Posts by Paul Campbell
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"will Freeview boxes have to have HDMI" - short of a law I can't see how they can insist on it - remember that an HDMI box will refuse to display on a non-complying TV .... but HDMI TVs should still display for a box that doesn;t have all the magic crypto - why would any Freeview vendor go to all the trouble to get HDMI certified (trust me it's a real pain) and build a secure manufacturing line when it doesn't add much functionality .... it's not like they wont be able to decrypt the unencrypted FreeView signal if they don't have it (which IS true for the US markets I design settop boxes for)
Once digital broadcasts start there's going to be a whole bunch of open source people building mythTV boxes - I bet someone will do a CD you can use to convert that old PC (don't throw it away just yet!) into a PVR by adding a couple of digital tuners from DSE and popping in a mythTV/linux CD
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Russell - definitely all the colour info is being converted to PAL colour modulation (and worse mixed back into and stomping on the black and white [Y] signal if you use the plain yellow cable rather than S-video) - component is the way to go
But really modulating your nice digital signal to some analog form then having the TV convert it back to digital so it can display it is quite silly - analog means noise at some level whatever you do - which is why HDMI is the way to go, sadly with the tacky DRM
(note: that even if you go digital all the way you wont close the 'analog hole' - it's still there - pirates will just take the backs of their TVs)
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so last time I checked (6 months agoish) Sky and TVNZ are really using the same satellite - and in fact the same streams - when you tune to TV1 on Sky your sky decoder gets the same bits you get when you tune to it on freeview (well maybe not quite - there are multiple copies with different ads inserted for different regions) - and yes it's all mpeg2
Probably TVNZ decides how much their MPEG is compressed (rather than Sky who get to choose for all the other channels they have control over) - variation between channels even within the same service can be extreme - back when I designed sat boxes in the US we'd make sure we had access to HBO (which splurged on bandwidth) and the NASA channel (which way over compresses) to help debug stuff - the new HD channels are even larger and sat services in particular are cramped for space (hence the push for MPEG4 and real HD showing up in DVB-T)
I think if you are seeing better quality because your new mpeg decoder has a better decode engine, or a better video backend - both are hard to get right and there's a lot of variation out there
Because Sky doesn't let others sell boxes for their service we're stuck with their crappy box with the crappy formware that crashes every week or so and keeps losing the guide. The one with a UI in yellow and blue obviously designed by people who don't understand colour and video and the artifacts you get when you directly mix complementary colours .... hopefully a bit of freeview competition will encourage them to fix a few bugs in the current stuff
BTW a lot of people make the mistake of connecting their wonderfull new TV with a crappy old cable - I don't mean go buy an expensive gold cable, those are a ripoff - what I mean is don't use one of the yellow/red/white composite cables - at the very least use S-video or pref a YPrPb 'component' cable or best of all a digital connection (the dread HDMI) - if you choose that cheap cable that evil Sky UI will literally dance for you
Wiring the dish is actually pretty easy in NZ - everything is horizontally polarised (so far) so there are no LNB switches at the dish, that means you can use simple splitters around the house - just remember there are electronics (called the LNB) in the dish so they have to be powered for any box in the house to work - if you look at the splitter you'll see that one side is marked as passing LNB power - plug that into something (like the sky box) that will provide LNB power and make sure it's always switched on.
If they ever want to have a whole lot more channels on Sky they'll have to start using V polarised transponders too and that's going to mean replacing the LNBs on all the dishes in the country (and those splitters) - so I'm guessing that 500+ channels are a very long way away
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When CDs came out they came with a price about 50% more than vinyl (this in the US where I was living at the time) and CDs seemed to keep this base price for a long time evenwhen they became so much cheaper to make - it was a great scam for the record companies - they're selling the same bits after all.
I buy a lot of CD, an awefull lot of CDs, I'm probably one of the few people with a large size iPod that's mostly full and only contains stuff I actually own - I'm the sort of customer the music industry really wants to cultivate - I don't do DRM and I live in a linux world, I have an iPod but don't do iTunes - if they want my money they are going to have to cater to me - so Amazon's store is potentially something I really want to work .... time to open an account I guess - easier if you actually have a US credit card ...... (but they'll want a zipcode that matches the card and will use that to charge me sales tax sigh)
Moving back to NZ a few years ago I didn't stop buying CDs but they are SO expensive - since the cost of manufacture is a $ or so the price should have gone down with the rise of the NZ$ vs the US$ (roughly 20% at least - not so for NZ titles of course) - I travel to the US 2-3 times a year and always fill a suitcase with CDs and paperbacks (I just hit some magic frequent flier mark and from now on I get and extra bag - woot!) - books are another than that are terribly overpriced in NZ
I suspect the real reason is that there's an extra layer of middlemen somewhere that have to make their cut - or maybe it's just that there just isn't enough competition
I tried discussing this out on the manager at the local Real Groovy the other day - why hadn't CD prices come down by 20% with the $? after all I bought that latest MIA album over there you want NZ$36 for in California last week for US$9.99 (in Borders no less). She bitched at me about people buying stuff online and the cost of brick-and-mortar stores - wouldn't hear that I wasn't buying online (yet)
Funny thing about RG are the cheap second hand bins .... looks to me like they are buying the unsellable stuff from Amoeba (at least from the stickers they've forgotten to remove) and maybe other places
One good thing about buying CDs in NZ - someone else gets remove the evil CD packaging for you ....
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(oh and for the record I use 00000 as a zipcode a lot - especially usefull if you have a NZ credit card in the US and want to use one of those petrol pumps that insist on a zipcode ...)
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Well I think if your kid is saying bigotted stuff online it's perfectly OK to publically say you don't believe what he says is true - I don't think that humiliating - I wouldn't use inflammatory language to do it - but I wouldn't say 'no comment' either
On the other hand I wouldn't force them to take it down - instead I'd put up my own comment - and talk to them about what I was doing - a great time to talk to your kid about free speech and bigotry - certainly I wouldn't blindside them - but sounds like Bill has had weeks to talk to his kid and do the parent thing before it became a public issue
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Of course they do - and parents get to work on that - I tell of my kids for using 'gay' as a generic adjective - and their friends if they do it in our house or car (cue teenage rolling of eyes)
what you don't do as a parent is keep your mouth shut
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The upside of the net is that everyone get to make a statement, the downside is that if you're full of shit everyone gets to call you on it.
You know the internet is a reflection of the larger society - bigotry doesn't go away if you ignore it - in fact I think you have to call people on it - being a kid doesn't get you a completely free ride - at some point someone is going to to tell you you're acting like a dick - it takes a village and all that
Should Bill English be responsible for his kid's BeBo page? if he isn't checking up on it (and his kid's friend's pages) he's IMHO not doing a good job as a parent (I've certainly pointed out the contents of my kid's friend's pages to their parents) - one could argue that as a responsible parent he must have known (or that alternately he's not being a responsible parent)
Free speech is a wonderfull thing - sadly not quite a right (here) - I'll happily defend your right to say anything you like - if you don't like what someone has to say - don't tell them to take it down - the right thing is more speech - call them on it, tell the world they're full of shit - seems to me that's what GayNZ's doing - but what about Bill? where's his denouncement of his kid's views?
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re: LA air quality .... Ii think you guys are comparing apples and oranges .... LA has a horrible, barely manageable smog problem partly because of all the people living there and partly because of the geography - but the cars on the freeway make a lot less crap than the cars in NZ - there's just a hell of a lot more of them
This means you can be sitting on the freeway in LA and not have some beatup old car in front of you pumping you full of fumes while you can in Auckland .... which is surrounded on 2 sides by the sea so that in general that crap doesn't stay around long term.
I understand the argument that if you make people have clean cars the poor wont be able to afford them - it's the same argument that you can make against slavery - the CA law when first enacted limited the amount of money you could be forced to spend per checkup to mitigate problems - but now days grounds chronic smoke belchers much as we would a car with say bad brakes ... after all both are a risk to public safety
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well I walk down the hill to the uni - that's free, catch the bus back up $1.20 despite having the Prius I think that's still a good deal - at those sorts of prices I don't think it's a bad deal and I try and do it 2-3 times a week - I just wish they wouldn't use those ancient diesel buses that blow the black smoke out the back (remember when we had clean green trolley buses ....) - I still take them because I know they'll be driving around blowing the smoke whether I take them or not