SteelSkin.net – The Ramblings of Chris Nutt

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.

I have made no efforts to hide my disappointment after seeing the Star Trek reboot at the cinema. I really didn’t like it. However in an effort to be fair after my recent revisit of the other films I sat down and watched it again.

Taken as entertainment it is ok. I found it to be a bit like an American kid’s cartoon or Transformers 2, frenetic and a bit much. Nothing has space to breath, all ideas good and bad seem to be chucked in to fill airtime.

For it’s time the Star Trek series did try to step things forward, moving beyond the pulp Science Fiction of Flash Gordon and building on the work of the Forbidden Planet. You had an international, interracial, intergalactic and interspecies crew. Bare in mind the controversy at the time of a Russian on-board and a female officer on the bridge.

Old Star Trek had gotten stale. It was by the numbers and re-treading old or unwelcome ideas. I think I was hoping something on a par with the BSG reboot with more mainstream appeal.

Really what we got was something that back peddled to Buck Rogers. Women are back to being love interests only and science takes a back seat to fiction. Add on a Pimp my Ride level of subtlety and any good ideas are swamped by candy floss. The start of the film felt so good to me that the rest feels all the more criminal. Wasted Potential, Vacuous and Shallow in the whole 3/10