14th Feb 2008

What a wonderful start to the day today, a full belly laugh while eating breakfast! Catching up on the last pages of yesterdays Press, there was a small paragraph on the fortunes of the Canterbury women's basketball team "The Sirens". Apparently last year they were the only team not to have found a main sponsor. One was lined up, but the Australian franchise running the competition did not approve.
The prospective sponsor turned out to be a pet food manufacturer who made a product called Dogs Breakfast. Priceless!!

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A small plug for My Sky.
We live in a fairly isolated spot. Radio reception is patchy (no FM) and subject to atmospheric interference and TV (channels 1-3) much the same. We installed Sky digital a couple of years ago which meant we got great reception, but you couldn't listen to the radio and watch or record TV at the same time. I've known about My Sky for a long time, but resisted because of the $600 price tag. you never own the box, but if like us, you are locked into Sky out of necessity, then the outlay becomes diluted over time. If it breaks they replace it, possibly with a newer model as time goes on.

PVR's (personal video recorders) are big time in the US but don't seem to have caught on here in NZ. I believe there are one or two firms selling them in conjunction with Freeview (the Freeview decoder and recorder are one unit). The main feature advantage of PVR's is the ability to time shift your viewing habits. We tended to stop everything at 6pm to watch the news. Now we can set the recorder to record it every night and perhaps start watching it at 6.45pm from the start while it's still recording (fast forwarding through the ads). You can record one channel while watching another, or record two channels while watching something already recorded. It's great for recording programs at obscure times and I've got into the habit of sitting down with the TV Guide a week ahead and picking out anything that might appeal. Ocassionally you find some gems buried in the schedule. Programming is only a couple of button clicks and with around 80 hours of record time you don't have to be fussy with your choice. I generally have a quick look at any "iffy" ones and if they look crap then the delete button removes them in one swoop (none of the microsoft "are you really really sure you want to do this?"). Anything you want to keep permanently you can move on to a VCR or DVD recorder. Unfortunately this can only be done by "playing" the programme in real time, but I set it up before I go to bed and it's all done the next morning. Another great feature is the ability to pause a "live" program you are watching if the phone rings or the mormons knock on the door. You can then resume watching (as long as the call hasn't taken over an hour) and fast forward through the ads. It is possible to never have to watch another advertisement on TV again!

As you can tell, I'm a My Sky convert...!

TC