Posts by The Avangelist

World+Dog says 'no thanks' to 3D TV

Porn is a good point

I want to correct the anonymous coward, people didn't start buying DVD over VHS for that reason at all, in fact if you survey most people they don't use any of the additional content on a DVD 90% of the time it is for the most part niche content and marketing fluff to bump interest.

The reason that they transitioned from VHS to DVD was for a number of factors. Storage being the top on peoples lists. you reduced storage space I think by just over 3/4.

DVD as a format itself was also lead by the pornographic industry. If they had continued to release adult films via VHS it wouldn't have gone as far as it did in the same way that it was said industry that created secure payment concepts for online retail.

It is fact that there has never been (cite) a general release film with multiple camera angles as an integral part of the plot. Pornography however rinsed the gimmick when it was first introduced.

The same will go for 3D. The minute Vivid start releasing good quality 3D movies, suddenly there will be an influx in TV purchases & other industries taking note and jumping on.

I've experienced lots of different types of 3D experiences and can safely say without any bias that it fails on the home front more than anywhere else because instead of an immersive experience which you find at the cinema (even if it isn't a positive one) it lacks greatly because of the constraints of the environment it is in.

Virgin Media introduces P2P throttling

nobody said anything about copyright

Peer 2 peer capping has nothing to do with materials you are downloading. It is a matter of data and overheads.

If you go on the sole assumption that it is whether Warner or Miramax are upset you are watching poor dvd rips you're quite mistaken.

Polaroid enthusiasts unveil new instant film

18 comments by non-photographers

Pretty straight forward chaps, polaroid is the ultimate in image tests. If it looks good on a roid it's going to look great in the final shot. That is why so many photographers still do test shots with roids.

Yes the price is too high, but if you haven't tried to develop a roll of medium format in the last couple of years then you haven't got any basis for comment.

Google Nexus One

there goes my hero

being an early adopter to android (a mistake I think) I've been waiting for some time for a positive spin, the platform and what it has to offer is so so close to being perfect. But it's still not there yet, and I don't think that this handset is what is going to make it happen. As correctly stated, it's the OS and how you add to it that really makes android glow and until we start to see some more 2.1 releases that aren't unstable colab's I wouldn't endorse the phones.

Whatever happened to the email app?

devils advocate

I use every single one of them. Then again I develop an email marketing application so I am looking at them all day to day.

Gmail has some bonuses, but since my hotmail box has existed since 1996 I kinda have to stroke under its chin once in a while.

BBC to cull radio stations, halve websites in painful biz review

Risk assessment sees US ties cut

I think that the Beeb would be better off relying on the stable import business that CH4 and Five have implimented and solely rely on US imports. Let's be honest here, the UK has failed to create a high quality export... ever? I can't think of one, and Dr Who most certainly does not count, you cannot equate it to the high calibre being outputted by HBO for example.

This culling is understandable, the cost of BBC as a whole is immense and the realisation that nobody actually uses the local news sites, its many portals and subs, means that web content must go to favour the iPlayer services.

It's not about the lack of an advertising platform that allows the beeb to suffer, it's that it is far to big an organisation to take risk on new talent, big budgets and the export game.

Microsoft Silverlight - now with hidden Windows bias

Eventually

They'll drop it, but not for a good decade of flogging that dead horse.

Not having developed with it yet, I can't say whether it's any good, but for me, it is yet another bolt on for your browser, and since the flash platform, which of course devoured shockwave, is quite apply cruising along, why rock the apple cart?

I am sure that whatever I may be able to do with silverlight I can most likely do with a bit of AS3, some flex and flash build and a tickle of javascript - something else MS tried to tamper and gave up with.

Sometimes I am amazed that .NET still exists.

Apple tablet will 'redefine print,' says rumor mill

It wont change print - not fast enough

at last weeks Flash On The Beach Conference, Mark Anders talked extensively about the new text capabilities of the forthcoming update from Adobe for Flash and Papervision.

This I think is going to have a huge drive with regards to the way print is handled on both desktop and mobile devices. It might be a preferred hardware solution, but if the platform isn't there for delivery it's wasted.

Orange gets UK iPhone deal

oh and I am the first

giggidy.

I've been saying this would happen all month, it was clear that was the sole purpose of the t-mobile merger, and now we have what we wanted. score one for the orange under-dogs. Now we just wait and see whether they're still going to carry crap tarrifs or if they will do some creative accounting.

Sonic the Hedgehog to make 2D comeback

Or Maybe the decision

Was based on the fact that 3D has never worked for the blue haired chap?

So Sonic 2.5D eh, there's a big suprise, expect Viewtiful Joe minus the annoying noises, actually they'll be there too.

As long as it is a DLC, he needs to regain our trust before he can have shelf space back.

Apple yanks C64 emulator from App Store

Hot Coffee 64?

I do find this idea of developers increasingly not removing code blocks but just disabling them brilliant!

We all do it, but if you've been asked to remove it, unless it causes the application to crash and burn, surely, you just take it out?

I spose that in this case, it needs that, because... well isn't that what it is?

PS3 phone out next month

I don't get it

Am I missing something here?

Nowhere on that does it say you can stream stuff off your PS3 from anywhere, that would never be possible, you would have to have a VPN app on the phone, VPN abilities on your router then a connect option for your PS3.... no no no, none of you have read this.

All it is saying is, we slapped the same wireless stack in it that the controllers use so you can use the phone as a remote control. That is it.

And it's pointless, certainly not a selling point that is for sure.

Android app puts signs where they should be

I would love it if

Wikitude actually worked full stop, but in the UK it's a bit on the pants side.

It's nice to have an alternative for a sat nav system, but I still go back to the paper map to get anywhere and I never use my phone to listen to music. Why? You may ask. Because I want my bloody phone to be able to call someone when I have piled my little car off the M25 into the hard shoulder because I was too busy drinking my coffee and watching a dvd in the folded down passenger seat's head rest.

PS3 backwards compatibility gone for good

He's not totally wrong

Sure I had a few pangs, I never got to finish my MLB 97 season when I got my PS3, and I had a stack of games that were great replayers, but at the same time, you got to move on. Why would you be going out buying PS2 titles owning a PS3? You don't it simples!

I am never sure of the legacy concept, you are buying into something new and exciting, OK, so we might want to play Gran Turismo Aspect III for a bit longer (since they can't sort their asses out and give is a new title) but come on, who cares?

Orange prices up LG 3G watchphone for UK

get it on a darn contract!

I would actually be sad enough to get one if it was on contract.

Dealer details slimline PS3 launch

Will this slim version

Keep the temperature down better and have a quieter fan? my PS3 'Bloated dead body edition' sounds like I am stuck in a turbine after a few minutes of play even if it is suspended in mid air for circulation.

If they offer a trade in I may consider it, but I can't see it happening can you?

Wii and PS3 sales slide

I only have a PS3

because I got it as a gift with my mobile phone (thanks cfonew). Otherwise I wouldn't have bothered because it is far too expensive, it's also way too big!

Wii sales I can understand, they seem to think they can get away with releasing 1 title a year, and that sort of concept isn't going to survive too long, if Nintendo aren't too careful they could be heading the way of the Saturn.

3rd parties aren't making great titles (Wii motion has been passed as an excuse to get more 3rd parties in) the downloadable content is over-priced for what it is (I was reluctant to pay a tenner for a Spectrum game in 1988, I don't want to be still paying that price now) and the vast majority of it has either been freely available to those who wanted it, or is a sub-par selection.

I think that PS3, has staying power quite clearly, however in Europe at least, it is falling down heavily on the lack of downloadable content, the regularity of said content be distributed and losing exclusive titles (ie GTA and Soul Calibre franchises) Microsoft have kept their exclusive titles and quite sensibly too as it does drive unit sales.

Sadly it would almost seem that Microsoft has had the better business model - even with a subscription based format for online play on a console and no video playback capability as standard.

Average UK broadband just over half advertised speed

why is this suddenly news?

We have known this for the best part of a decade. The infrastructure is not in place within the UK to cope with data travelling down copper other than phone communications.

That is the whole point of the 21CN network install which is due to finish 2012 (cite req). Until we have fibre optic door to door (never gonna happen) we wont get decent download speeds because we are all sharing lines to the boxes and boxes to the exchange.

I live 262yrds from exchange exactly, I have never got a decent connection regardless of provider. What is in the ground is toilet, and there's nothing we can do with that.

The only thing that will result from any mass-debate will be that providers will have to change their advertising regulation to not specify 'speeds up to' anywhere on their marketing materials. Complete waste of a conversation.

oh and I forgot to mention

It don't mean diddly what you have going in and out of your house because you have no idea what is on the end of the cable to the server you are trying to connect to, whether it is a media service, website, torrent whatever, if they have only got a 512k upstream you aren't going to be getting any faster are you.

Samsung intros skinny watchphone

more watches

This is what I have been after since the calculator and the remote control a phone in my watch.

If they could start getting these onto contract deals I would sign up.

Orange calls up LG watchphone

honestly I would

totally buy this. I have been waiting for decades for this to become reality. Why not take the gamble and release it on a contract FOC like everything else?

If I didn't have to pay for out outright I would be on the waiting list.

Next year - bionic eye! come on!

People just not that into Blu-ray

It isn't the quality that is the issue

The whole thing of 'hi definition' was a bit of a white lie to start with, it was a justification to improving the quality of lcd screens over CRT's.

I have a PS3, I had it with a bog standard CRT for a good year. I finally decided I wanted to free up the 2ft by 5ft space my jumbo CRT took in the living room and bought a flat screen. Obviously I bought a HD Samsung. The only difference between playing GTA with and without a HD connection is that I can read the text clearer going through HDMI.

Your eyes cannot tell the difference between a DVD and a Blu-Ray disc, anyone who says they can is lying to save face because they think they're stupid for not being able to tell the difference.

My best friend has gone back to watching VHS and I don't blame him! He can watch a film or a tv show and stop it come back to it a few days later and pick up exactly where he left off! How many people can do that with their DVD's or Blu-Ray? Not many.

The other big flaw is that they are utilising Blu-Ray space to fill with loads of extra 'content' rather than focusing on the cinematic release itself, this has always been the failing with DVD.

I don't remember any of my VHS Tapes having behind the scenes dross, useless menus or 'extra deleted scenes'. They're deleted because they didn't belong in the movie, jog on!

Last.fm denies data handover to RIAA

I have been waiting

two years for this to happen! It was going to eventually wasn't it! I was thinking this only yesterday.

I get a lot of Promo's through the post for reviewing in magazines and blogs and it only occurred to me recently that I should probably disable lasty scrobbler when listening to these records over and over again to write a review.

I guess a possible solution would be for A&R / Labels / PR to send out these CD's with additional meta data on the files.

And when does it count as 'not officially released'? What about the millions of people worldwide who buy and sell imports? It is perfectly legal to own a Japanese Re-issue of album A or even a standard issue of album A which is not due for general release in country B for some time.

Will be a tough cookie to crack me thinks but I am all ears to the options.

HD TV beats depression, claims HD TV company

My samsung

I got to say when I got my Series 6 just before xmas I was smiling. Extra space where I had a huge CRT. I could actually read the text from my PS3. All was well.

But I am reasonably sure it hasn't cured any depression.

eBay revenue shrinks for first time in history

I don't want another shopping mall

If I wanted to browse the high street I would get off my butt and do it.

I liked ebay before they allowed commercial trading. Now I just don't see the point, the listings are flooded with grey imports and bullshit scammers.

Give it back to people and you will find it may decrease its profits but will greatly increase in its value.

At the very least allow to remove shops from your search results.

New Italian Job ending revealed Friday

well if you put it like that:

Get that gun from Portal move the bricks around? all too easy.

They all huddle together which generates heat, they generate enough heat to warm up the gold. It melts displacing the weight across the van. Sure you may lose a few fluid ounces out the back, but you are left with a gold coated van, making it even easier to get through customs and before you know it, you've left Calais and can see the white cliffs on the horizon.

Hilton 'sucks face' with MySpace CEO

whoo?

whooooo?

Google kills iPhone-optimized iGoogle

no mobile css?

shock horror google in non mobile css scandal..

They should never have needed a version for iphone in the first place. Cross platform and all that

Zavvi goes titsup

Well it's Virgin's fault

that Tower Records went from Picadilly Circus. I know that was a long time ago now but Tower was the best hi-end record store, it was like every indie on Berwick street in one spot with a stargreen downstairs.

Previous statements do ring true to me, stop giving people 90+ day invoices and stop sale or return, surely that would be far better right now than allowing people to sit on masses of stock.

The only people who will win out of that will be the administrators with their eBay shops.

2008's top three music phones

no wonder this site has a white background

Could you love Steve Jobs any more already?

Jees

I look forward to next weeks articles:

2008 best design for a glorified phone

2008 top 3 overpriced micro computers

2008 top 3 phones that have expensive contracts that only rich tossers can afford

2008 top 3 Gadgets that will possibly become the greatest gadgets of all time - even better than penicillin, bread, clean water and Jesus.

The winner of all will of course be Apple iPhone.

Play another record

2008's top three compact cameras

I don't Believe it!

What's going?

Reg roundup of tech and haven't found a way to wedge the iPhone in? My eyes must be completed fucked. I guess I only have a 1.2MP retina.

2008's top three touchscreen phones

iphone shmyphone

bit of a lazy article, classic end of year roundup crap.

BUT!

what I will say is, I have used an iphone, and its a phone it makes calls, but it is shit for SMS and doesn't even have MMS. So its a good job you have to piss away money on it because teenagers would never want one take to long to cul8ter

Nintendo whacked with $5m Wii strap lawsuit

ihadthatproblemaswell

thisiswhatapostlookslikewithoutanythumbsbecauseihavenothumbtopressshiftorspace.ialsobrokemytvbecausewithoutthumbsicannotgripwithanythingexceptthepalmofmyhandwhichafterawhilegetssweatyandilosetraction

UK e-tailers scurry to scrap dodgy Heavy Metal covers

oh well whatever nevermind

In case nobody posted this fact.

Nirvana's nevermind cover art changes pending on the region.

In the US and AUS the babies penis is visible. In the UK and most of Europe it is not.

Petty

Pathetic

Eventually I wont be able to defile my geintalia in public at all.

Employees sue for unpaid Windows Vista overtime

Bloody sleepers

all you smart arses who said sleep the machines are the exact same people who bugger my electric bill.

If you aren't using it TURN IT OFF!

Plus if it is a call centre it is people hot swapping desks isn't it so they're latently using roaming profiles on a shit network infrastructure AT&T are bound to have bollocks IT look at their services.

I called Newnet not that long ago, took the woman 20 minutes to boot her machine and get my account details on screen. Why? Because of all the times in the world the Admin bint decided to run her Sage back up on a monday lunchtime.

nob

How to destroy the music business

too many organisations not enough consensus

Big problem with any concept like that is that essentially it is invoking some kind of 'tv licence' for music. That makes no sense and doesn't cross borders because while it could work in one country it would fail in another.

There are so many things which as you have nicely put together are completely retarded and yes this all boils down to marketing and advertising executives failing to hit unrealistic targets.

The internet hasn't actually destroyed music or labels at all. What it has done is widened the catch net. You can now find everything and anything you might like. As a rocker myself (OK metal head) I have discovered countless artists through mainly epitonic originally long before torrents and myspace, that would never have been brought to my attention otherwise.

The fact is that the 3 major record labels that own and run the entire industry also control the radio stations. Where things are failing is that the subversive sales tactic of getting a track onto constant radio play on country A's top radio station is that again, with the internet there are now niche radio streams and we don't have to listen to their shit peddling any more.

Labels need to stop investing millions in one pair of tits and spread themselves thinly over a broader selection of artists who are talented in their own rights. I am talking about real bands, and the hidden away song writers for the likes of Britney Spears. Pay the poster girl less and the song writer more to write for more artists.

The 'record industry' is run by marketing and the visual is easier to sell than the audible bizarrely. If we stop the endorsement and repeated distribution of attractive people with no musical talent of their own there is still money to be made by marketing teams.

Just because you can sing doesn't make you an amazing artist you are just a good singer, do you write your own lyrics? Probably not. Do you write your own arrangements? I doubt it. Well guess what? There are literally millions of people who don't have the looks of Rihanna who can write and perform a millions times better night after night.

Let the modern day Malcolm Mclaren's be the ones on the TV every day selling an artist and stop creating 'role models' out of naive average but attractive people.

There is money there it is just nobody has bothered to change tac and are still sailing away from the horizon instead of towards the sun.

Championship Gaming Series runs out of quarters

I bloody hope so

What a naff idea. Nothing more boring than watching your mate play on the computer.

What ridiculous idea, when clans etc already exist, and a few years back in the UK Bravo had a similar show which blew hard featuring Gadget Show founder Jason Bradbury talking to some overweight no hopers whilst playing CS Source.

First Amendment rescues Grand Theft Auto's 'totally nude' strip club

that is true

But it would not be OK if LINUX detergent then slapped a penguin on the box.

Manuelgate's goth vampire stripper fades from MySpace

classic catch 22

Love it all really. Little Britain has spent several years 'parodying' the British public as a mixture of doll scum, racist, fascist homophobic people in some of the most extreme ways ever portrayed on television, but it is OK because one of the is 'a gay' and everyone bangs them a load of awards.

Alf Garnet reincarnated AKA Pub Landlord is onto something like the 4th season of his mock extremist chat show and that's OK.

What exactly is not ok? I refer to my original posting on the Little Big Planet story which outlines these exact double standards, of which a large majority of the press then also commented on such as my statement about how it is now 'OK' to make fun of the Queen to her face, something that no less than 30 years ago would have found you hanged.

just before I go

One other thing, not that excuses the actions taken by Brand and Ross BUT least we not forget that guy made his money from making an extreme characterure of an entire nation of people. I don't recall the Spanish trying to murder him whilst on Fawlty Towers?

BBC's TV detector vans to remain a state secret

All this talk of CRT detection is toss

What a load of crap, I tell you right now there never has been and never will be a TV detection service.

I don't need to post this anonymously but I didn't pay a TV licence for over 5 years. The minute I looked into getting cable TV flag went up on database and I had a reminder that I needed to get one.

This guff about detecting CRT based televisions is toss as well. Distinguish the alpha frequencies between a CRT TV and PC Monitor? Nobody and I mean NOBODY who has trained with enough technical skill to even be able to tell the difference between the two through several feet of concrete, steel struts a drive way and a main road is going to be willing to take a job that dull and that shit.

They never existed they never will exist and the BBC should not be in control of the so called licence fee.

You honestly trying to tell me that the entire BBC is solely funded from the TV licence? Is it fook, it wouldn't even cover the cost of wages for a quarter. So they already get money from elsewhere without the use of advertising so they can stop taking mine to produce a load of free to air radio signals that I can pick up however the fuck I like. You can't charge for a wave.

Vista SP2 beta could land within next four weeks

I swear the whole world is retarded

There is bugger all wrong with Vista, sure perhaps if it was shipped with a lot less of the security features and Aero functions turned off we would all be a lot happier but I just don't understand where this crap about having to downgrade or problems with updates come from.

I have been running a laptop with Vista on it for over 18 months no problems at all and all service packed and hotfixed to the hilt.

I have built and supported a network of over 50 PC's all running Vista and have never encountered a problem.

The only problems I have encountered is dimwit sys admins who can't RTFM.

Gamers cash in on LittleBigPlanet delay

pathetic

No doubt this comment will be removed from fears of some all powerful being but these muslim complaints seriously need to get into 2008.

We can say what the fuck we like about the Queen without being beheaded - to her face if desired (see Royal Variety Performances from numerous comedians) spend all day slating the Catholic church, what makes them so fucking special or over sensitive?

Absolutely nothing, and the sooner people stop pandering to this bullshit the better.

Next we'll have the pope requesting Pulp Fiction be destroyed because a passage from the bible is used in reference to violence.

pathetic

Did the width move for you, darling?

What's wrong with people

I don't get it I really don't. As a designer, I sympathise with the worries and all that, but you sit and look at something every day you get bored with it.

I think the site looks great, and anyone who complains about anything that isn't a bug is a bloody gibbon who should go back to playing on myspace and reading real papers.

OMFG, what have you done?

Well I say

'tis good

Creative Zen X-Fi 16GB media player

you have just shown me

the creative zen that is in my pocket right now. Except they couldn't afford to paint the whole think one colour and made the buttons worse.

What a pile of cack.

Come on Creative I am losing hope faster than the Republican party.

What they should be doing is working on integrating the XML parser with Last.fm's scrobbler that is a better use of their time.

No snapping: Photographers get collars felt

I am waiting day and night

But I will eventually get the picture which will make me thousands when I sell it to the press. of a smug bastard pig using his mobile phone whilst driving.

It will happen, I know it happens, I just need it to be in front of me with camera in hand

Pandora prepares to join titsup.com club

last of the fm

Perhaps if they had paid closer attention to last.fm which has snuck under the radar for the last few years they would have seen where they were going wrong and could have been a contender.

Alas, it has been cack for sometime and I have used last.fm since the beginning of 2006 and bought thousands of pounds worth music off the back of it. So there is a business model as long as you have a clear defined goal.

i,e Total domination!

The IT Crowd goes west

I only drink Absinthe

Regardless of whether it is or is not geeky - IT Crowd IS funny.

Cannot understand how you can't find it amusing.

How many times have you asked somebody if they want you to set up their PC whilst they have pretended to use it? I swear it has occurred to me twice.

"Made in Britain"

Brown's website is Web2.0tastic

you dont have to add those copyrights

the word press copyright slots are optional from what I remember.