Posts by Nigel Whitfield.

CES 2015: The good, the mad and the POINTLESS

Re: HEVC decoder in the TV

A lot of people round these parts would much prefer a dumb display.

However, when it comes to consumers, and the way in which they are marketed to, the whole sorry saga of "HD Ready" proves just how confusing people find these things.

It's possible to use HEVC with 4K over DVB-T2; there have been some tests doing that. Realistically, I think it's pretty unlikely to happen in the UK, given our forthcoming bandwidth squeeze, but nevertheless, "does it have a decoder" is an issue ordinary punters need to be aware of when they're shopping for these things, just as "does it have HDMI 2" ought to be.

Otherwise, people will buy kit, especially at the 'bargain' end of the market that's either not able to do what they expect of it, or is underperforming (eg not supporting higher frame rates). And, just as some of us found when patiently explaining what the technical definition of "HD Ready" may be, casual consumers make assumptions - often perfectly reasonable ones - and end up shafted.

Re: Audio cast dongle - yes please

Well, more or less; but the casting system tends to involve your device not streaming directly to the receiver, but simply sending commands that say "play this stream, from this URL"

That means there are fewer hops, and even if the battery on the phone, for instance goes flat, the casting device carries on playing

In theory, you can do more smart things - I don't see why a few devices on the same home network couldn't sync playback between themselves, for instance. So, potentially it can offer a lot more flexibility than simply sending an audio stream over bluetooth.

Re: How about

Yes; that sort of thing is ideal for people who are always moving AV gear between round houses and square ones.

It's the first week back after the break. PR people are horribly enthused with the delights of new year and a free ticket to Vegas.

Everyone's convinced they really do have the most *a-ma-zing* things to show us, and their particular gizmo is obviously way better than any other smart watch or iPhone controlled lightbulb ever before in the whole history of stupidly-named gadgetry.

Sometimes, the only sane thing to do is to crawl out from under the duvet, scowl, pen three pages of bitterness and sarcasm, and then try to sleep again until spring.

Re: You've got me brimming

I think perhaps one of those new domestic beer coolers, mounted on top of an old Roomba, so you can have it trundle into the room when it's beer time?

Re: Audio cast dongle - yes please

I've got an Arcam miniBlink in the living room, which is great with a phone that has aptX. But at £90 it's probably not the sort of thing I'd go out and buy myself.

But, something that sort of size must surely be possible - or even a matchbox size, with external wall-wart PSU - for audio. Roll them out for £20 each, and I'd have one in every room, especially if they could sync network playback.

Ford recalls SUVs … to fix the UI

Re: Push-button gear change? Really?

I would guess they just get used to it; it doesn't take long to adapt.

My car is a left hand drive DS23; on that, you apply the parking brake by pressing a pedal with your left foot, and release it with a lever in your left hand. The clutch is hydraulically controlled, as it's a semi-auto.

And, after the first few times you just get used to the way of doing it. I found it fairly easy to adapt last time I used a Zipcar which had one of the fancy modern electric handbrakes (a VW Golf).

I don't think I'm particularly faster to adapt to things than other people, though perhaps having a DS I'm more open to the quirky.

Ghosts of Christmas Past: The long-ago geek gifts that made us what we are

Re: Basics

Yes, I did.

Re: Basics

Wasn't there an OA81 diode too? I think that's what I used when I made my first crystal set.

I then enhanced it using the info from the Ladybird book Making a transistor radio

I remember using the OC71 with paint scraped off in a couple of projects, too.

Re: I think Big Trak...

Here you go: Ten tech treats of Christmas past

We do like an annual nostalgic wallow round these parts.

Re: I think Big Trak...

We talked about Big Track in a piece last xmas

Re: Obligatory Rant...

I suppose you're right; I didn't explicitly set out to create a list like that, but yes, lots of these things are a fair it less structured than modern equivalents. When I was looking at the Meccano web site, I saw that even their kits have fairly specific aims.

Sure, you can build 25 different models, according to the blurb on the box, but it's nevertheless adorned with pictures of specific things for you to build, which seems a slightly different approach to the older packs, like the one we pictured.

I wonder if that's partly because as a society we've tended to embrace the ready made much more in recent years - in all aspects, even food, clothing, furniture - and so with less direct experience of making things, more direction has to be given.

And, as other people have commented, there used to be many more people around - it seemed to me as a kid, anyway - who could help. For example, a neighbour used to work at Mullard, and helped me with electronics projects when I was a kid.

Re: |

Here's a nice collection of jingles from the "Station of the 80s" if you want a wallow in nostalgia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icDdZg9qJDw

I visited the Villa Louvigny once, and saw the 208 studio, with Mike Hollis.

FREE EBOOKS: Apple falls into line with EU refund laws

Re: There is no requirement on digital content

Exactly; for whatever reason, Apple has gone well beyond the requirements of the Consumer Contracts Regulations, which include a specific exemption for digital content where download has started - just as they do for media which has had the packaging opened.

Whether you view this as a sop to people who believe in intellectual property of not, it's there and is intended presumably to counter exactly this scenario - of people obtaining something that can be (like a CD) or is already in digital format, requesting a refund and keeping their copy.

It's clear from reading elsewhere on the net that some developers are pretty annoyed about this, and in some cases with good reason. Even if there aren't a huge number of people doing it, it could make a big difference to small developers. As far as I can see, the way Apple is doing this means that you could spend £47.99 on the TomTom Europe app for your week's driving holiday, then return it afterwards, which is surely not the intention.

I suspect perhaps it's laziness; yes, the T&Cs do apparently make clear that downloads remove the right to cancel, but that's not sufficient under the CCRs. You need to make sure that it's clear that once the download starts you have the right to cancel, and the new rules seem to be much more about making things clear than burying them in a document most people never read.

I think all they really need to do is to add a pop up before download that says something like "One this download commences, you lose the automatic right to cancel your order within 14 days"

Perhaps they simply decided that rather than tweak the store apps to add an extra popup for people in certain territories, it was just easier to rewrite the rules. They may even have imagined that it would make them sound even more fluffy and consumer friendly.

But in doing so, they run the risk of upsetting quite a lot of developers; far better to actually implement the rules properly - with a pop-up in-app, and perhaps a global setting for auto-downloads that defaults to off across all devices, as well.

Lonely this Xmas? Nerds, n00bs and no-hopers' guide to dating apps, Pt.1

Re: Rugged?????

I think some people use "discreet" to mean "straight acting" because they have a tiny inkling that the latter is a bit of a questionable term and they think writing "I'm not one of those flappy flouncy types that gives us all a bad name" will take too long.

I think "straight acting" really means "may throw up behind the sofa at parties"

Re: Rugged?????

"Rugged" is one of those wonderfully flexible terms people love to use online, I find.

"Swimmers body" is another. Based on some guys who use that description, I think they omitted "... in the chest freezer"

Re: Pictures of one's privates

"If a nice fella pulled his pants down in a different environment, say while queuing at a Lidl checkout, "

Dan,

I'm shocked. Lidl?

Or were you just there for the rough trade?

Re: You city types with your fancy ways

If that happened to me, I'd be tempted to reply along the lines of "that's quite nice, but our bull's got a bigger one"

Re: a female perspective...

Only one gimp mask? I always take two into the shower!

Re: Pictures of one's privates

Listening to recordings of them with my mother (we also went to see the 'Revisited' show in the west end when it was on) she's amazed at what they got away with back then. For most of the show's run, homosexuality was still criminalised, too, which makes it even more surprising - it must have sailed completely over the heads of management.

Unless ... (poses with little finger to corner of mouth) ... it was a Massive Homosexual Conspiracy.

dah dah dah!

Nah; you're avin a larf!

Re: Pictures of one's privates

On which topic, Round the Horne Revisited was a jolly romp, which I was fortunate enough to see when it was in the west end.

For those who are completely oblivious, I recommend watching here.

Re: Pictures of one's privates

Ooh, ello Bloakey. Bona to vada your dolly old eek!

I'd write more, but I've got a criminal practise that's taking up a lot of my time

Re: Pictures of one's privates

London here too; perhaps it's an age thing... or perhaps it's related to sexual taste. If you just want a quick game of hide the sausage, I suppose there's some merit in checking the merchandise. If your tastes are more exotic, there may often be other considerations that are more important.

Re: Pictures of one's privates

Dahling! You could probably count the number of *straight* friends I have on the fingers of a badly mutilated hand.

Honestly, it's like christmas presents as far as I'm concerned: surely half the fun is in the unwrapping.

If you have nothing to offer but dick pics, well, I've probably seen enough to make a statistically relevant sample. Sending me even more just makes my eyes roll, and that of most of my fellow lovers of musical theatre.

Four tuner frenzy: The all-you-can-EEat TV Freeview PVR

Re: How does it compare?

Well, I guess it depends which ones you mean, and in what way.

For example, I still rely on my old Toppy 5800 (I loved it so much I created a website...) to find things for me using EPG search keywords. But for a lot of day to day stuff, including recording in HD, I use a DigitalStream box.

If I were picking something for a non-techy family member, this might well fit the bill (or a YouView, more likely because of the simple backwards EPG).

If I wanted customistation, I'd go for an old Toppy or Humax - but few boxes have that level of control any more, especially once they have to start jumping through hoops to get FreeviewHD certification.

Re: Interface

Sorry, no luck with that. There are no options other than those shown on screen. I've just had a good rummage in the settings for you.

No, sorry - the best you can do is list them by category/genre, but you that's it.

Well, if the idea is to use local storage rather than upgrade the network, I'm not sure that would work brilliantly. While I can get 15/16Mbps downstream, my upstream is only 0.6 - admittedly I'm on aluminium rather than copper, but probably not even 500 metres from the exchange. You'd have to limit the peer sharing quite substantially to make sure it didn't impact on my downstream (as can be see when the wretched iDevices bork everything as they upload to iCloud).

You may also need some technical tweaks to the copyright rules; the exemption allowing recording at home is "for timeshifting" and explicitly precludes "a library for repeat viewing", which is almost exactly what would be created here.

While it may indeed be a rather archaic description that hangs over from the days of the VCR, and something ordinary punters won't worry about, it would very likely exercise the minds of a company's legal department, if they wanted to create a system based on something like this.

Re: Doesn't work with any broadband

I've amended that section of the article to reflect the updates here.

BT to buy EE

Well, this is going to be interesting... I wonder how many of these they have sitting in a warehouse. And whether they'll end up having services like BT Sport added to them.

Perhaps in years to come, these will end up being as much a novelty as a HomeChoice box.

Re: Wuaki.tv?

I think that must be your IP / the info relating to it in whatever database Wuaki are using for geolocation.

http://uk.wuakit.tv works just fine for me here - I get directed there automatically.

This is the first box to do this in the UK, at least on the high street, but I recall there was a Japanese one that did the same thing, across all muxes, and possibly a BBC R&D project.

On the face of it, it's a neat idea - but to cover everything, you'd need seven tuners now, in areas where the temporary HD mux is available. And what happens if another mux is launched? You'd have a subset of channels that can't be recorded, which would confuse users.

The EE box manages 24 hours, across a selection of channels. If you were to do it for every channel, on every mux, for even 7 days, you'd need a lot more storage. To get up to the 30 days now offered by iPlayer, you'd need even more, and the cost of the boxes would likely go up a fair bit.

At some point, you're throwing quite a lot of extra money at each receiver, compared to the cost of a dumber one with no local storage. If that money were spent instead on upgrading the UK's broadband, it might make quite a difference. Plucking a figure from the air, you might well have the equivalent of over £100 per subscriber to spend on infrastructure.

Of course, the problem there is that the people saving the money (the broadband providers) aren't necessarily the ones who need to invest in the infrastructure, because the crucial parts of that are owned by BT Openreach. Because competition. Yay!

Nevertheless, it's a reasonable point - and perhaps hybrid systems where, for example, a few days catch up is stored locally on a disk and anything further back comes from the net, may well hit a sweet spot. It would be interesting to know the metrics, for instance, of how long after broadcast most programmes peak on services like iPlayer. Shifting some of that burden to the local device could be a stop-gap pending probably infrastructure upgrades.

Re: Generous Space?

Generous not necessarily in financial terms, but regarding the amount of telly you can store. My main Freeview PVR has a third of that storage, yet still manages to hold a backlog of worthy programmes with subtitles that is likely to take me months to get through.

Re: Soon to be redundant?

Well, yes; that is the big question. Had this come out a few years back, it would have looked pretty amazing, but as I said in the review, it's fallen in an odd space bewteen YouView and Freeview Connect, and if EE were to be snapped up by someone else who already has a TV service, you'd probably worry whether or not it has a long term future.

Re: Doesn't work with any broadband

I suspect this is probably down to the fact that it had previously been activated on EE broadband. Certainly, it worked without a glitch on my own non-EE service when I was testing it (but perhaps they made allowances on the review kit). I do know from an EE source that they can tell when the box has been turned on, so they may deliberately check if the box has previously been used via a specific ISP.

Are you a Geek Dad/Uncle/Mum/Aunt? Ten Techy Gifts for kids this Xmas

Well, indeed, not a completely new thing, admittedly.

You wouldn't believe the number of press releases sent out this time of year that start "If your publication is running any gift guides..." full of the most bizarre stuff imaginable. So a certain number of trips to the pub and lateral thinking were involved in this one, trying to come up with things that would appeal, without taking the easy offerings from the PRs

Re: Not helpful

Sorry about that. Still, if he's not even two, I'd say wing it and just give him the wrapping paper. Cheaper and plenty of fun at that age.

UK.gov STILL won't pop a cap on stolen mobile bills

Aaargh.

Please, enough of the politicians spouting stuff about "hardworking families"

Are those of us who are single, or without children, somehow not worth protection too? It's a loathsome meme, socially divisive, and the only reason this bunch of cowboy chancers use it is because they think it makes them sound both simultaneously fluffy and hard on those they deem not worthy of support.

Clearly, too, from the foot dragging, they're really not doing anything to protect consumers, whether in families or not. They're dicking around for as long as they can.

Even my VoIP service has a maximum spend alert to protect against fraud. If the companies, or the government, wanted to do this, it could be fixed pretty damn quick.

Assange's WikiLeaks: Give generously this Xmas – for statue of our dear leader

Re: Suggestion

Clearly, that could result from the sculpture tipping over as it's imbalanced by a massive bell-end

Oh dear...

If my recollection is correct, that mock up looks like they've set the statue in Milan, in the plaza shared by the Duomo and the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. I'm sure they think it's a lovely piece of work, but there are more appropriate places. (The bottom of the sea comes to mind).

What next? Perhaps they'll sensitively position it outside the Taj Mahal, or at Stonehenge on its world tour.

The Information Age: A day out for grown-up children?

The display cases shown in the article, and the touch screen information boards do a fairly good job, I think, of allowing most people to get something from exhibits, whether it's just a simple "This is X. It did Y in 1863" or more details.

For instance, the galvanometer case can show a lot of information, explaining how it works to magnify the relected light, with diagrams and animations, and extra information at various points. The touch screen panels tended to have a couple of main screens of primary and secondary info, and then 3 or 4 pages of background.

That may still not be quite enough background for everyone, but I think they are making a pretty good stab, by using the technology, to display things in a way that works for a broader range of people

Another lick of Lollipop: Google updates latest Android to 5.0.1

Re: Which reminds me

I recently did that on my N7 (2012); though not cracked, after a drop the digitzer stopped working, and I decided that a replacement screen would be better than buying a new tablet.

After Lollipop, I'm thinking I may as well not have bothered. I will try CM or perhaps going back to Jelly Bean.

Please, do tell me more about this subsidised Apple kit for journalists. Last time I checked, NUJ members got around 7% off some products, and iPhones are specifically excluded, along with some other items. It's roughly the same discount available to students and teachers.

The idea that we're all gifted the latest shiny stuff is a fiction. In fact, a lot of IT sites and magazines have always found it incredibly difficult to even get loan kit from Apple, who have historically been much happier to see it gushed over by far less technical types than you'll find writing on the Reg.

Brit smut slingers shafted by UK censors' stiff new stance

Re: Just to throw in a subject for debate...

@Lamont, notwithstanding my earlier throwaway comment, I do tend to agree with you.

Certainly, from some recent conversations I've had with young gentlemen, the increased openness of recent years has meant that many desire to do things that, at their tender ages, I had barely heard of, let alone seen enacted upon a sticky computer screen.

And, you're also dead on that better education is the key. PSE (or whatever the acronym is now) should not be something that parents can opt their kids out of, and it should make them aware that things they might have seen in porn are not necessarily realistic, or everyday.

That, of course, would involve people talking frankly about sex, and sadly too many - especially those with power - equate talking frankly with corrupting and depraving. They still cling to the idea that the mere fact of someone knowing about sex (or about any particular sex act) is enough to make them do it, especially if the knowledge falls into the hands of a teenage boy.

This persistence in seeing sex as only something dirty, and from which people must be protected is, in my view, far more damaging than being open and frank. We'll have grown up over these things when a teacher can say "ok class, who's heard of bukake?" and engage the kids in a frank discussion of whether or not it's appropriate for a first date, matters of consent, and so on.

Until then, because this law won't stop people seeing porn, people will continue to see things in a false context, devoid of information about consent, and safety, and it is that lack of context and understanding when it comes to sex that is the killer, not the act itself.

Re: Just to throw in a subject for debate...

Certainly, many people now have unrealistic expectations of how quickly a plumber will arrive

Re: Don't worry too much.

Unenforceable? Hah!

While they may not necessarily go out looking for some of this stuff - and a lot of producers will move their sites overseas - it's almost inevitable that this will become the sort of stick with which to beat people when the police have failed to find something else that they can use.

The original Spanner case, after all, came about because the police said they were investigating something different. They found no proof of that, but did find SM images and video, so prosecuted the participants.

We appear to be living in dangerously puritan times.

Ten Mac freeware apps for your new Apple baby

Although not free after the trial ...

Two add-ons for Mail that I find invaluable are LetterOpener Pro, which decodes pesky winmail.dat files, and MailHub, which learns where you're likely to want to file messages, and suggests the correct folder. Makes it much easier to keep on top of things. $30 for the former and $20 for the latter. Well worth it in the amount of time saved.

Free stuff:

For fan control I use smcFanControl, though I am still on Snow Leopard and a 2008 MacBook Pro.

PeakHour is useful for keeping an eye on the throughput on the network via SNMP

For database fettling, I use a MySQL client called Sequel Pro

For checking wireless stuff, and what's being advertised via Bonjour, iStumbler

LastPass (I have the premium version, to sync with the Android phone, and allow Yubikey auth)

Dolphin plugin for Firefox, makes it easy to push tabs from the tablet or phone to/from the Mac

I second the votes for Graphic Converter too; got me out of many a tight spot. Also adds some useful options to the right click menu in the Finder, like 'Set file date to EXIF date'

Be your own Big Brother: With the help of Apple, Facebook ... oh, HANG ON

Re: Tracking individuals day-to-day movements is inherently evil.

Perfectly valid comments, yes, and I did mention some of those in the article. In particular, I really can't see telling a teen that you're going to install a tracking app on their phone will do anything other than make the relationship even more fraught.

In the first draft, I referred to the "scare ware" industry, and I think there's a lot of truth in that. People are encouraged to use devices to protect from very rare events - and in some cases, rewarding a company with an ongoing revenue stream in the process. When, as all the figures show, it's far more likely that if something wicked is coming your way, it's not a stranger.

Festive streamers caught in Vulture's claws: Gadget-ogle for audiophiles, video geeks

Re: I'd quite like the Dual autochanger

Looks a neat bit of kit; I saw a couple of videos, and the splendidly named Vintage Knob site has info on the non-changer version

Re: Roku3

As far as I know, the Now TV box is, essentially, one of the Roku 2 series boxes (the XS, I think), with customised software. Whether you could flash one with the series 2 firmware would be interesting to know..