Tag: TV

Play TV

Sony’s announcement last week of a TV Tuner for the PS3 was pretty uneventful for me. However this video of the interface has changed my opinion.

The menu’s look excellent and far slicker than normal Freeview boxes. The ability to view recorded content and also live TV on your PSP being streamed from your PS3 was also very impressive. Twin tuners, hard disk recording and HD to 1080p (let’s hope Freeview gets a couple of HD channels) makes for an impressive package when teamed with the PS3.

With the digital switch off almost upon us this could be a big seller for Sony.

Joost

I have three Joost private beta invites to give away. I’ve used it a couple of times over the last week or so and while it’s a bit buggy it’s one to watch especially with the new content deals being signed. If your interested then leave a comment or drop me a mail. Note that Joost works on Windows and Macs.

Back to the grind

Well after a great week off it’s back to work tomorrow. Got lot’s of outdoor work done this week which was good. The weather has been great for April – yet more freaky weather! Also got chance to enjoy the PS3 a bit more, catch up on some movies and also some TV. Sky+ is great but I can never keep up with all that I record. That meant I had over 3 weeks of some series to watch but then I can at least skip the adverts.

Also starting to get my act together with the two Macs and also thinking about off-site backup (paranoia is rife at the moment). I hadn’t really got the laptop and desktop working well together yet. The NAS drive I’ve got is good but gets noisy, so much so that I’ll be picking up an alternative or at least busting it open and replacing the fan with a larger, slower, quieter one. I’ve got the mail sorted by switching to IMAP so that all my e-mail (dating back to 98) is available on the server so from either Mac or on the web I can see it all. Next is the sharing of data between calendars, address books and a few applications I use. I’ve got a couple of options. Sign up to .Mac which is £70 a year for syncing and access to a 1 Gig iDisk. There’s other benefits but none that I would use. Alternatively I could sign up to something like Dreamhost and use it for the sole purpose of remote backup and synchronisation, making use of Transmit to keep folders in sync. Dreamhost would give me 160Gig with Webdav support for £60 a year. Decisions, decisions.

Anyway, back to watching Lost. The last three episodes have been great!

Life on Mars

Well, it ended tonight and has probably guaranteed it’s status as a classic by leaving strands open to interpretation. There may be spoilers ahead if you didn’t see tonights episode so you’ve been warned.

My take on it all is that he never woke from the coma. He had a choice to make and was still in the coma imagining he had made the choice and woke in 2006. Those scenes were all too clean. Morgons quotes about being the worlds best surgeon were very odd. No one mentioned the coma or what he had been through – it was all surreal. Sam jumping off the building was him rejecting 2006 and going back to 1973. But he never woke. So he’s still in a coma but happier with the imaginary 1973 life. The girl switching the TV off – was that Sam’s life support being switched off?

Well thats what I think but there’s a couple of alternative theories that are as plausible. 2006 is fictional and in Sam’s head. 1973 is where he’s from although the first series saw him finding his young self and parents? But then he knows all about iPods etc.

Or he did wake from the coma and he killed himself or put himself back in a coma by jumping off the roof. I doubt this one as the current day scenes seemed really false. I’m sure other people will have more alternatives.

John Simm said in an interview that he wished the last episode finished 4 minutes earlier when Sam jumps of the roof – how confused would we be if that had happened. A classic show – I’m really pleased they ended it after two series though as it went out on a high. I wonder how the Ashes to Ashes series thats allegedly starring Philip Glenister will follow this?

*Update* – The lead writer has spilled the beans on the Manchester Evening News blog. He did wake from the coma, he did commit suicide and the test card girl switching off the tv was an in-joke from the writer telling the viewers to go and do soemthing else instead of watching TV. Class.

Sky Anytime

Sky’s much lauded new feature Sky Anytime was finally made available to Sky HD customers today with Sky+ boxes to follow soon. Launch the TV Guide and press the red button to access the Sky Anytime content. Downloaded overnight and refreshing daily it will showcase Sky’s ‘best’ content and allow you to access this at anytime. Finally the missing 140GB from my Sky box is being used.

It probably also explains why my HD box fans have been on at 6AM for the last few days. I thought it was a buggy firmware release but this makes more sense. One nice aspect of this content is there are no DOG’s or adverts. While I was initially sceptical it is a nice way of catching some shows that I may have missed, especially some of the one off shows. There’s just too many channels to keep track off. It’s also free which is pretty rare for Sky.

However if I do turn it off I would have loved the option to reclaim the 140GB for my normal recordings. It’s also a bit weird how much SD content is included for Sky HD users. Finally, does it download or record off the channels as the programs are broadcast? I guess that doesn’t really matter. For the moment I’ll keep it enabled and review the content on offer. If it’s offering content outside my normal viewing then it will be worthwhile. If not then at least my box will resume it’s normal quiet life overnight.

TV Talk

Great to see Richard Hammond back on Top Gear tonight. When it happened I never thought we would see him back on TV joking about it, never mind just a few months after the crash. Pity the road laying ‘sketch’ was so lame. The crash film however was pretty shocking – amazing that he came through it at all. Thanks to YouTube it’s available only an hour after broadcasting (and pretty good quality too).

Shilpa wins Big Brother. No big surprise although good to see little mention of Jack’s girlfriend.

Sky HD rocks! Now that it’s back up and running I’m loving Battlestar and 24 in HD. The football over the weekend has also been good. There’s lots of rumours that Sky will be making Sky+ the default box from now on removing any cost for the service (about time). There’s even talk of making multi-room free. I can see the former happening but have doubts about multi-room. I wonder if there will be any announcements during the interim results on Wednesday? I would love multi-room to be free 🙂

Sports Saturday

  • Philips HD TV – £1600
  • Sky HD Box – £300
  • Sky Monthly Subscription – £52
  • Watching England get knocked out of the World Cup again on penalties, Terry and Beckham shedding tears and Andy Murray winning magestically all in high definition – priceless

Andy MurrayWhat an amazing day of sport. First Andy Murray. Great performance especially as Roddick was serving so well. Still think it’s too early to be thinking of semi’s or final’s but that performance today was one of the best sport moments of the year so far. As for England they didn’t play well when they had eleven men, they had the better of the game after Rooney was sent off, the substitutions were frankly bizarre (take off wide man and put on Crouch, aka gigantaur, with no one left to cross it?) and to be honest the England team performance throughout the world cup did not merit a semi final place. Bye.

Looking forward to Murray in the 4th round now. Just how far can he go? I hoped that the comments on his website would be a bit more positive after the nasty stuff left over the last week but the one copied below shows that despite a really good post match interview some people just never let up.

If you weren’t such an unbelievably lucky hitter and hoper, so incredibly dull and such a nasty piece of work, it would be easy to look past the fact that you’re so dam ugly.

I thought Mr Burns was a cartoon character. I didn’t realise he was real and had offspring.

So sad.

Sky Trilogy

Sky announced a brand new service today – Trilogy. Surprisingly there are three main features to this service:

1) Sky will take pre-orders for the service months before it comes out and take your money the day you pre-order the service, not the day you start using the service (although this is probably to avoid confusion as they have no clue when you will start using their service).

2) They will move the start date of the service to…whenever they please.

3) When the engineer finally shows up to install the service he’ll struggle to fit a dish and/or deliver a box that doesn’t work. That last part is for special customers only.

Of course there is no such thing as Trilogy. There is however such a thing as another delay to my HD install. The engineer couldn’t fit the dish – requires high install team. God damn sons of bitches. So I’ve got the choice of fitting the dish to my garage or the shared chimney with my neighbour. I’ll plump for the garage as it’s probably easier in the long run. I learned last year with fences that seemingly innocuous things turn difficult when your neighbour is involved. Main worry was that the high install team are in high demand and it could be weeks. Thankfully I’ve got a booking for Saturday 10th June. So I’ll miss the first game of the World Cup but hopefully that is all.

So from pre-ordering at the end of March I’ve had install dates of 23rd May, 27th May, 30th May and now 10th June. I just hope that when I do eventually get a box it works. They’ve had everyone’s £300 who pre-ordered since end of March – that’s £12 million. If you do end up cancelling they have problems refunding credit cards so it will take 6-8 weeks to issue a cheque. Rupert Murdoch – genius or cunt.