Robert Small, The blog thereof.

I think most people who’ve been following the iPlayer in any depth have noticed that it’s not really delivering. It has some good sides, but there are a fair few things that I’d like to take issue with.

I would not say it’s been a complete waste of money, it hasn’t. It provides videos to anyone within a certain part of the desktop market’s spectrum. So, what’s bad about it? Primarily, you may not download the videos if you’re on anything other than Windows. Isn’t this government backing of a monopoly? Annoyingly the online viewing is only available for 6 days, and even if you do find that old XP disk you’ll only be able to keep the videos for 30 days. So much for asking your neighbours to download a year’s worth of East Enders for you while you’re off on that gap year in Tibet.

So, if you use Linux and you’re away from a computer for more than 7 days, tough.

It does provide some good quality video, the screen shot above shows a similar quality to what you’ll generally get. How much of a good thing is this though? If we dub this ‘high definition’, where’s the standard definition or low definition version for those of us on slower and more expensive connections?

Whatever codec they’re using (I haven’t researched, maybe someone can fill me in) seems to be quite high on the bandwidth usage. They also don’t seem to be using the standard method of scaling videos; normally videos will scale nicely to full screen on any of my computers (on youtube and the like), iPlayer doesn’t. I get skips, jumps, hops and judders if I try to full screen it. I’ve tested it on this machine (1.7GHz, 1GB), my other laptop (1.6GHz, 2GB), and my dad’s media machine (2x 2.6GHz, 2GB). All had problems.

It also has a habit of killing itself out of the blue. This generally manifests itself in one of several ways:

• ‘There has been a problem playing this video…’ This tends to happen when you walk away for a while and then come back.
• ‘Undefined undefined undefined’ This has only ever happened once, but I presume heavier users get it more often.
• The jitters. This is when suddenly everything goes jittery, something like a deliberate echo 0.5s after and at the same volume.
• The express joo-jars. An apt nickname for when it goes into super fast mode and does something weird with the sound.

In general it behaves, but I’ve noticed a few other distinct problems:

• Incomplete uploads. An absolute curse, generally it will finish just before the bit which finalises the whole program.
• Time delay. For some reason they seem to forget to upload half the days programs for a while, perfectly OK until you want to watch one which is missing.

All in all though, it’s not all bad. I’ll try a comparison with a competitor, ITV’s catchup.

Downloads: [BBC] Yes, only Windows and for 30 days. [ITV] No, or invisible.

Video quality: High, sharp and generally smooth. Nasty.

Adverts: None, just a channel trailer at the beginning. Lots.

Requirements: Flash and a browser. Internet Explorer, a ‘patched’ Windows Media Player, ActiveX.

Speed: Fast. Slow to start with then seems to be buffered and OK.

Watching live: No known mechanism. Possible, reasonable quality.

At the end of the day, does it let me watch Dr Who? Yes, therefore it can’t be all bad.

Kind regards, Robert.

While I was in Chicago I went to the musical Wicked with my girlfriend. For those of you who don’t know what it is I’ll give a brief explanation. Wicked is the story of what happened before the story ‘The Wizard of Oz’ and a little more around it. It shows how the witches started off being who they were and why this was the case. What I really liked about it was it’s ability to make me rethink what I thought about all the characters within the story. It’s a severe reminder to those of us prone to judge on what we see not to do so. The whole story is too complex to explain in one go like this, and it’s also too good a story for me to want to spoil it for you.

I’m reminded so often that what we’re forced to act on is so so often a torn scarp of an involved and colourful picture, one side of a dodecahedron. You’d hardly want your case to be heard in court if they refused to let you have more than ten lines of your defence speech. It’s strange then that so often we jump to conclusions, often with less information than that.

Looking at a homeless person you might presume that they put themselves there, that it was entirely their fault that they’re now forced to roam the streets. What you don’t see is what they may have gone through on the way down. On the streets of Chicago there are many homeless who are (or so I’m told) often those with severe mental problems, society - it would seem - has no coping mechanism to provide these people with adequate and viable treatment.

Just as you may be forced to re-look at how people got where they are today on the streets Wicked! makes you look again at how the witches became good or bad, in fact it will certainly shake your view of who was good and who was bad.

The acting was terrific, really, terrific. The costumes were no less impressive, if I tell you that involves people dressed as flying monkeys then you may have some idea. I was certainly impressed by it. One of the things I loved was a mechanical dragon mounted over the stage, this roared and emitted smoke whenever it was appropriate (the exercising of magic, etc). All in all the musical really involved me and drew me into it, I’m generally a pretty harsh critic as I don’t entirely see the point of telling a story using exaggerated acting and singing. This was so well produced and directed that I only had a few little criticisms: one of the solo’s felt a little laboured as it was quite long and; there was a severe pun which I won’t reveal, it just annoyed me.

Over all, if I have the opportunity again I’ll have a second viewing. The acting was incredible, the special effects were wonderful; if you have a chance, watch it! I’m not telling you much because I don’t want to spoil the show.

Do tell me what you think; kind regards, Robert.

[Photo's to come.]

I’ve recently bought a Sony Ericsson K800i, it’s a nice little thing. I say thing because it’s one of those multitudinous devices which contains a camera, a mp3 player, expandability via memory cards, a radio, a basic web browser, video calling and all the rest. What’s more it can be used to call people when you’re out and about!

In short I wanted a phone which I can use (unlocked) in the States without breaking a warranty. To use my MDA Vario II I’d have to break a warranty which I intend to use within the next few months, my Vario being slightly broken. Before some clever person points out that I can use my Vario in the states without unlocking it, I want to use a pay as go SIM from the states to lower charges and I can’t do that without unlocking.

So, I went to CarPhone Warehouse and purchased one. It’s the cheapest 3G phone I could get with T9. T9 is what I’m used to from my old old phone, a nice little Sharp. So, I have a phone which suites my requirements; it provides 2G/3G for the best coverage and T9 for my comfort.

It also has a ~3mpx camera, not too bad one either. I’ve taken a few photo’s with it and give it a test in most conditions, one thing I noted was that it actually handed both the dark and near dark with relative ease. I was very surprised that it even handled flash compensation reasonably well. The camera is covered by a shutter and when you remove the cover it automatically starts the camera application, when you close the shutter it closes the application. I thought this was quite useful.

It has a music player and radio, these leave a little to be desired. The radio is analogue, but other than that quite a reasonable little device, it requires the headphones to be plugged in as it uses them as an aerial, but it doesn’t restrict your listening to them. The music player is integrated enough to prevent the two running together and it has a passable interface for using to play a track at a time.  It didn’t like my music, in fact, it seemed to hate it. It (apparently by random) truncated it’s readings of my ID3 tags, it also doesn’t allow playing by album, this is not good if you’re in the habit of using compilations.

The web browser seems OK, as does the RSS reader, I haven’t tested this to the full because I have limited credit on the SIM which came with the phone.  I’m always hesidant about web browsers on phones, the screens are small and the typing facilities are minimal. However, if such things please you I think they should be adequate for most average needs.

I’ve not tested video calling, I see it as pretty pointless but the camera on the front seems to be OK.

So there you go, that’s me unboxing it. I’ve liked what I’ve seen and found it pretty usable, the leather strap for carrying makes it feel rather like a camera and adds a bit of character, the screen is clear and the camera is of good quality. Most importantly it makes calls, if it made coffee I’d be far happier than all the gimmicks.

Here’s me, signing off, Robert.