1st couple days w/ Sony blu-ray GTV

I bought the Sony GTV box on a whim because my cheapo Insignia BR player died and couldn't be fixed. Yes, $400 is a lot of $$ to spend on a peripheral, but I figured it was worth a shot (at least for the 30 days before I have to take it back to BB).

I have to say, overall I'm impressed. I have Dish Network, so I'm getting full integration with my cable stuff, so maybe that's why I'm so pleased, but pleased I am. I didn't take more than an evening to get up to speed with the box and now I don't know if i could watch TV without it.

Yesterday the wife and I were home and wanted to catch up on Fringe, which we hadn't seen yet this season. I had the first three episodes on the DVR and they popped right up when I searched Fringe. The last episode got skipped when I had to tape something else, so I had to get it off the web. It came right up and I bought it from Amazon VOD. I tried to watch from the Fox site, but something got funky and the commercials played over the content on the first commercial break. Maybe a one-time bug, maybe not, but I had another option right there so I went with it. A drag that Amazon doesn't do HD VOD for GTV yet, but it's early days.

The web experience has been great. Once I figured out how to zoom, I was reading away while watching TV. The best way I've found to nav the different open apps is to press and hold the home button and go through the overlay screen. That's been a big time saver.

One pleasant surprise: Napster. I hadn't tried this service but had heard good things about their reboot, so I thought I'd give it a try. Thus far, very cool to have 10 million tunes at my fingertips.

Of course, I wouldn't have needed to try Napster if I could have accessed my music server, but I can't. The box sees the drive on the network, but won't let me access it. Drag. But I'm all about the new and Napster's worth a try for a month or so.

Another head scratcher: There's no way to mute the TV and listen to music that I've found. Everything's going through my AV receiver and I just haven't figured it out. I like to watch sports with the sound off and music on. As it is, the TV sound stays under the tunes, but the tunes are louder. Not exactly an audiophile experience.

My biggest question now is whether I should keep the Sony or return it and get the Revue through Dish. They're selling it for $179. For that I could get the box and a pretty pretty decent blu-ray player and still come in under the Sony price. I looked at the Logitech and the keyboard felt pretty cheap to me. Not to mention that a full keyboard is not couch friendly in my place.

Hmmmm..

Anyway, I wanted to drop off a few thoughts for you. Like I say, I'm pretty impressed and the future will only bring better, cooler stuff. More later as I get into it.