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This Week in Tech

I was born in 1966.

Somewhere there is a slide of me, aged a few months, in a bouncy little chair in front of the TV. The black and white TV. With legs screwed into the wooden cabinet. With one socket on the back. The one for the aerial. With the three channels that weren't on much during the day and finished before midnight.

43 years later, only half the lifetime of TV itself, i want to watch some TV. Well, i have 2 i could just turn one on. Oh, but the girls are watching the one in the living room. Ok, oh, but the one in the bedroom doesn't have an aerial, what should i do!

Well, i could watch Sky via the Xbox 360 that is plugged into one of the half DOZEN sockets in the back of the TV. I could watch a DVD, or stream something on demand thru Sky Player or Zune Marketplace or i could boot up the laptop which is now permanently plumbed in as a Home Theatre PC (HTPC) and watch something from my 400Gb library, or iTunes, BBC iPlayer, 4OD, ITV player, BlinkBox, Lovefilm watch online, SeeSaw or TVCatchup.com, which will stream me all the channels that would normally come thru that little wire from the roof.

Or i could surf YouTube, Google video, _Current.tv or watch any number of video podcasts (I encourage all to watch "The Engadget Show").

And if i really wanted to i could do most of the above on my netbook or even ipod touch.

And if all that means, God forbid, MISSING SOMETHING!! I can record it on the Virgin HD PVR and watch it later.

TV has come an awful long way in those fleeting 44 years. As a technology it is not only ubiquitous but changing constantly and leading the digital revolution for most, non-techie types. But there is one thing that plays on my mind about it. We have all these amazing new delivery systems for our TV with more and more HD driven innovation to come. But the system is no good without the content.

I wanted to watch some TV remember? So i looked around on all of those online, IPTV, cutting edge services and ended up watching the best thing i could find.

It was an episode of "Dr Who", starring Patrick Troughton.

Made in 1966.

My Digital Life : Real World MMO

I'm beginning to feel like i'm living in an elaborate MMORPG. Either that or the genre has been so groundbreaking that real life is taking on it's ideas.

In an MMO you move through a world which appears huge but is really pretty small. in real life we are bombarded by news and views from the entire globe while inhabiting a tiny sub world of home and work with the occaisional forays to another PvE server or vacations as we call them.

In an MMO you interact with NPC's to get things you want or need and to pick up quests and missions. If you've dealt with a call centre, helpline or govt department recently, or work in a white collar job with a boss you can relate to that.

In most MMOs, as well as your monthly subscription you can expand your enjoyment with microtransactions from an online store or swap things you have or have made in an online auction. well the most i spend on entertainment these days is either subscription TV services, LoveFilm and buyingshows, apps and comic books on iTunes and downloadable content, arcade games on XBox Live. Shame about online auctions though, oh, wait, hang on...

In an MMO you use IRC or Voip chat to speak to you friends, send them mail and meet up in the digital space. In real life i consistently interact with friends digitally and in many cases asynchronously far more often than in the meatspace. Facebook, twitter, this blog, skype, SMS and old fashioned email.

In an MMO, when you die you suffer severe penalties for a while but then carry on as normal. Ok, so perhaps not all of life is an like an MMO but hey, if you're religious, perhaps this counts too.

This week in gaming

Sticking it to Game Room

After several days recovering froma nasty virus it was lovely to be rewarded with an exciting impulse buy in the 'Game' sle this weekend, picking up a Hori EX2 arcade fighting stick (Xbox 360 licensed) for half price (£34.99). A lovely chunky piece of kit, wired, 6 big buttons representing A,B,X,Y,RT,LT, with the remainder of the xbox controller buttons being replace by smaller ones along the top surrounding the ubiquitous Xbox button itself.

Not being a big fan of the arcade fighting genre (although i did help myself to a preowned Tekken 6 at the same time) the stick is absolutely perfect for Game Room. It will work with any game that uses the dpad for movement so is perfect for the simple arcade classics available both as part of Game Room and in the XBLA.

However, despite this, i still can't crack Asteroids Deluxe. I guess more practice is required. The next Game Pack, along with the start of the weekly release schedule, isn't out til the end of this month (April 2010) and i have been able to resist splashing out too much with just 6 games in my arcade but despite this it is a compelling product. Devisive in opinion though it seems, between nostalgia freaks and those that have left the origins of gaming behind. For me i can't help trying to beat those games that frustrated me in my youth and despite a healthy dose of mid-life nostalgia it's the basic addictive gameplay of these defining little games and the framework of the Game Room itself with it's friendly competition settings and collectibles is what keeps pulling me back in.

Quickies

• Star Trek Online is just getting better with some very good 'episode' storylines which hark bark to the shows and movies.
• Broken Sword on ipod touch it's a very interestingly designed puzzler, more like an interactive comic with it's art by Watchmen's Dave Gibbons.

And, finally...

... having loaded the spring update and formtted a spare cheapo 8Gb USB flsh drive i had lying about, arcade titles, video downloads and game demos work fine running of the stick despite it 'failing' the MS performance test during the format process.

Happy Timewasting

Couch Potato Online

In the week of the US release of the iPad there have been many reviews, criticisms and posts about just what this 'revolutionary'device is for.

It seems to be revolutionary because it is made by Apple. If they brought out a toilet brush that cost £200 and was made from aluminium and did what every toilet brush had ever done but just more stylishly the twitterati would nerdgasm over that too.

And that can detract from what the iPad and it's upcoming android and windows 7 counterparts will bring to households. The era of casual couch computing is upon us.

I recently picked up a freebie iPod touch 8Gb 2nd gen from a friend who had upgraded. As a bigger screen to watch itunes downloads and video podcasts than my classic, it's a boon for the train. However, as iphone users know it's the apps that make the device. And apps like IMDB, while sitting on the couch watching a dvd for that "Oooo, what have i seen her in?" moments or just popping into safari for a quicky wiki check. It's even got me reading comic books again thanks to the excellent comiXology app. All backed up with a few cool retro style games that make it a DS rival in pocket gaming.

So, surely, if the touch is the perfect pocket sized couch potatoes friend, then an iPad is merely just a bigger screen version and can't be all that bad for being nothing more. Perhaps, with the edition of itunes books to back up what stanza offers on the touch it's even more for that couch (or even in bed) entertaining computer experience.

But, hang on, it's pretty expensive for a glorified wifi portal to enhance the movie experience purely ecause it connects to the network more or less instantly. I mean, that's the key isn't it? i want to know the answer to this now not in 5 mins after i've gone to the computer and booted it up and the browser comes to life. wifi devices and smartphones have cut out that boot process by being 'always on'.

And yet, i already have a device that does all this, it's not cool, it's not touch and it's certainly not Apple. but it has great battery life, runs a gazillion apps, connects to the web with a 7" display and can even access itunes, etc. Ok. it takes about 3 minutes to boot but if i just have it on when i get to the couch, the battery is enough to last all night. and despite being underpowered and as pretty as a house brick and superceded by a thousand copycats it's a damn sight more open and flexible than an ipad.

Ladies and gentleman, welcome back to the spotlight, the humble EEE pc 4G. £150 if you can find one, fast with linux installed, powerful with xp installed and before long, in late 2010, lightspeed when it has chrome os installed (i tried an early build on usb, boot to browser in 10 secs).

Yes, the ipad is a very impressive ipod touch on steroids. But it can't do a fraction of what this obsolete bit of plastic i'm posting from can.

Food for thought

In my drive to attempt to consume my media as digitally as possible by either rental, subscription or purchase i've just gone thru Julie & Julia and the other boleyn girl via love film.

Not entirely sure if love film counts as digital distribution but it is an excellent service. Especially when it comes to feeding blu-ray discs into the voracious maw of the ps3.

And julie & julia is a brilliant film, not only did it make me want to post to this blog while watching, I also had to pop out and make some delicious egg mayonnaise.

So as a service love film works a dream. There is something about the rental of physical media which seems to sit better in the value for money stakes feeling than digital downloads or even just watching on vod.

Not sure why this is but sure this experiment will reveal all.

Virgin vod works very well, not used zune on Xbox yet. This seems to be something around having to shell out precious microsoft points instead of just adding to a bill somewhere.

The psychology of pricing indeed.