Techno Techno Techno Fear

20th MAY 2006:

The search goes on for a video hard disk recorder to replace the unreliable VHS machine that is currently residing under my telly. Favourites in the line up include Sony's XL100, one of the KiSS machines and the top of the range Topfield PVR5800.The Sony only has 1 digital tuner, which is not great should I want to record more than 1 programme at the same time. But it is a media PC which should ensure playback of most formats. However, it works on Windows, which is not 100% reliable. The KiSS machine (DP608) also has just the 1 tuner and so far, is limited to playback of a handful of formats, although they are ensuring future updates via firmware. But it has a cunning feature which enables you to remotely programme a recording via the web or through a WAP browser from your mobile phone. Great for a shift worker like myself who often forgets to read the programme listings in advance.

The Topfield has 2 tuners and a caddy for premium subscription cards. It also has a USB socket enabling connection to a PC for file transfer of video, allowing archival to DVD. However, I have heard that this process of transfering files from "Toppy" to PC is quite slow.Most machines that are currently on the market seem to do either one or the other, the Sony comes close to what I'm after, providing I can upgrade by adding another digital tuner. Some have a HDMI output, which will be handy for future telly upgrades.

New boxes from SKY HD and Telewest have more than one tuner and can record in High Definition. However, both of these machines require a monthly subscription package. That means it's out of the question for me, as I find these services a rip-off. It's a stand that I will continue to stand up for until a better system is introduced. Remember that Tyson vs Bruno fight? To watch this boxing match within the privacy of your own home ended up being a financial farce! Firstly, you had to pay for the basic package. Then, you had to subscribe to Sky Sports. And then they had the cheek to charge an extra £10 on top! Is this astute marketing or Murdoch being a greedy fucker? As long as the British public are willing to pay, Murdoch is willing to charge.

23rd May 2006:

Format Wars. Donchya just love 'em? This is a discussion I've had with various people over the years and it will probably carry on. Back in the day, when it came to media in the home, you only had a few simple choices to make. If you wanted a T.V, you chose between colour or monochrome. If you wanted a sound system, it was mono, stereo or possibly quadraphonic. Vinyl or cassette, reel to reel or 8 track cartridge. If you wanted a VCR, it was Betamax or VHS (whaddya mean "Phillips 2000"? Get outa here!).

It's much more confusing nowadays. It's all going digital as well as a few die hard users clinging onto Analogue technologies. Within the digital storage media world alone, you have discs, memory cards, hard disks and digital tape. And within all of these media, you have individual sub-catagories of differing types.Take digital tape for example. You have digital compact cassette and Digital Audio Tape. Admittedly, both of these formats seem to be a dying breed, as access to key points within a tape based system takes time to access. But also in use are ADAT and DTRS digital tape based systems used to advantage in sound recording studios.Let's look at reflective storage optical discs. We've got (and had) Laser Discs, CD-i, audio CD, CDR/RW, CD-ROM, stereo sound minidiscs, High 1GB capacity minidiscs, Data minidiscs, optical Yamaha discs to name but a few...Did I forget DVD? Also available in their +/-R/RW AND INCLUDING +/-R Dual / Double layer derivatives. Oh yes, let's not forget DVD RAM! Exposed or caddied-up. 4.7GB or 9.4GB!I'm not even going to start going on about memory cards. It pisses me off in a way. One company tends to align itself with a certain technology. If you favour Sony products, then you're better off with it's neat looking but expensive memory stick (which, of course, has various types of it's own sort, e.g: plain, duo, pro, micro etc). If you're loyal to Panasonic, then you'd be better off with S.D. type memory cards (with, and including their different versions of SD, miniSD and microSD). I can't wait for Blu-ray vs HD-DVD!

The recent arrival of the Sony PSP meant the introduction of yet another storage media - the UMD (Universal Media Disc). For fuck's sake, this marketing gimmickery is getting so tiresome!What I'd like to see, in an ideal world, is something like an optical disc in a caddy (Blu-ray seems to be heading in this direction), that will hold 1 terrabyte of data and these blanks will be on sale at £1.99 each (as a current television advert says: "Anyone will buy anything for £1.99")!

Even better would be a physically durable and small sized but large capacity solid state memory card (and thus eliminating the need for wearable moving parts), holding just as much and costing just as less, and standardised so that it could be used in a variety of media and data uses.It's not only digital storage media that has it's battles of popularity with differing formats. Let's look at digital imaging. J-PEG, BMP, TIF, GIF, etc.When it comes to digtal sound, we have WAV, MP3 (and it's differing qualities), OGG VORBIS, etc.How about digital video? We have VCD & SVCD, MPEG 1, 2, 3 and 4, Div X, Div X HD, X VID, Nero Digital, blah, blah, blah...I understand what we can learn from having different formats, the pro's and con's of each.But what we don't need as consumers, are formats that are introduced as a marketing gimmick.It makes me want to go away and learn Esperanto.

30th AUGUST 2007:

On-going format wars will be the death of me. Reading the manual for the new DVD recorder is a nightmare, a bit like this blog in fact. The translation from the original Japanese is good enough, but this machine is perhaps too complex. Did I mention "format wars"? I've always had a beef with consumers (ie; us) having to be the experimental guinea pigs for all the corporations of the hi-fi world. Audio-visual anoraks are currently debating the pros and cons of Blu-ray and Hi-Def DVD disc. Where do they get the time to do all this verbal to-ing and fro-ing? The other day, I was mug enough to waste my time reading an article on wether the existence of MP3 was the hammer that was beating the nail into the coffin of the compact disc.

I recently upgraded the porta-phone (free-ish upgrade) only to discover that I needed a new type of memory card and that the recently aquired 4GB memory stick duo that I bought was not compatible with it as it was with the last one. Same make of phone, a Sony Goran Ericsson. Big raspberry to them. With knobs on.

Back to that new DVD machine. The PVR (personal video recorder) that I've got and that I've had for just over a year now, does a grand job and I'm very pleased with it. However, it's Achillies Heel is notable when it comes to archiving recorded material. The long arduous process involves hooking the bastard up to a computer where transfer of recorded files are made to the PC's hard drive. Those files then have to be converted into MPEG 2 files to be burned to disc. I tend to archive stuff quite a bit so the process of doing this is slow and tedious.

I recently decided to purchase a nifty Pioneer all-singing-all-prancing stand alone gizmo which will record onto it's built in hard drive so that recorded programs can be edited (you don't want to watch the adverts again, do you?) and then burnt to a blank disc within the same box. It even does Freeview and DivX. Hang about, where are you all going? Am I boring you with this nerd talk?

This gadget records in a choice of 34 different quality settings. Remember when we used to have a stress free choice of SP and LP on VHS? Why is there a need for 34 of the blighters? It seems that some quality settings work for certain types of blank discs and not for others.

DVD+R/RW/RL

DVD-R/RW/RL

DVD-RAM

Great. A machine that records and plays back with all the types of disc mentioned above, with a few exceptions to the rule. As mentioned earlier, it can play DivX (but not DivX Ultra or DivX HD), it plays a variety of CD but not DVD-Audio or SACD...I could go on but your snoring's getting louder already.

Trying to find a machine that does it all and does it all to a good standard is like searching for rocking horse shit. Not even the top of the range Sony media player lives up to what I need. What astounds me is that, with all this technology available to the large audio visual companies, none have been able to come up with the real satisfactory goods of what I'm after.

It's down to hot business competition. Drug companies would be able to formulate more medicinal cures and treatments if they all got together and shared their collective research. After all, we invest into these companies who have their hungry shareholders to feed and they take great pleasure in crapping on us from a great height by witholding what could be a star product. I'll never forgive Sony for abandoning their own creation; the minidisc.

So far, I'm happy with the new toy. The complexities of it are baffling in that they exist. But it's all down to business rivalry that these different formats are present in the first place. To boycott these products may be the obvious choice, but if we do, prices would never come down and newer technologies would be slower in making an appearance on the market.

We open our wallets to pay for the price of progress.