLACK

Manufacturer's Description

HD1080p HD 1080p offers you very high resolution to generate it’s picture. The ‘p’ stands for ‘progressive scan’, which scans all the lines at once to add stability & smoothness to fast-moving images. This makes 1080p TV’s excellent for sport broadcast & games.

Integrated Digital Tuner / Freeview Having an integrated Digital Freeview Tuner means that your TV has a built in receiver that will give you access to many more channels without the need to have any additional hardware, such as a Freeview box. In 2007, the government began switching UK broadcasting to digital, so if your TV doesn’t have an integrated digital tuner feature you wont be able to view any channel without buying the additional hardware.

BRAVIA Engine 2 You can’t have too much of a good thing, so we designed BRAVIA ENGINE 2. By using our most innovative technologies like intelligent noise reduction and Advanced Contrast Enhancer, BRAVIA ENGINE 2 builds on the power of the acclaimed BRAVIA ENGINE and adds four new image processing stages. What’s more, BRAVIA ENGINE 2 incorporates full digital signal processing, which means that it can enhance many different signals.

Dynamic Contrast Contrast ratio is improved and all shades between the brightest white and the darkest blacks are maintained, so the picture has more depth and detail. This is achieved as the backlight brightness adjusts according to the brightness of the scene. Sony’s unique dynamic contrast system features ACE (advanced contrast enhancer) which ensures all of the subtle shades of grey are maintained. The W4000 Series delivers a Dynamic Contrast Ratio of 33,000:1.

BRAVIA Sync BRAVIA Sync enables the control of your TV and peripheral devices with a single BRAVIA remote through menus displayed on your BRAVIA LCD TV. It is supported by selected Sony Home Theatre Systems, Blu-ray Disc players, Audio/Video Receivers and Handycams. Please check the specification of your other Sony products to ensure that it includes BRAVIA Sync.

XrossMediaBar (XMB) XMB™ (XrossMediaBar) is Sony’s original graphic user interface that allows for simple operation of various media and content, as seen on the PS3 and PSP. Users can navigate through the different types of media by zapping across icons that are aligned horizontally. After selecting the medium, a list of its content appears as thumbnails vertically. The main benefit of the XMB™ is that it alleviates the need to look at the remote control while searching and selecting content. With an increasing number of media and content, simple navigation has become a challenge, especially with a remote control. The XMB™ gives access to a wide array of content with only a few buttons.

USB Photo Viewer Enjoy digital photos on the big screen. With the USB Photo Viewer, the user can view photos instantaneously by connecting a digital still camera via USB and selecting "Photo" from the XMB menu. Thumbnails of the photos stored in the digital still camera will appear on the screen, from which the user can choose to view full screen or as a slideshow. You can also select your favourite photo as a standby screen just pressing favourite button during thumbnails display, full-screen view and slideshow. Share your fun memories with family and friends on BRAVIA.

Picture Frame Mode Picture Frame Mode offers you the opportunity to decorate your room with BRAVIA like a painting or photo in a frame with BRAVIA’s superior color reproduction. By selecting the image to be displayed and the duration time on your menu screen your TV will show either a still image or slide show in it’s full glory at reduced power consumption, rather than simply having a black screen sitting in the corner or on the wall in your room. You can display your favourite photos from in USB memory or preinstalled images on BRAVIA. 1. Push "Home" on the remote control 2. Select "XMB" 3. Choose "Picture Frame" Mode The picture you selected as Picture Frame appears on the screen. You can select either one of the 6 default pictures or your own pictures using the USB port.

Live Colour Creation Live Colour Creation is a backlight system which produces a wider colour gamut, seen particularly with the red and green areas of the spectrum. So your TV picture will have more lifelike and natural colours with no smudging or dulling of the image. Available on 40", 46" & 52" W4000 models.

X.V. Colour X.V colour offers a colour palette of 100% of the colour spectrum giving more depth, detail and natural images and is closer to the colour spectrum seen by the human eye. Available on 40", 46" & 52" W4000 models.

HDMI Sockets The W4000 Series has 3 X HDMI Sockets – 2 at the rear of the set & one at the side. Your HDMI socket provides a connection point on your TV that is able to deliver a high definition picture. Quite simply, the more HDMI sockets that you have on your BRAVIA LCD TV, the more components you are able to link up to for HD picture quality, for instance, a Blu-ray player, your camcorder and your gaming console. Having the socket located in the front of the TV means that you no longer have to get into awkward positions or move the unit in order to gain access to the connection point, great if you’re viewing your photos on your TV via your digital camera.

Photo TV HD Photo TV HD picture processing technology designed to faithfully reproduce the natural beauty of your still images when viewed on your HD Ready 1080p BRAVIA LCD TV. Whereas all other TVs have technology designed to optimise video images, the BRAVIA W4000 has BRAVIA Engine 2 for viewing videos and Photo TV HD for viewing still images. In order to enjoy PhotoTV HD, the PhotoTV HD-compatible TV and device need to be connected either with component or HDMI. Connection through component requires the user to manually select the Photo picture mode. When connected via HDMI, the television will automatically switch to Photo mode.

24P True Cinema '24p True Cinema' mode, is a perfect match for movies. Film is shot at 24 frames per second, but UK televisions operate at 25 frames per second. This means that when you watch a movie on DVD, you are seeing it sped up by 4 per cent. '24p True Cinema' enables the panel to display films at their intended 24fps (frames per second).

Box Contents

Customer Reviews

A really impressive TV
Researched and viewed a lot of TV's before going for the 40W4000, a lovely piece of kit and a great price, at 200 quid cheaper than the 100Hz 4500 it was an easy descision. I totally recommend this piece of kit if you want a good looking TV that has a fantastic picture for HD Blueray, XBox360/PS3 gaming and turns in a very good performance on standard TV broadcasts.
It is worth spending a fair bit of time adjusting the settings for each input though as I wasn't over impressed with the 'out of the box' settings, search for other users suggested settings on the web.
Very pleased with my purchase.

Sony does it again - excellent product!
This TV has replaced my beloved 12 yr old Sony Trinitron 29" CRT. I had viewed the Samsung, Panasonic & LG counterparts in both LCD & plasma formats, prior to choosing the Sony (I don't believe in blind brand loyalty).
2 weeks on, and I'm pleased to say that our viewing experience has been transformed by the W4000 - it has far exceeded all expectations! The previous reviewers have waxed lyrical about its performance, and I completely agree with every point. LCD technology has come of age, with picture quality as good as CRT.
I also appreciate the fact that the minimum viewing distance is about 6-8 feet, which suits our mid-sized living room perfectly.
I did take note of the forum comment about the W4500 being better than the W4000. Went to the Sony Centre and watched 10 minutes of 'Iron Man' (BD) on the 2 sets, side by side - and I must admit, there was absolutely no discernible difference whatsoever in any department. So, saved over £250, got free 5 year Sony warranty, and went for the W4000 - in my humble opinion, was a no-brainer!

Excellent Lcd!
After visiting a few high street electrical stores and spending hours trawling through various review sites and forums, I decided to purchase this TV.
I'm so glad I did.
Haven't had it long so I've not tested it to it's full potential, but I must say how good it looks through the standard inbuilt freeview tuner and with a 720p resolution movie, it looks marvellous. The blacks are black, the whites are white and after a little bit of tweaking the colours are lifelike. Can't wait to get a full HD film on the go!
Don't expect deep, booming bass from it's speakers, but what you do get is more than adequate.
Unfortunately, the first set we had delivered had a slight defect on the screen, a noticeable 3 inch dark patch. Thanks to Amazons excellent service, it was replaced within 4 days.
I can't recommend this telly enough. Well chuffed with it....
4.8 out of 5....