SteelSkin.net – The Ramblings of Chris Nutt

Thanks to the videos of MrTasselhoff I have ordered myself an Ainol Novo 7 Aurora. I have been swithering about the Samsung Galaxy Note Vs S II for ages. As I have wanted a sub 9″ tablet for ages and I need a new phone. At the price the Aurora is I can easily afford a new Phone as well.

However the Aurora isn’t just cheap. There are plenty of cheap and nasty Android tablets on the market. The Aurora’s defects are either irelevant to me or can be patched in software.

Killer features:

• Hitachi IPS 5 Point multi touch display
  • As much as my mates Advent Vega is nice, you just can’t see anything easily on the device. Aside from the MVA displays in Archos’s G9 devices and OLED in Samsung’s you need the viewing angles of IPS on a tablet. It can not be fixed in a position square on to the eye like a Monitor, TV or Laptop screen easily. So TN is out of the question for me.
• 8GB of internal memory
  • I don’t want my apps and settings disapearing when I mount or swap my SD card
• Real HDMI out
  • No fancy adapaters (MHL or Apple)
  • No Fuss
• Form Factor
  • I find 9″+ tablets too big. My mates iPad 2 is too big , as is the Vega. Only the Transformer gets around this by being a Tablet/Laptop hybrid. Used my mates Tab 7.7 and was highly impressed by the form factor, I can hold it with one hand and use the other securly. The Aurora is .7″ smaller so benefits from being just right
  • Light, 40% the weight of a Vega and half the weight of the iPad 2
• Ice Cream Sandwich and the power to use it
  • 1GB of ram
  • Dual Core 1.2Ghz CPU
• Android 4.01 from day one

We need to talk. I do love your DVD, Game and Blu-Ray service it is great.

However your streaming service whilst a nice extra does not look like a winner against a truly competitive alternative. If you don’t get the quality up and the variety up you may find one year a mass exodus to NetFlix.

Now I really like your service at the moment so please consider these suggestions :

• Speak to the BBC find out how they make their video SD or HD look so good in the PS3 app
• Get a deal with Crunchyroll or Manga or who ever and get streaming Anime. Especially simulcast. This will get a small, but very vocal voice shouting your corner on the internet.
• Get season passes to Sporting events. Start small at first stuff that Murdock wouldn’t care about like British Rallying or Ladies Football. Again stuff where the fans will feel great loyalty for your attention to them

Thanks to Mark Aberfan (Aerials) on Join Fresat  he put me right by pointing out a new firmware update for the Echostar HDS-600RS.

Fixed my problems

As posted on AV Forums:

well my Echostar started failing to record series link shows. First it disabled series link altogether. Then I switch it off and then on. It then showed the series link icon, but then failed to record beyond the first recording.

I have tried: Factory Reset, reinitialising the drive and a firmware update.

I’ve lost all of my recordings and it’s no better.

I am less than impressed with Echostar, compared to PS3 PlayTV and even my mates sluggish TIVO this thing is slow. I can’t imagine how slow other devices are if this is considered fast.

It could be that it was second hand, but when it did series link properly it at least allowed to to just watch the shows I wanted with as little time in the interface as possible.