First time I had sex with a girl I thought I'd never be able to stand having sex with myself again.

I got over it. Good thing too because for some reason the ladies don't dig me.

I have been using cheap 10€ to 15€ Headsets my entire life.
This year I bought dedicated headphones for 50€ . I will never go back, quite the opposite actually, I thirst for more expensive ones. It has been hard for me to listen with cheap earphones on the go since then.

Also, it seems that internal TV codecs are way better than free PC codecs. The same file on my 1440x900 laptop looks like shit compared to 1920x1080 led tv.

That might just be the resolution and the small screen.
On a small laptop with that resolution it will look as good as a DVD.

But, for example, my laptop could easily display 720p. But it looks like shit compared too. PC codecs are far from quality in colours and detail to TV codecs.

Games don't have that problem.

Probably you could edit and tweak PC codecs preferences, but that would probably kill my CPU and GPU :P

I think I had the same thing when I got my first LCD monitor for my PC ;) Everything looked crisper and better somehow.

My parents got a 46" HD LED TV for this Christmas too. And right now I have the same feeling after watching a few movies in HD.

It could also be down to the quality of the laptop screen, which sadly a massive majority of which are just plain bad. The ipad 1 screen, even being 1024x768, is still stunning to look at, thanks to the ips screen and the colour gamut and output levels. Laptop manufactures (bar Asus and Lenovo) are content with putting low quality, low cost, cheap screens in both the high and low end product lines. Then act all surprised when tablets are eating into their profits.

It's the reason why I mostly watch stuff on my asus transformer prime, rather then my bigger laptop. The screen is just too damn good (I mean damn good) and I'm definitely a tablet covert.

Don't do it ... you must resist ... ^^

If you start to take a stroll on the audiophile path - your wallet will never forgive you. ^^

I myself bought some UE11 three years ago - spent 1000€ and the sad thing is - it was totally worth it. First time use - nearly cried out of joy.

I can agree for colours. But most of TV series in 1080p look blurry on laptop. 1080p movies look amazing.

And the same file that looks crappy on LCD notebook looks brilliantly on TV

codecs dedicated for a device have better algorhytms, that's my diagnosis.

That's still not the codec that's the screen. Your first down converting the image to a lower res (possibly 720p) then up converting it to a dumb laptop res. Add to that they have an LED backlight (which if they got a decent matrix type allows individual leds to be shut off to make blacks deeper...) and the screens are nothing a like except in the fact they are likely not IPS

The sad thing is that 1000€ still pales in comparison to the best audiophile equipment out there.

Even for headphones. Want the best? Prepare to pay the cost of a car for one. (Google Sennheiser Orpheus if you are curious or hate your wallet)

First time I saw MAME running an original arcade game on the PC (it was a 486 or a Pentium, maybe). I was simply shocked by the possibilities of emulation, and I'm still somewhat happy like a fucking child every single time I can run Ghosts'n Goblins, Splatterhouse, Black Tiger or whatever on my Core 2 Duo laptop....

First time i've heard the original pressing of Michael Jackson's Thriller. My jaw dropped, and i was able to enjoy sound again.

Now i can't even look at most of the remastered s#$t record companies are pushing out.

Similar enough?:)

How is MAME nowadays? Been a couple years since I tried it and I remember thinking it's hard to get everything working correct. Wasn't exactly a easy to use program.