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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.