musings

The future’s bright: the future’s already here! Now there’s a handheld electronic ‘book’ you can take anywhere, think of a title, and get it downloaded in one minute. The 3G technology frees you up from computers and WiFi hotspots as it uses the cellular phone network. Newspapers, magazines, blogs and even Wikipedia are all available to read on the ‘electronic paper’ display. Amazing.

This really is a 21st century device. I have always thought that Amazon was an unimaginative use for the internet. Although it gained prominence during the dotcom boom, it was only a mail order retailer at heart. Nothing revolutionary there. Just as early cars were horseless carriages and the first iron bridges were constructed using woodworking joints, Amazon was in the business of selling books through the post.
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Earlier in the year our burglar alarm control box started overheating. We phoned Hi-Tec Security Ltd who originally installed it, and they sent an engineer. He diagnosed and rectified the fault in half an hour, and charged us £109.86.

Here’s the breakdown:

Callout: £30.00
Labour: (@ £39.00 per hour) £19.50
Battery £44.00
VAT £16.36

Now, you might think I would have an issue with the callout charge. Their office is, after all, only 1 km away. Not at all. I am quite happy to accept that there is a flat rate, and £30.00 is the sort of figure companies charge. Similarly, £39.00 per hour labour is reasonable.

What I do object to, (more…)

The standard way of delivering a website is to design and upload what the client wants. When amendments are required, the customer tells the web designer, who makes the changes and uploads them once more.

Alternatively, there are a number of full-blown Content Management Systems (CMS) which enable the designer to provide the client with a set of pages which are fully and directly editable in a web browser.

I have used both approaches, but recently I have begun to experiment with a hybrid solution which is basically (more…)

I can do it! I can do it! You know when you start learning something new, and you feel as if you will never master it, but then the ‘penny drops’ and you never look back? Great, isn’t it?

That’s where I’m up to with this whole TV programme archiving thing. So, to save you having to go through the same journey of discovery, here’s my way (one of several, I know) of making a nice shiny disc containing a film or something else you have recorded from the television using a PVR such as the Humax. (more…)

I have been working with an evaluation copy of DVR-Studio Pro (which costs €75 to buy after the evaluation month expires). With it you can open the .ts file you have previously downloaded to your computer from the Personal Video Recorder (PVR) and quite quickly edit the programme - typically to remove advertising breaks.

What happens next is hair-pullingly frustrating. You should be able to load up a blank recordable DVD and then click one button to produce a copy of your edited TV programme on the disc. Does it work? Well, yes and - more often - no. Sometimes it just stalls at the ‘Authoring DVD’ stage. Sometimes it produces (more…)

I am told that my late grandfather had a ‘cat’s whisker’ radio which required painstaking tuning and complete silence from everyone else in the room so that he could hear the faint signal of the BBC Light Programme on headphones.

Sometimes I imagine being able to travel in time and show him some gee-whizz 21st century gadgets - or even some everyday technology we take for granted like colour TV. But today I imagined myself as grandfather talking to someone as yet unborn, describing to them the time consuming journey of discovery and frustration that is making a DVD from a saved programme.

Having got a file off the Humax and onto the PC, I have spent many hours (more…)

I don’t like to give up on a technical problem - especially if success is tantalisingly close. So today I disconnected the Humax PVR from the TV in the living room and connected it to the PC in the office.

Guess what? MediaController worked just fine! I have been able to transfer a TV programme and a radio programme and play them on the computer, and I have also been able to transfer mp3 songs and jpg photos to the Humax!

Why can’t I do this using a notebook PC? Some people say the USB doesn’t have the power. Or maybe MediaController doesn’t like Windows 98 (the desktop computer is running Windows XP). I don’t think the opeating system is an issue because MediaController is a DOS command-line application.

So there you have it. Any time I want to get a file into or out of the Humax, I just have to unplug the power, two SCART leads and two co-axial cables, and carry it into another room. What could be simpler?

Don’t get me wrong - I still love my new personal video recorder (PVR) and I wouldn’t dream of going back to a single Freeview tuner and VCR. But there are a few irritating shortcomings in the Humax, one of which I think amounts to a breach of the Sale of Goods Act.

You are supposed to be able to hook up the PVR to a computer using a USB lead. Not only is this essential if you want to archive a programme (eg by burning it to a DVD) but also if you want to load the Humax with mp3 music files or jpg images. (That’s what the 5 Gb partition on the hard drive is reserved for - and it can’t be reassigned to TV or radio files.) However, I have spent several hours and failed to transfer a single file in either direction.
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Our video cassette recorder (VCR) stopped working this week. Not so long ago, this would have meant a trip to the repair shop, a £35+ charge and a few days’ wait. Now the repair shops have all gone from the high street, and a VCR with a fault is just a box to be disposed of. I still find that difficult, and I have to overcome the instinct to make do and mend which has been passed down through countless generations of my family. So I still haven’t quite got rid of the dead VCR, and I am considering eBaying the remote control - which would salve my conscience whether or not someone bid on it.

In the meantime, I have discovered the world of the (more…)