During the well publicised bad times when many Xbox 360 owners were returning their consoles for repair, I was stunned to hear stories of people purchasing Core consoles to continue playing for the two weeks they would be inconsoleable (sic). More money than sense I thought.

Fast forward to this weekend and I find myself the proud owner of a brand new 360 Arcade. Considering there’s nothing wrong with my existing Premium console, what prompted such an expensive purchase?

In an acronym: HDMI.

My Christmas present to myself last year was a new LCD television to replace the 5 year old 32″ CRT which has done sterling service but at a maximum resolution of 480p – yes folks, my headshots have been aimed at things with more jagged edges than a bread knife.

I was particularly looking forward to seeing the 360 at its best resolution so imagine my dismay as I plugged the cable into the new television to find it only supports 768 through the VGA port! My cunning plan had turned into something you could not pin a tail on and call a fox.

Now I wouldn’t call myself a AV purist but I would readily accept the label of stubborn. So at 9pm on a Saturday night I drove to Tesco and bought an Arcade console and an HDMI cable with the express intention of achieving my aim. Once I’ve posted this, I will be playing CoD4 in glorious 1080p and no doubt missing how inaccurate I could be with my aim. All this for the princely sum of £219.96.

For those of you abhorred by this tale, take solace. I objected to paying for a cable that would allow me retain optical sound whilst using the HDMI cable so I butchered the old cable with a screwdriver. After all, no point in wasting money is there?