Wednesday 14th April 2010

The following events took place on Wednesday 14th April 2010...

I did some research about the V+HD box. This is what I learnt...

• there is no pure digital way of pulling content off the box - you have to record to DVD using the SCART - annoying
• there are two types of box - the later being made by Samsung. Opinion seems divided about which is best, but which you get depends on what the engineer has in his van at the time. This may be a thing of the past now - I'll let you know.
• one feature of SKY+ that we love and works MOST of the time is "Series Link" - I was happy to see that V+ has the same thing.
• The V+ box has an Ethernet connection and USB connection - neither is used - how frustrating! What a waste. People just use the USB to charge their mobile phones, iPods, and XBox360 controllers!
• The Sky and V+ remotes look about the same. I hope that the volume control on the V+ will work with my Sony TV - the Sky+ one doesn't.
• If everything you record is at HD, you'll get about 20 hours on the box - when all our PC hard drives are in the terrabyte range, why are these drives so small?

I also did an audit of what was on the Sky+ box - you know what - it's all Old Skool terrestrial stuff! BBC2 mainly, BBC1, ITV1. Nothing at all that I'm actually paying for! Most of it is Series Linked - we tend to watch series.

I asked my son to take hourly snapshots of our Internet speed and journalising the results. We're establishing a performance baseline against which to benchmark our shiny new fibrechannel Internet access - we will have an objective view as to whether it's really faster or not.

PS - I posted my contract at... Kings Cross! By the time you read this, it will probably be at the Virgin Media office in sunny Dunstable.