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Welcome to my updated website. I wasn't getting any time to work on this anymore (see later posts about my family!) so I've decide to turn the whole site into a web log. I first wrote a web log back in 2002/3 when Flavia and I were travelling around the world, its still a fun read and you can see it here. For my new blog I've picked the main topics I seem to spend most time doing and researching and I'll blog them as I find anything I think is interesting or useful. Ask me question (I'll post it to the blog) by mailing me.
These are the last 5 entries in the blog, to view the blog by topic follow a link below or the link next to any post.
Technology | Web Development | Travel & family | Sport | Misc
| Posted | Comment |
| roj Technology 11 August 2008 |
Well I've had my old SPV M700 (the rebranded HTC3600) mobile for a year so I was due an upgrade. I wanted to keep windows mobile and my sling player and I like HTC phones so I was thinking of getting the O2 XDA Orbit as an upgrade. That would require a switch of operators so I gave orange a call on the off chance they had a new phone coming out I didn't know about, and they did the HTC Touch Diamond, HTC's newest phone and one they are now putting their name to rather than allowing it to rebranded. This is a nice phone, windows mobile 6.1, 3MB camera, 3G+ and almost half the size of my SPV. I have the upgrade now and it really is a great looking phone, and good for browsing too (it has the new opera mini browser installed as its default browser). Funnily enough it came out on almost exactly the same day as the new iPhone, which also looks a good phone and I considered it for a minute, but settled on the new HTC. BTW HTC have installed its TouchFlo system on top of windows which allows the phone to really be used without a stylus (there still is one for when you want it). Its worth noting that HTC have been making touch phones for years, so this is not a iPhone rip off. The only negatives are that HTC decided not to add a SD slot for extra memory (4Gb is on board), and it still does not have a 3.5" stereo jack so you can't use your own head phones (you can buy an adapter but its not in the box). You can see the phone on orange here.
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| roj Technology 22 June 2008 |
I saw all the news about the Freesat launch recently, not immediately relevant to me because I have a skyHD box, the only new HD channel on offer via Freesat is ITV (which I never watch). However it did get me thinking about the spare satellite connection and my new powerful PC. I have tried DVB-T in the past in my PC and picked up a load of channels, but I ditched this once I got my Slingbox. However getting and recording HD (mostly BBCHD for now) via Freesat would be nice.
A bit of research later and I can see that if I get a DVB-S card I should be able to pick up Freesat, and for now that will include the HD channels, one day they plan to broadcast the HD over DVB-S2 but for now are on DVB-S. So I need one which will run with Vista 64 and two I narrow down on are the Hauppauge Nova S2 (DVB-S and S2 about £70)) and the Pinnacle 7010i (dual DVB-T and dual DVB-S about £35). The latter seems to be a couple of years old and is PCIe instead of PCI, but I have a spare PCIe port and I manage to pick one up from Play.com for £32 (they’ve now sold out and these are hard to come by). It installs a treat, Vista gets the drivers for me as soon as I boot up. I don’t bother to run the enclosed software, but instead try (a buy for about £10) a copy of DVBviewer, which is pretty easy to use and can scan about 500 video and audio channels over satellite). I can’t watch the HD channels because none of my H.264 codec (I had Nero and ATI) work, so I try (and buy for about £7.50) the Coreavc H.264 codec and I then pick up beautiful BBC and Luxe HD channels, the latter seems to have pretty average content, but BBCHD is worth the license fee alone. ITV HD at the moment still eludes me but I’m not losing sleep over it! I found 2 pretty helpful threads on getting this all running, one on avforms and one on digitalspy. |
| roj Technology 22 June 2008 |
Well I finally got around to upgrading my PC, now that I want to do some video editing with my HD camcorder, and play some of my HD movies on my PC (and actually not notice how slow vista is) I need an upgrade. A new AM2 motherboard (ASUS), dual core (AMD) processor, PCIe Graphics card (ASUS), Toshiba HD-DVD rom drive, some DDR2 memory (Samsung) and a new PSU (quiet IT colors 550W) later and I've practically got a new PC. So I buy a new (ASUS) case, stick all my old hardware and my XP HDD (I had a dual boot PC) in it and I have a working XP PC, using my KVM I can then start playing around with my new kit in my old Lian-Li case. Once put together I decide its time to upgrade to Vista 64 (ultimate) SP1 as well (I was running Vista x86). The PC build and O/S install is the easiest I've ever done (my 5th plus helping a few friends out now and then). The only problem I had with Vista 64 was none of my wireless adapters worked, rather than buy a new one I decided to ditch wireless and get a set of homeplugs and upgrade the whole home network to used the existing electricity cables. This is a great result, so easy and now all the PCs have network a stable access at 83Mbps. The whole PC build / upgrade cost only £200 with another £60 odd for 3 homeplugs. I now also have two PCs which is handy if you’re running something long and intensive (like HD movie conversion). |
| roj Technology 11 March 2008 |
Well BluRay has won the war but at the moment HD-DVD players are selling like hot cakes, and the HD-DVD films in some countries (eg. Australia and Germany) are outselling (or at least matching) BluRay titles. So what's going on? Well since Toshiba (and then Microsoft) announced they will stop producing HD hardware the price of the players has plummeted, but canny consumers have realised that they can buy into HiDef very cheaply and wait for BluRay to finish their players and get them to an affordable price. Remember there is still no guarantee BluRay will replace SD (standard definition) DVD before the next big thing (HD downloads etc) comes along. Because for many ordinary users (who are only just thinking of getting an HiDef capable TV and an upscaling SD DVD player) the difference between HD and SD isn't perceived to be that big.
For someone who has had SkyHD for nearly 2 years I can see the difference and enjoy watching HiDef consent, but I will only pay a small premium on SD content for it. Ie. HD-DVD. You can now get a Toshiba EP30 on Play.com for under £50, it still includes 2 films and an HDMI cable (its fine don't be tricked into buying an expensive imitation, the signal is digital, ie. 1's and 0's), but they also offer one with 7 free films fro £70. Amazon will surely respond with an offer to match. The UK HD software market has not seen price drops to match the hardware, but with HD-DVD you can buy discs from anywhere and the US (Amazon.com and deepdiscount.com), Germany (Amazon.de) and Australia (dvdcrave and ezydvd) all have title from £5 (in some cases cheaper than the SD DVD equivalent!). It just a case of not showing your hand to early, the titles you want will come down in price, but will also go out of stock and potentially never be replaced, so it its down to who blinks first! With 800 titles world wide there's enough to keep you going until BluRay is finished, affordable and definitely going to be here to stay. |
| roj Technology 11 February 2008 |
I had been ignoring the so called HD 'format war' between the HD-DVD and BluRay camps. I knew that Sony's BD was bigger (ie. 50G to 30G) and naively thought that meant it was better and would probably win, but assumed they would both be too expensive for a while. Plus there is no guarantee that either HD/BD discs will be the next format after the very popular DVD, consumers could well skip a generation and go straight to HD downloads, ie. getting stuff when you want to watch it rather than buying films on media you own, but usually only watch once. I am a fan of watching HD content though, SkyHD and in particular the BBCHD channel has some fantastic stuff.
I was prompted to look into this a bit further for 3 reasons: 1. The prices have come down a lot quicker than I thought (particularly for HD-DVD) 2. Streaming media over the Internet seems to be taking longer to develop than I thought (especially in hardware), 3. Amazon DVD rental started offering a lot of HD/BD's at no extra cost over DVDs (presumably as do their rivals). Once I did look I found my early view of BluRay being superior wasn't nearly so clear cut. I think if there is a winner in the war it will be BluRay, due to Sony including a BD player in the PS3, but more importantly because Sony have worked harder at getting the major studios onboard (they own one themselves). Also cynically because I think the studios think will make more money via the BluRay route. However I have bought an HD-DVD player, because when I looked a bit further at the technical details I saw the disc size was a bit of red herring. Both formats have enough size and play HD movies very well and to a similar standard (I don't believe you could tell them apart). However Toshiba (the main producers of HD-DVD players) have come to market quicker with a finished machine. Most BD player's are still profile 1.0, ie. No Picture in Picture (coming in 1.1) or internet access (2.0) whereas HD-DVD has those features now, on the players and the disks (note: its probable the PS3 will eventually be upgradeable to 2.0, but none of the other players have the hardware to be). Not only are the HD players fully featured but they are half the price! Also the HD-DVD format is region free, so you can buy disks from anywhere, and due to international distribution deals even the so called exclusive studios are publishing HDs in other regions (eg. Look on Amazon.de for the Fantastic 4 by Fox, a BD exclusive studio, more examples here). I was ready to jump in and get the Toshiba-EP30 with 7 free disks for £190, but then Warner switched to BD exclusivity, so I waited and when Toshiba dropped the EP30 to £120 (still with 7 free films) I jumped, ordering from Play.com. Both they and Amazon sold out at the end of January in EP30's which had gone to the top of the sales charts. The 7 free films offer has now finished, but there are still 2 in the box (300 and Bourne 2) and its seems you will probably be able to pick one up for sub £100 now. Also not only is this a superb HD player (and believe me the extra features are not gimmicks, it great to be able it change language, add subtitles or access the extras once the film has started, also internet access for firmware updates and content is going to be a really great addition - once the media pros work out how best to utilise this), but it also upscales SD very well, giving new life to your DVD collection (as I believe does the PS3). So I think the war will be on hold now that Toshiba have cut prices, and if they are losing money I'm sure they are losing less per machine than Sony are on the PS3 (which is priced to compete with the X-box, so Sony will find it hard to react to the recent Toshiba price cut). For the rest of 2008 I'll be making the odd purchase (probably from abroad - see here for bargains) and watching my HD rental films and maybe next year or when there is a sub £200 fully featured BluRay player I might get one too (or a PS3 but I'm not a big gamer and my son is too young, the Wii is more likely). At the very worst I'll be left with a great upscaling SD player, plus it will still play my HD films! Ultimately it should be consumers not studios who will decide if there is a format winner, and buying the more expensive and locked format (with less features) doesn't make sense right now - unless you are getting it for the games. |
Thanks to everyone who has enquired, but I am currently working as an Internet / Intranet and E-commerce consultant / developer for a large European consultancy firm. I am not looking for a new job, but if you are an employer / recruitment agency and you think you have the "offer of a life-time" then check my CV for details of what I might respond to.
NB: All views and opinions on this website are my own, and not those of any employer,
or institute related to my research.