You're right, speakers with internal power supplies are really nice, I have quite good 20W types that directly plug into the IEC outlet at the back of your computer.
PAL TV is visibly better compared to NTSC, I had to watch US TV for 10 days when in NYC, and it always looks slightly blurred (Concerning the sound I don't know whether it was a bad movie or typical, anyway it sounded like transmitted over the phone, even on a dolby surround system). Also there seem to be some channels you definitely don't need (at least more than here), I've never seen more bad movies than those my host always kept running. The more channels you have the more useless ones you get. [Linked Image] (Austria has 2, ORF 1 on VHF and ORF 2 on UHF, if we want more we can get cable/satellite and tune in german stations, some of which are hardly better than the US ones I mentioned above).