Archive for the 'TV' Category

ITV’s Rampant Stupidity Continues

Published
by
John Griffin
on May 7, 2008
in TV and Tech
. 0 Comments

As much as I hate Sky, I hate ITV even more. And today is no exception with the announcement that ITV HD will be a Freesat exclusive. So rather than rolling out their channel to the largest established HD platform in the UK (Sky HD) they choose to go with the unproven service that just launched.

There is no technical need for it to be exclusive to Freesat. It all comes from the same satelite orbiting the Earth regardless of which service you sign up for. BBC HD which is available on both proves this. As far as I can see the only thing they need to do is maintain two EPG formats - thats it.

We all know how well it went the last time ITV were a platform holder (hint: horribly) and it looks like they are well on their way to screwing things up again.

Not that I watch anything on ITV.

iPlayer on Wii makes mockery of PS3 and 360, says BBC

Published
by
John Griffin
on April 15, 2008
in Gaming, TV and Tech
. 1 Comment
cunt

I have been saving this rant since last week due to the blog issues. I still think it’s relevant.

When I read this blog post by the BBC’s Darren Waters last week I started to get very angry. Now that I’ve had some time to think about it I can make a cool rational judgement - something I suggest Mr Waters tries.

“The BBC’s announcement of a deal with Nintendo to put the iPlayer’s streaming service on the console makes something of a mockery claims by Sony and Microsoft that their consoles are the true multimedia machines.”

I don’t care which side he is on but the fact is that he and the BBC should not be taking sides. It’s all very well to brag about how amazing your online video service will be on the Wii but it’s another thing to shit all over Nintendo’s competion. It’s called impartiality buddy.

Now to the techie meat of the issue. Any browser that supports the latest flash can play iPlayer content. So that’s why Wii and PS3 support is on the way - they have browsers. The catch is that this is the low quality version, the high(er) quality video must be downloaded. Unlike that BBC blogger I have a PC connected to a large screen and attempted to watch Doctor Who via the flash player this week. It looked horrendous. I couldn’t watch it. The same video I couldn’t watch will be what is offered on the Wii and a download option can never be implemented that platform.

People don’t mind watching YouTube videos on their PCs in tiny windows but when you stretch it out on a huge screen they will not be impressed.

Is Lucas Way Down In The Hole?

Published
by
John Griffin
on March 18, 2008
in TV
. 0 Comments

I was discussing the potential of the Star Wars live action TV show the other day and wondered where George Lucas would be drawing his inspiration for how it should be structured and presented. I’d hoped Battlestar obviously but was pleasantly surprised to see this on Slashfilm this morning,

“Some of the characters from the features find their way in there, so it’s not completely divorced. It’s as if we just went down the street and told a different story. You know, we were doing, I don’t know, 24, and now we’re going to move down the street here and do The Wire. Same thing, it’s just different people doing the same thing in the same city.”

Yes he said THE WIRE, everybody’s favourite Baltimore based drug busting masterpiece. My expectations have significantly increased in the hopes they can pull off a character driven tightly nit story. I’m just glad he is aware of some of the best contemporary TV out there, we don’t need another Young Indiana Jones Chronicles.

Stuff I’ve Been Doing Recently

Published
by
John Griffin
on March 12, 2008
in General, Life, MMA and TV
. 0 Comments
  • Watching the outstanding final season of The Wire. More thoughts on this when I have them, but it’s up there with the best TV ever.
  • Reading the fine works of Chris Ware, most notably Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth. Creepy, disturbing, brilliant.
  • Playing Company of Heroes and the Opposing Fronts expansion after they showed up on Steam in a gold pack. I have been meaning to go back and start some semblance of an online career, playing the campaign right now to get me ready. I had forgotten how much better this is than most games in the genre.
  • Attending what will hopefully be Ken Shamrock’s second last fight (let them do the brother vs brother match). He got knocked out by Buzz Berry in the first round and all I could think sitting there in Wembley Arena was why didn’t you shoot Ken? Just shoot and take him down. Guess they didn’t have game plans back in the early days of MMA. British guys have horrible wrestling so there is no excuse.
  • Catching up on some of the movies I tragically missed recently.

iPlayer Downloads Now Firefox Compatible

Published
by
John Griffin
on February 5, 2008
in TV and Tech
. 0 Comments

Slow clap.

Small baby steps.

Change the Aspect Ratio!

Published
by
John Griffin
on January 22, 2008
in TV and Tech
. 3 Comments

Charlie Brooker hits one of my little frustrations right on the head today,

I tend to assume other people share my obsessive need to examine the settings until everything is just so, and get genuinely enraged when I go to someone’s house and discover, say, that they’re watching programmes in the wrong aspect ratio. People over 50 are the worst offenders: they’ll blithely sit through a Dad’s Army repeat that is unnaturally stretched across the screen so that the entire cast look as if they had difficult births that left them with flattened skulls. Faced with this, I get acute back-seat-driver anxiety, and end up hectoring them like an exasperated pilot trying to teach a four-year-old how to fly a helicopter.

It’s not just the aspect ratio, when I go back home shows are being watched in standard def even when they are being broadcast in HD on the next channel and we are paying for the luxury of Sky HD. That’s not as bad as watching a whole nights TV with squashed or stretched heads but still makes me wonder why they pay for it.

The exception to the over 50 rule is my brother who couldn’t care less and is oblivious to picture quality. I’ve caught him watching analogue terrestrial with black bars (put on by the broadcaster for 4:3 correction) stretched across the 16:9 LCD. Ouch.

UFC 80 Live Report

Published
by
John Griffin
on January 20, 2008
in Life, MMA and TV
. 0 Comments

The dedicated few made the difficult trip up to Newcastle to check out UFC 80 this weekend. The Metro Radio Arena is a tiny shed of a venue compared to the O2 and the M.E.N. making our cheap ‘nose bleed’ seats seem considerably closer than previous shows. This was a great show to see live as only one fight went the distance (the opposite of UFC 75) and even that was pretty exciting. The roof blew off whenever BJ Penn did anything and we were all pleased to see him finally get the lightweight belt, he deserved it. I don’t think the noise in the arena came across on TV, although I didn’t realise quite how bloody the fight was till I watched it back at home.

Oh and due to a hilarious lapse in security when the show ended we got octagon side, met Mike Goldberg and got involved in the numerous chants aimed at Joe Rogan, Dana White and of course Micheal Bisping. At one point there were about 20 guys chanting like crazy at Goldberg right behind the camera while he was doing a fill for a prelim, if you watch it back you can just make out the noise but Goldberg never cracks - what a pro.

Great show, fun weekend, shame about the location, come on Dana bring UFC to Birmingham!

Best (and Most Disappointing) TV Shows of 2007

Published
by
John Griffin
on January 1, 2008
in TV
. 2 Comments

Best Show: Battlestar Galactica
Runners Up: The Sopranos, Doctor Who, Rome, Entourage, Heroes

BSG does it again! Capped off by an amazing season finale and recent the spin off Razor made BSG the king of TV for another year. The Sopranos, while controversial, did provide an entertaining end to its long run. Summer 2007 was known as the ‘Summer of Entourage’ for HBO having the genius idea of putting two seasons back to back and boy was it great. 2007 also included the second half of Heroes season 1 of and the whole of season 2. That’s why it appears in two categories ;-).

Best Comedy: Flight of the Conchords
Runners Up: South Park, The Office (US), Entourage, Flight of the Conchords, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Screenwipe

I’ve added this section because I knew I could never bring myself to give a comedy a best show award and the quality has been high enough this year to justify it. Flight of the Conchords came out of nowhere and I instantly loved it, some of the songs they come up with are so memorable and its unlike anything else on right now. Tenacious D they are not! South Park had another excellent year with the Imaginationland Trilogy and the Guitar Hero episode. The Office (US) when it moved to an hour long format for the first few episodes of the season really shined, it’s just a shame everyone in the UK refuses to watch it.

Best New Show: Flight of the Conchords
Runners Up: None

Something is wrong when I can’t think of any runners up for this category.

Most Disappointing: 24
Runners Up: Lost, Heroes

Many felt 24 had already jumped the shark in previous years but this year it literally did. No amount of swerves and guest stars could save them from everyone feeling like they had seen it all before. Lost gets a mention because I have a love hate relationship with it. While season 3 was far better then last year (which received my most disappointing TV award) it still felt convoluted and most things that needed explaining remained unexplained. Heroes gets a special mention for the majority of season 2 which sucked.

Shows I switched off half way through: Scrubs, Bionic Woman, Sarah Connor Chronicles

Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe: New Year Special

Published
by
John Griffin
on December 23, 2007
in TV
. 2 Comments

Seeing as the BBC do a horrible job promoting Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe, to the extent that regular viewers like me and BBC Four newsletter subscribers don’t know it’s on, I thought I’d do them a favour and plug the repeat on here. Watch it.

Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe: New Year Special at LocateTV.com

Heroes Season 2 Is Disappointing

Published
by
John Griffin
on December 11, 2007
in TV
. 1 Comment

The second season of Heroes came to end rather quickly and disappointingly after the huge success of last year. While it certainly turned a corner by the 8th episode it all seemed too little too late. This was incidentally the episode that told the events right after the end of season one and finally ditched Hiro’s wacky adventures in medieval Japan. Why on Earth they couldn’t just do this in the first place is beyond me - it makes far more sense and actually explained what happened to the characters after the big finale. Dumb.

The other thing that has been nagging at me are the logic holes. A man who can manipulate time itself would have no problem handling every situation and saving anybody. Hiro has become too powerful and breaks the show because of this. The guy really needs to be restricted to just pausing time.

Also in the last two episodes it’s established that Peter and Adam can be killed by a bullet through the head. Yet before this Noah is shot in the head, killed and then promptly resurrected via a transfusion of Claire’s blood. The same Claire whose powers Peter absorbed and as such you would assume the same rules apply to her as to any blood transfusion.

I haven’t even started on my outright hatred for Maya and Niki - so pointless. Hopefully the writer’s strike will give them time to reflect on the issues this season has had so they come back with swinging next year. Hopefully.