Category Archives: Tech

Impressions, Tech

Samsung D900 Impressions

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Samsung D900

The datestamp on the first photos I took on my Sharp GX20 reliably informs me that I got the phone on 22nd February 2004, meaning that I’ve owned the same phone for over three years; surely a record in these days where most people don’t even keep the same number for a few months, let alone a handset. It’s still a brilliant phone and I love it like a pair of comfortable old shoes, but now that the battery struggles to see me through the day it was time to move on.

I went for a free upgrade to the Samsung D900. Not a clamshell as I like, but one of those slider phones that folds down to a svelte 100x50x10. It has a lovely screen that made a screen protector (can’t complain when it cost £3.90 for a pack of ten on eBay) a necessary investment with my messy fingers sliding over it to operate many of the features. I shudder to think what an iPhone would be like.

At this point I’ve been using the phone for a couple of weeks and have a pretty good handle on how things work. It has operating differences that I’m getting my head around – # is now a space rather than 0 on my old phone – and a few annoyances – no custom text alerts unless you use some hacked firmware – and as I work through them I’m finding I like it more and more. The screen looks splendid with a stellar spire in the Eagle Nebula as wallpaper (best wallpapers around on that site), and it’s also quad-band which means I’ll be able to use it in Japan. Plus MP3 ringtones lets me counter the shitty hip-hop that so many people seem to use with such classics as the Ouendan theme, ‘The Opened Way’ from Shadow of the Colossus, the Katamari theme, and, of course, the MGS codec sound.

A very decent phone, then. I tend to get comfortable with things like this which makes getting a new phone a bigger deal for me than most, and the fact that I’ve adapted this quickly can probably be taken as good sign. That’s not to say that I’ve thrown away Ol’ Reliable, though. Just in case ;)

Games, Tech, Xbox

Is Microsoft Retarded!?

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The Xbox 360 Elite has been announced, and it’s not a limited edition heralding an enhanced premium system as was rumoured. So now there’s three SKUs and the price has essentially been increased?

I was looking forward to buying a white 360 with HDMI when it was released, especially if it had the new 65nm chips and revised chipset (hopefully with revised reliability). I’ll be able to buy an HDMI-equipped 360, but that’s as good as it gets. Also good on them for including HDMI and component cables in the box, which is much better than composite. *cough*

What we get is a third SKU for $80 more than the retail price. Since people seem to price the 360 at $400 and the PS3 at $600, despite cheaper models being available, this is effectively a price hike that takes a chunk out of their nice $200 price cushion on the competition. And they don’t have the HD movie playback which may be of debatable value but is something you may as well have for $20 more.

No 65nm processors means that unless they’ve done a motherboard revision for the addition of HDMI the motherboards are still going to be warp-prone and unreliable. At least those three red lights will look nice against the black finish, right?

And, of course, it wouldn’t be a 360 without extortionate hard drive prices. $180 for 120GB is insane, as on NewEgg they sell a 160GB 2.5″ SATA hard drive for $120, or a 100GB one for $81. That’s one expensive enclosure that they put them in. A 2.5″ external 120GB drive costs $94.

I’ve almost got my head in my hands here. A limited edition before the standard premium (oxymoron?) got the HDMI port made sense, this just doesn’t. Fingers crossed that they’ll pick up the ball again when the 65nm chips get integrated.

DVD & Blu-ray, Impressions, Movies & TV, Tech, Xbox

360 HD DVD Impressions

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Xbox 360 with HD DVD Drive

If you thought getting hold of an Xbox 360 late last year was difficult, you should try finding one of the HD DVD drives. The shop where I had my original order didn’t get any and, according to my friend who owns it, Gem (the main UK Microsoft distributor for indies) only had a couple of dozen for the whole country. Gameplay told me that they couldn’t supply my preorder until, after much ado, it turned out that they could.

Obviously an external drive isn’t the most elegant way to play HD DVD but what this does is make an excellent stopgap until the standalones come down in price a bit. How many HD movie players are there for £130 again?

It’s admittedly a bit disingenuous to say that this is an HD DVD player for £130 when you need a £200 machine to run it, but a quick calculation tells me that £130 + £200 = £330, which is significantly less than the £400+ for the standalone HD players or the PS3. It comes with the remote (usually £20 on its own) and the King Kong HD DVD (£14.99 on Play), and when you look at the aggressive pre-Christmas bundling going on with 360 consoles I don’t think it’s a bad deal.

Pricing aside, the most important thing is how well this works. The answer is pretty well. Not perfect, although it does represent excellent value for money and the quality is very high. It’s certainly the best way to play HD movies without breaking the bank. Continue reading 360 HD DVD Impressions →

DVD & Blu-ray, Life, Movies & TV, Tech, Xbox

HD DVD Hunting

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‘Tis a sad day when you have to jump through more hoops to get a new accessory than you did the console itself, but that’s exactly the experience that I’ve had today while hunting for the 360 HD DVD drive, which neither my friend’s shop (there were around 20 in the whole country for independent shops, according to the distributor) nor Gameplay could supply me with for launch day. I doubt I was alone in this experience, so here’s my day.

I’d heard that a good number of PC World stores would be getting a handful of units each for general sale. Got up bright and early at 8am this morning so that I could be at PC World in Poole, the biggest around, for when it opened at 9. I asked in there and they said they were expecting a few but they haven’t turned up, and they might be in their delivery later that day. Went home via the Christchurch branch (the other side of town) but they weren’t getting any, checking every place that might have had them (Tesco, Currys, Comet, etc) on the way. No joy.

Then I had to go to uni so I checked PC World in Southampton while I was there, along with Gamestation, two branches of Game, Virgin, HMV, and CEX. Nothing.

On the way home I detoured over to Poole again to see if their delivery had arrived. Nope. Maybe Monday, they said. By then I was resigned to getting an import on Tuesday, obviously at a premium but not as unreasonable as the current eBay prices, so I went to cancel my unfulfilled Gameplay order which still said “Ordered” since I’d missed out on the initial shipment. Went through their cancellation process and then noticed – after I’d cancelled it, mind – that it had changed to “Being Picked”.

I rang them up to see if that was accurate and, if it was, to see if I could cancel my cancellation. The guy there informed me that they’d managed to get a few more units and mine had been shipped out this morning via courier, so I should get it on Monday.

A happy ending, then. Now I think I need to lie down…

DVD & Blu-ray, Impressions, Movies & TV, Tech

Topfield TF5800PVR Impressions

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Another day, another new gadget. This time it’s a PVR funded, as always, by my good old student loan. Hooray!

Topfield TF5800PVR

Say hello to the Topfield TF5800PVR, known to its friends as the Toppy. By day it’s a mild-manned Freeview PVR with a 160GB hard drive to record 80 hours of material, which by my calculations is how much TV I watch in about three months. It also has component output which is a great boon for an LCD TV user. This thing has some real tricks inside that bland little case, however.

First up is the USB port on the back. It’s used not only for the obvious firmware upgrades, but also to pull the recorded video off the hard drive to the computer where it can be edited, burnt to DVD, stuck on the PSP/iPod, or whatever. Obviously this in no way encourages piracy and putting copyrighted material on YouTube. Never. Not even all the weekend’s goals like they show on Match of the Day 2 in a handy two-minute package.

It’s real killer app here, though, is that it can run its own little applications known as TAPs (Topfield APplications). With some judicious tapping mine now pulls EPG data for the next two weeks from the Radio Times site instead of the basic 7-day EPG that Freeview has (this means much more extensive information including mini reviews of every film that’s on) and has a number of searches running that record anything that matches them (e.g. it searches BBC1 and BBC2 at the weekend for names beginning with “Match of the Day” that are on after 10pm, catching both versions). It also allows me to browse the listings by genre, name, and even content summaries. And that pair is just the beginning. There are tons of the things.

I only got it last Thursday (from Superfi, who were pretty good and the cheapest on Pricerunner) so I’m still learning the ropes and doing that perpetual tweaking that I do – I’ve only just become happy with the setup of my Harmony remote that I bought in March – but I’ve been well impressed with this thing. It’s a decent box on its own merits, and when you factor in the ton of extra functionality that you can download for nothing, it’s brilliant.

Games, PlayStation, Tech

RIP Lik-Sang

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Remember those days when your only choice for getting an import game was the local independent and the prospect of paying £100 for it? Or a questionable mail order company in the back of CVG that may or may not fold before the next issue? Then the Internet came along and we could get all the cheap imports and dirt cheap accessories we wanted from Hong Kong outlets, and it was good.

As you may or may not know, possibly the biggest of these Hong Kong retailers, Lik-Sang, has today announced in a surprisingly ironic statement that it’s closing down as a result of repeated Sony lawsuits against it. The most recent one, which I wrote about in my last post, ended in a ruling that the importing of PSPs into the EU before the official release had been illegal and, by association, that importing the PS3 would be as well.

“Today is Sony Europe victory about PSP, tomorrow is Sony Europe’s ongoing pressure about PlayStation 3. With this precedent set, next week could already be the stage for complaints from Sony America about the same thing, or from other console manufacturers about other consoles to other regions, or even from any publisher about any specific software title to any country they don’t see fit. It’s the beginning of the end… of the World as we know it”, stated Pascal Clarysse, formerly known as the Marketing Manager of Lik-Sang.com.

“Blame it on Sony. That’s the latest dark spot in their shameful track record as gaming industry leader. The Empire finally ‘won’, few dominating retailers from the UK probably will rejoice the news, but everybody else in the gaming world lost something today.”

Well, fuck them. Really, fuck them. I’d never once used Lik-Sang to buy a Sony product but had bought countless cheap gadgets (most recently my £10 component switcher) that are difficult to find elsewhere. Now that’s gone because Sony wants to attack consumer choice for when they decide that they don’t like paying more for a late product. I don’t, didn’t buy a UK PSP, and also won’t buy a UK PS3.

This is a sad day. I hope this pisses off enough gamers to really come back and bite them.