Once You Go HD, You Don’t Go Back

I recently bought some 5.1 over the ear headphones to use for gaming and it got me doing some reflective thinking.

I remember the first time I played a console videogame on a HD television (PC gaming is another matter altogether). It was Gears of War. I was playing it on a poorly wall mounted 32″ LCD on a wall bracket meant for a TV two thirds of its weight and at a dodgy angle from about 4 meters away in my kitchen. And it was good.

That first HD experience prompted me into buying a VGA cable for my 15″ LCD screen upstairs in my room. As it had no component cable inputs I had not been using high definition on that screen. After I got that VGA cable I never went back. Since then I’ve bought a beast of a TV. I now game on a 32″ Samsung still using the VGA cable with the 360 and a component cable for the Wii (don’t worry, I shall be getting rid of that soon).

This went on for months and I got more and more acclimated to teeny tiny pixels of joy dancing in front of me, alluring me to play more with their florescent appeal. Because of this conditioning I find gaming with SD sources annoying and gaming on Cathode Ray Tubes genuinely difficult. We still have a massive flatscreen CRT in our living room and, I kid you not, I can hear the super high frequency hum of the coils in the flyback transformer. Something Likely due to wear over time of the lamination causing them to more freely vibrate (oh yes, I do my homework). I can’t even watch regular old TV on that one any more as it gives me a headache.

As I get used to my HD gaming and begin thinking that this is the bee’s knees, I begin to want after something more. My desires for an optimum gaming experience have not fully been satisfied yet, and the logical next step is surround sound. Arguably the most immersive of the gadgets one can use in gaming. I had experienced surround sound setups in the past, occasionally gaming on a wealthy friend’s setup, and doing so pushed me into taking steps into acquiring this amazing technology.

After looking into it a little bit I felt that 5.1 headphones were my best bet as I could get them for a very reasonable £80 compared to a much more expensive speaker set-ups. That fact coupled with the unsymmetrical placement of my gaming area meant that headphones were my only bet. So I bought them and waited for them to arrive.

A week or so later me and the family were setting up the Christmas tree (of all things) when a man in brown shorts knocked on the door. After signing for them on one of those annoying digital hand-held doo-dads I scurried away and tore the packaging open and immediately delved into the spaghetti hell that was behind my TV and systems. I plugged everything that needed to be plugged and powered up everything that needed to be powered and set about optimising the device to my own personal preferences.

The first game I played with the headphones was Left4Dead and I can tell you: It makes a MAJOR difference to your entire style of gaming. It feels more immersive, it makes you better at the game as it allows you to locate things by sound (no more boomers hiding in the trees thank you very much) and it lets you hear things that you don’t get in a stereo setup. There are sound effects that are not present in non-5.1 setups. For example: I was playing through some other games to get a feel of what they were like with surround sound and I came to GTA4 and I started a game. I was trundling along, as you do, when one thing led to another and I jacked a car. I drove this car over some sloped roads and people and was greeted with a brand new noise! Never before has I heard the creaking of the suspension. Like I say, it makes a difference to immersion.

There has been a downside to using these headphones. While they do come equipped with a 360-compatible microphone, it is a bit rubbish as is the case with most 3rd party headsets. It occasionally cuts out or hums and the jack sits very loose in the controller. As a result of this I tend not to use the mic any more which is a shame. But for those times when I want to experience 5.1 goodness AND be able to chat with friends I have to use a rather silly, but effective, solution. What I do is wear the headphones over the head as intended, and then lay the 360 headset across the back of my neck and angle the mic in front of my mouth. I have to set the voice output to speakers and this can be done on the fly in the preferences menu, but the major annoyance of this (other than how absurd I must look) is that I have to turn the game volume way down to be able to hear anyone over the sound of zombies screeching or bullets flying. And this somewhat kills the immersion that I was after in the first place.

But where does one go from here. What is left for me to upgrade to? I am at the limit of my financial boundaries on such things. And I certainly can’t use a bigger screen as I wouldn’t be able to get further enough away from it. I shall make do and enjoy my setup as it is now.

So overall, HD and 5.1 is a joy. It is an expensive joy that uses up a lot of space but thinking back, I feel that it was worth the expense. I went after them for immersion and a better gaming experience and they enabled me to become better at the games I play. But that is merely a happy side effect.

Image source, for those interested:
http://blog.audiovideointeriors.com/208great/ (The $6million home theater)
http://www.techeblog.com/index.php/tech-gadget/ces-2008-panasonic-150-inch-plasma-revealed-video- (150″ Panasonic plasma screen)