Content here is by:
Michael Still
mikal@stillhq.com
All my Open Source projects
Online CVS server
Extracted view of CVS
Home
Site map
|
|
ImageMagick book
MythTV book
|
 |
|
 |
|
Thu, 24 Feb 2005
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
A few weeks ago I was held prisoner in Wellington for a week. I didn't get much of a chance to go out, but here's some photos of what little of Wellington I did see:
Technorati tags for this post: pictures wellington
posted at: 17:56 | path: /pictures | permanent link to this entry
There are no comments on this post yet. Be the first to make one.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Did you know if you have more tabs open in firefox than there is width on the screen to display the icons for, then you start to get some lovely paint bugs in the top right hand corner of the window. Kinda cool. I guess that means it might be time to do the annual tab cull.
Technorati tags for this post: blog firefox
posted at: 16:29 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry
There are no comments on this post yet. Be the first to make one.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The reason Linus chose the Tux penguin mascot for Linux is that he met some particularly cute penguins here in Canberra. Here's some pictures of them...
Technorati tags for this post: pictures linux tux
posted at: 13:29 | path: /pictures | permanent link to this entry
There are no comments on this post which have survived moderation. 1 posts have been culled and 1 blocked. Be the first to make a non-spam comment here, please!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
So, it had to happen eventually... I bought a can of spam for lunch a few weeks ago, and we gave it a try in the office. It was a lot nicer once the smell had died down a couple of hours later. Join me, for my adventures with spam!
Technorati tags for this post: pictures spam
posted at: 12:38 | path: /pictures | permanent link to this entry
There are no comments on this post which have survived moderation. 1 posts have been culled and 1 blocked. Be the first to make a non-spam comment here, please!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Tags for this post: andrew( ) pictures() 20041118()
posted at: 12:37 | path: /andrew/pictures/20041118 | permanent link to this entry
There are no comments on this post yet. Be the first to make one.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I've just decided that I'm going to experiment with blogging about pictures when I update them on my website. This category will be used for such posts.
Technorati tags for this post: pictures
posted at: 09:46 | path: /pictures | permanent link to this entry
There are no comments on this post yet. Be the first to make one.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
posted at: 09:33 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry
There are no comments on this post which have survived moderation. 4 posts have been culled and 0 blocked. Be the first to make a non-spam comment here, please!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Last night I attended the launch party for the Foxtel iQ in Canberra, Australia. This is the first TiVo like product to be released commercially in Australia with an Electronic Program Guide (EPG). Overall, the presentation was pretty slick, and I was impressed with the knowledge of the sales people present -- it was only the tougher questions they needed to refer to someone else. The launch seems to have generated some interest. Anyways, here's a dump of my thoughts about the whole thing.
Features: the box is a replacement for your current Foxtel digital set top box. If you're note a Foxtel digital subscriber, then you need to become one before you can get yourself an iQ. The box looks much like the one which Foxtel shipped me when I joined Foxtel digital, and whilst I can't find a product data sheet on the pace website, I believe that they're manufacturer. Who makes it is irrelevant anyways for reasons I'll discuss a little later.
Much like a TiVo (and I presume Windows Media Center edition, although I haven't used that), you can fast forward and rewind programming with a variety of speeds. The iQ only caches an hour of live video, so that's as far back as you can go. I don't believe that my TiVo series one has any such limitation, but is limited by free disc capacity. I haven't explicitly tested that though. You can pause live TV, and in fact can record two incoming streams at once, which is a win over a TiVo. The presentation made a very big deal of the pause and fast forward features, which took most of the face time with the customers to explain.
You can setup Season passes for shows with the iQ, again much like a TiVo, but the show must have been marked by Foxtel as being a series before that will work. They made comments that their EPG was still a work in progress, and that it would take some time to get all of that right. There is no concept of the device learning about genres you like, and there is no title word searching, so you can't record all of a show which is not a series that way.
The Foxtel staff pushed the "time shifting" line very hard. They see the device as solely for that purpose, and used that to explain the gaps between features available on the TiVo and the iQ. There is also no facility to download the recorded videos to watch on another device later. This isn't legal in Australia anyway, so that's probably for the best.
The remote is horrible. I love my peanut remote.
Pricing: the box is expensive. Foxtel will charge $395 for you to sign on, and $100 for the install. There is no self install. You don't own the device however, and if you cancel they take it back, just like you set top box now. That makes the iQ very expensive. You can reliably get a TiVo in the US for $90 dollars, and importing it to Australia costs about the same, which means the TiVo option comes in at about half the price of the iQ.
Foxtel also charges a monthly access fee for the device, on top of your Foxtel digital access fee for the shows.
When pushed on why the device was so expensive, the Foxtel staff said that "you should see what we pay for them". That logic amazes me to be honest -- because Foxtel got screwed and didn't do enough research, they intend to pass the pain on. Wow. That's customer service.
Legalities: it is my understanding that time shifting is not legal in Australia. All VCR ads certainly say things like "subject to copyright" on the adverts. I guess that Foxtel selling a box to time shift means that there is an implicit license for you to do that. That makes using a TiVo or a media center legal as well I would think.
EPG: now that there is EPG data for Foxtel shows, I would think that Microsoft should stand a chance of getting EPG data for the Media center happening soon. That would make me a fairly happy chappy.
Overall: the iQ feels like a bad TiVo series one clone. They talk about rolling new features out in the future, so you can hope that things improve over time. Then again, this is a big step forward for what is commercially available in Australia. Here's my buying guide:
- Technically savvy? Can install onto a PC IDE disc from a boot CD? -- Get a US TiVo and hack it.
- Don't mind not having guide data? -- Get a Windows media center
- Failing all that -- Get a Foxtel iQ
Technorati tags for this post: blog tivo foxtel tv windows media
posted at: 09:13 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry
There are no comments on this post which have survived moderation. 3 posts have been culled and 0 blocked. Be the first to make a non-spam comment here, please!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
