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* Posts by Simon Grierson

18 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Jun 2007

Netflix dares UK freetards: Watch new Breaking Bad NOW or torrent it?

Simon Grierson

I doubt it'll stop the hardcore torrenters...

Simply said if your used to acquiring your media from a certain outlet, you'll continue doing so.

What pisses me off is the neanderthal atitude fo network TV execs with regards to online streaming.

E.G. Why cant the BBC, ITV, C4, 5 all have every programme they output accross their channels on catch up? And why are some shows available for longer than others?

E.G. 5 showed Sons of Anarchy S5 earlier this year, and it was on demand 5 - but now they are repeating it on 5usa - it's not. The only outlet I can get it is through purchasing it at a greatly over-inflated price.

I have to wait indefinitely for netflix to get it.

Same goes for Dexter season 7.

I am NOT paying £25 a show for HD versions, nor am I going to pay Sky £50 a month to watch a handful of shows.

Netflix has been going great guns of late, and it's more watched in our house than mainstream telly - Orange is the new Black, house of Cards, the back catalogue for Sons of Anarchy, and they're getting better with their movie selection.

If TV executives got their fingers out their bums then they'd see that there is demand for on-demand at a reasonable price , and they'd get a whole new bunch of people hooked on their shows in the future.

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Samsung Android 4.0 smartphone priced for Blighty

Simon Grierson
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FAIL

No evidence?

Apart from the patent Apple filed in 2008, before Android 1.0 was even introduced?

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/cell-phones/apple-files-notification-screen-patent-is-this-really-that-unique/122

So care to rethink your post?

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Apple to sell unlocked iPhone 4

Simon Grierson

Holy cow

While this is about average for a Sim free phone (the HTC Desire on PAYG is usually around £400-500 depending on carrier), it's still expensive. The iPad 3g 32gb is exactly the same price as a ipad at the same spec, despite 3x the screen real estate, twice the battery etc.

A camera and Gyroscope dont add that much to the price of a phone!

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Queuing for an iPad? Why?

Simon Grierson
FAIL

Correction: Keynote video VGA out does work

Just to correct your criticism of Keynote presentations working with the Video Out.

it does work,

See the list here of apps that work with video out:

http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1106525

Will this Register anti-apple anti-ipad crusade at least research facts before spouting off?

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Sky punts 'truly unlimited' 20Mb/s broadband

Simon Grierson
WTF?

Virgin do to!

Virgin's 50meg broadband is unilimted, uncapped and un-shaped. (Unlike their other offerings).

As far as i know.

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Newsnight tries banalysis 2.0 for Prime Ministerial debates

Simon Grierson
Badgers

Charlie Brooker...

. has a good take on this 'visual representation' nonsense on the news. You used to have a man sitting in a studio reading the news. But now, they will jet people off to stand in front of somthing - even if they could have delivered the same peice in studio.

Also, asking the public their opinion on things - yeah, right - a kneejerk reaction by someone who has absolutely no idea what they are talking about beyond what they made up in the last few seconds is SO much more newsworthy than professional analysis!

Likewise, monitoring the effluence stream that is Twitter reaches a new low. The media are obsessed with Twitter, but I dont know a single living real person who uses it!

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iPhone 4.0: iAds, multitasking, and 98 tweaks

Simon Grierson
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Catchup

Finally the Iphone OS is actualy doing stuff people want - multitasking may be late to the table, but at least it's not going to be a battery drainer.

My Android often mysteriously runs out of juice - only for me to find that there are dozens of apps slowing the thing down and polling GPS all the time (Hello Google Maps!!

Folders is also a massive win - the main hate I have for iphone OS is the reams of icons that just seem to randomly place themselves. This means I can have everything easily placed on one screen.

The next thing I want to see is Widgets and notifications in a sensible place rather than right on top of what you are doing!

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Murdoch tells old media to 'stand up' to Google, Bing

Simon Grierson
Jobs Horns

Old media vs New

Murdoch is trying to stem the flow of free news so his strategy will pay off.

However, given the huge number of newspapers and news sites across the globe, Twitter, Facebook, etc, it wont be long before his strategy fails.

Given the dredging of newsgroup posts for free news stories, perhaps we should charge him for access?

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Tories ask: Why BBC3, BBC4?

Simon Grierson
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BBC3 and 4

Most of the programming that is on BBC3 and 4 ends up on BBC 1 and 2 repeated anyway, or simply channel-swapped. Torchwood, Little Britain, Screenwipe, QI, Shooting Stars, Heroes, etc.

If they took BBC3 and 4 off the air, they could fill BBC 1 & 2 with fewer repeats and more programming. And get rid of Snog, Marry or Avoid...

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iPhone 3.0 adds cut-and-paste, search, new dev toys

Simon Grierson
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Palm Pre and WebOS p***es all over this

Sorry, but I cant help feeling that Apple have let the boat go on this one.

Push messaging instead of background tasks? No decent app organisation structure (instead of 10000s of apps cluttered around multtiple screens), no video recording, no home screen (proper with summary of upcomming events, messages received etc). What are they on?

Take a look at WebOS from palm - it's doing everything we want iPhone 3.0 to do and more, right from the getgo.

I doubt the Pre will be as popular as the iPhone but then what will be?

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Nokia N95 8GB becomes first phone to win DLNA thumbs-up

Simon Grierson
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Can quite happily copy music over

I can copy msuic, videos,and photos over from my EyeConnect equipped imac to my N95 8Gb fine!

I can even play music directly off my N95 from the Netgear Radio I have too :-)

Not only that, my Ps3 connects to both too!

All excellent!

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Apple cuts UK iTunes prices

Simon Grierson
Unhappy

0.99 eurocents is 0.74p

Do we know if Apple has to charge VAT on their iTunes store downloads?

if so, some EU countries charge up to 25% VAT, whereas we are 17.5%.

That could make for a big difference too.

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Tumbleweeds outnumber punters, as iPhone's First Night flops

Simon Grierson
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Better deals:

Some web dealers are selling the ipoD Touch 8gb for £182, and some web based phone dealers are selling mobile contracts with a free phone, a free iPod touch 8gb (or 16gb) for £30-£35 a month, with more minutes and texts on a variety of networks.

i expected this to happen.

Sure, I get inclusive Wifi access with the iPhone, but I can pay for that separately and still save compared to the iPhone if I go for one of these other deals.

N95 8gb is being offered for free on various networks.

if the iPhone was available on every network, for free, for £30 a month with the same number of texts and minutes, then it'd be a done deal.

However, Apple insists on its crazy locking down and will suffer in the long term as a result.

Who else bets that in 12-18 months Apple will buy out of its' deal with o2 and open it up with everyone else?

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The BBC iPlayer 'launch' that wasn't

Simon Grierson

Dreadful

I've managed to install it on my Mac, via XP running on Paralells:

Sadly, it's a slick looking, bud dreadfully implemented interface, that forces the user into a very tightly controlled viewing interface that seems to confuse, rahter than benefit.

Why is it American TV channels have got it so right? Distribute for money over ITunes, and stream for free, in HD, over their own websites using a plugin that works via your browser, on Macs and PCs in IE and Firefox.

For all the money they are investing in this thing, I'd rather they just abandon it and wait until a better solution comes along.

I can see it being a novelty that wears out after a few weeks of frustrated people being hit with DRM related problems.

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Open sourcers rattle EU sabre at BBC on demand player

Simon Grierson

Another solution

In the US, ABC, NBC, FOx, Sci-Fi dont even bother with the likes of Windows Media Player to deliver streamed video.

They use Flash video - in some cases, in high definition too.

ABC had all their episodes of Alias up while the show was running, Heroes is available to stream too.

The only catch? It's restricted - by IP - to the US Only.

Guess what Mr BBC? You have your solution there already!

Furthermore, the Kontiki solution they have chosen is extremely limited. It requires:

A Windows XP PC running Internet Explorer 6, and a copy of Windows Media Player 10 or 11.

Go for anything else and you get errors galore. Sky Anytime and 40d don't work very well on Vista, wont work with Firefox at all, and get very upset if you dont have the right DRM components for Windows Media Player.

Finally, Kontiki is P2P based - and lots of peoples' broadband providers trhottle those ports, thus extremely long download times can be expected. Sky Anytime and 40d take FOREVER to download very poor quality versions of the TV shows.

For some reason, the entire UK media has fallen in love with this rubbish system, and yet the US market has gone wholesale for a far fairer alternative.

Surely the American media companies are the example to follow?

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