It's my birthday next Monday. I'm very close to finally getting myself an Xbox 360 having seen a fantastic deal on the premium version bundled with a stack of well regarded games and a second joypad.

The purchase is nudging me towards buying an LCD display to hold me over for a short while until there's a display on the market that better suits my screen size and quality demands (not to mention to hold me over until I could afford said bigger/better display)….

All this is obviously leaving me eyeing the 360`s HD DVD add on (which is �129 over here), but ironically if I do stretch my birthday budget and get a small HDTV to tide me over it`ll probably leave me out of pocket to get the little drive as well. I`m still deeply torn on the whole hi def wars. It`s frustrated me so much… I`m still not even sure I`d want to spend �129 and accumulate a collection for a format that might fail.

I'm in a pickle.