Don’t fear Sky?

I'm not afraid of Sky, I just really don't like them very much.

Ashleigh brought to my attention an article on The Register called Don't be scared of Sky. It's an interesting read, and contains these gems:

"Churn (cancellation) levels are higher than ever, and the cynical majority in the industry reportedly believe the new portfolio of services is a cunning ruse to improve its subscriber statistics as it seems to have reached a difficult commercial plateau in customer acquisition. When you phone Sky to announce your intention to leave, the company's desperate customer support staff will do virtually anything to keep you (word to the wise: if you want a few months subscription free, or to bump up your package, call them up and tell them you're getting Freeview or NTL instead). The UK isn't quite the same dynamic as the US, with its hundreds of millions of households. The reasons for the slow down are simple - it costs too much, the content is getting worse by the day, and you can get better elsewhere."

"What do I want to watch? Probably less than 10 per cent of what Sky's dismal, failing waste of a platform has to offer."

It would appear that I'm really not the only one getting rid of Sky, as I suspected (and hoped, to be honest). I've heard tales of digital aerial installers being busier than ever as more and more people decide that chucking £45 away on a raft of channels you're never going to watch is pretty dumb. The one thing Sky have got that makes their position particularly potent at the present time is Sky+; It's just so damned convenient. "Punters" love it. It's really, really easy to use (even my 9 month old son has inadvertently recorded TV programs before), and you don't even need video cassettes!!!

Media Center: Moving forward

So the aerial install is done and my Media PC has existed quite nicely for the last week, recording random crap whenever I asked it to. I had one tense moment when the machine rebooted itself overnight, but a quick check of the event log showed that this was "intended functionality" - thanks Windows Update! (Which makes me wonder, if I've got something scheduled to record at 3am, and Windows decides to reboot, will it? Or will it wait?)

I bought a nice, capacious 300gb Seagate drive, and have transferred the contents of my 120gb IDE drive across (currently my Dell has a 160gb SATA and 120gb IDE drive in it) with the intention of harvesting the IDE drive for my Media PC. While 120gb isn't ideal (a recording of Freebie and the Bean the other night takes up 4.2gb) it'll do. If all else fails, I'll stick a USB2.0 card in the Media PC and hang an external drive off the back. My newly installed piece of Ethernet cable lets me do two things: copy content from the Media PC to the Dell in less than a day, and frees up the slot my wireless card was in for the aforementioned USB2.0 card.

I've also taken the opportunity to back my iTunes music folder off onto another drive (a 120gb drive I've got in a USB2 caddy) which will now be placed in a drawer and never used again.

So what's next? Stick the 120gb drive in the Media PC, move it back downstairs, and show the wife how to use it, that's what. I need to start using this thing to replace my SKY+ box now that the aerial work is done. I may well pick up another card for the Dell too.

Oh, and if anyone knows of a decent tool to convert dvr-ms files into something more agreeable, let me know

Eleventh Hour

I managed to watch the second episode of this four part series last night, and was even more impressed than I was after the first. Patrick Stewart plays the role of Ian Hood perfectly. It's actually very refreshing to see him playing a character who's far more human than the two roles he's most famous for. Ashely Jensen is also utterly superb, and it's thanks to both of these actors that the series manages to be as affecting as it is. I really warmed to Jensen after seeing her in Extras; I had high hopes for her future career, but you never know how it's going to turn out. Based on her performance in this, she has a very bright future ahead of her. It's also refreshing to see a female body-guard character, rather than the stereotypical knuckleheads It's genuinely one of the most unsettling, thought-provoking and yet humorous series I've come across in a while. It's a shame there are only the four episodes in this run, but I'd hope that Jensen and Stewart had enough fun making it to do some more. Stephen Gallagher's writing is also particularly strong here - I'm familiar with his particular brand of bio-horror from dramatisations like Chimera, but have never really read any of his novels. I initially thought that Ian Hood might have been a character he'd written about before, but I can't find any mention of him in his previous books. So Eleventh Hour gets a big thumbs up from me. The state of British television is a beautiful thing to see at the moment. This, Hotel Babylon, Life on Mars, and things like Hustle and Spooks are all proving that we can produce excellent, character driven drama of at least equivalent quality to the US, and sometimes more.

It’s alive! (nearly)

My Media Center PC continues to move slowly towards full capacity.

I'm still not quite there though. Last night I did some more fiddling. I've found that setting the s-video output on my newly installed Nvidia card to NTSC actually produces a better picture than using PAL. I've also found that using the MCE Config Reset tool I discovered online has put the "toolbars" back to where they should be. Divx video works brilliantly too, producing a perfectly watchable picture on my Sony Wega TV.

The only problem I have now is that the Sweetspot TV card doesn't pick up digital television terribly well through my aerial. In actual fact, I've noticed that certain channels on the Wega's IDTV aren't quite right, with distortion and flickering being quite visible. My conclusion: I need to fit a new aerial. Hopefully once that's done, the Sweetspot and IDTV will function correctly, and I can start to record some programs on the Media PC.
But I'm getting there. I've ordered a Media Center remote to make life easier when watching video on there. If the worst comes to the worst, I'll probably leave the Media Center in place just to stream and copy media to, rather than record on. Hopefully my aerial upgrade will

Hotel Babylon

It wasn't so long ago that I was massively dissapointed by the BBC. They had the capacity to produce world class, character driven, dramatic television of a standard equivalent to (or higher than) most of the American networks, and yet they never managed to pull it off. Lately though, things have started to change. Spooks started well, dropped in quality for a bit, and returned to form with its latest series. Last years triumphant return of Doctor Who proved that the BBC can do decent Sci-Fi. And this year is looking to be just as good, if not better than past years. Which brings me to Hotel Babylon, and Life on Mars. I'll cover Mars later. I wasn't expecting a lot from Hotel Babylon. I knew it had Tamsin Outhwaite in it, and I knew it had Max Beasley in it. I also knew it had Dexter Fletcher in it (or "that bloke from Pressgang") but I was determined not to let that put me off. Needless to say, it suprised me. Having watched a couple of series of Las Vegas, it's easier to see the similarities between that show and this; the flashy camera moves, the aerial shots of London, and the general tone are very similar. There is a notable abscense of James Caane, but in fairness the same could be said for later series of Las Vegas. What I liked about Hotel Babylon, is that it's teasing little details about characters. It's not trying to do too much, too quickly, and has a certain degree of confidence which allows it to find its own pace. Beasley is good, as is Outhwaite, but I found Flethcher's performance to be particularly enjoyable. So, keep it up BBC! I'll post about Life on Mars later

A Simple Plan

Sky+ is costing me too much money. I'm paying £42.50 a month (or some similarly moronic amount of money) for all the movie channels, all the sports channels, and everything else. What do I actually watch? The BBC and ITV channels, and my son watches Playhouse Disney. Having started weening him off Disney in favour of Cbeebies, I don't think he's going to be bothered. Plus, he's 8 months old - how fussy can he be?

So, here's the plan - ditch Sky+, build Windows Media Center Edition PC, sit MCE PC in front room next to TV, enjoy.

I originally thought I'd have all sorts of aerial installation fun ahead of me, but it turns out I can get Freeview with my existing aerial afterall (just plug the cable into the right port on the back of the TV, Dan). So, all that remains is to purchase the components for the MCE machine (tv card, video card with tv-out, larger hard drive, remote control) and build it.

I will document my trials and tribulations here.