Toms View of the World

So, you’re watching the game, and you decide it would be nice to have a cold drink. You don’t have a Sky + or Tivo machine, so you can’t stop the action…

What you need is one of these…

A remote controlled, robotic, beer-flinger.

Note the pingback on the previous post (the one about Vista).

That pingback appears to be from a (quite badly) set up WordPress blog with a plugin to rip content via RSS from other sites. Notably it stripped out the link to “previous post”. Unusually for these ripper sites, there is no advertising (yet), however there is also no indication of the purpose of the site, nor the identity of it’s owner.

It’s also clearly designed to only show the first part of a post, to remove any copyright messages that appear - so the RSS feed for this site now has the copyright message at the top of each post, rather than at the end.

Apologies to those of you who read the site via RSS…

Following on from my earlier post on the subject, it’s come to my attention that there is now a petition with over 2000 signatures on the Government Petitions Website regarding the overpricing of Windows Vista here in the UK.

Well, it’s being reported by the Guardian newspaper that there is no hope for Cable customers who like shows like 24, Battlestar Galactica and Lost.

A Sky spokesman insisted Sky had not “pulled” its channels.
“We have an agreement that Virgin Media can distribute those channels until the end of the month,” he said.
“Virgin cannot distribute from March 1 if there is no agreement so, sadly for our customers, those channels would not be available.”

I’m glad my Sky dish will be installed the day before I lose Sky One, Two, Sky News and Sky Sports News from my cable lineup. However I don’t think it’s encouraging competition or consumer choice for these two companies not to reach an agreement for the benefit of their paying customers. I have no doubt Sky losing several million cable viewers will have an effect on their advertising revenues - at least until the Cable customers who will move to Sky do so. Cable has a decent channel line-up even without the Sky channels, but there are enough shows I enjoy watching that I’ll make the move.

Plus if in the future I want to get HDTV, Sky’s platform currently has a much wider range of programming available…

A look into the past - as reported on Canadian TV in the early 90’s - a view of a new phenomenon - “internet” - no graphics, no Flash, no web - just newsgroups and email… on text-only terminals over dial-up phone lines. If only they knew what that world of monochrome text was to become in a few short years.

Scary. I actually remember the internet before the web was born…

See the full video on Geeks Are Sexy

With all the hoo-haa about Sky One on Cable at the moment, both sides are escalating their side of this battle, but doing so with a propaganda campaign by manipulating the customer - Sky’s latest “press release” is trying to make out that the breakdown in talks is Virgin’s fault, Virgin have retaliated by emailing customers this message.

Come on guys - stop behaving like spoiled children and do something to help your customers - end the uncertainty and tell us either that “we’ve agreed carriage terms for Sky” or “As of a certain date, Sky’s basic channels will no longer be available on Virgin” - then we can, as customers, make an informed decision about where to take our business.

Edit

I’ve just spoken to Virgin and the operator confirmed to me that the deal has fallen through… shame really, as my response was to cancel my TV subscription from them. Now I’m on the lookout for a decent Sky offer.

After the problems I had a couple of years ago (also see here and here) with NTL and their awful customer service, now there’s a row going on between the newly rebranded Virgin Media and the stalwart of pay-tv in the UK - British Sky Broadcasting.

Basically, Sky want more Virgin to pay more to keep showing what they call the “basic Sky package” - including Sky One - home of first-showings of The Simpsons, Lost, Battlestar Galactica, Stargate and many others.

I for one will be following the channels - if Virgin fail to strike a deal with Sky, and those channels cease to be transmitted, I’ll have the cable box removed and a shiny new Sky system installed. I’ve already checked, and it won’t cost me any more either, with a free box and free installation to boot - I’ll keep Virgin for Broadband and Phone services, but the TV will come through a dish.