Entertainment category

I’m pretty into my internet TV these days, YouTube is one of the sites I visit every five minutes (or less – don’t judge me). Of course though, there are plenty of shows that have been around longer than YouTube, and Rocketboom is one of them. It is one of the most popular internet shows and has been for sometime. If you haven’t seen it before, now is the perfect week as they are re-releasing old classics - three a day - for this week. Check it out.

Sony had earlier announced plans to drop the price of the 60GB model of the PS3 to $499 in the US, and release an 80GB model with a copy of Motorstorm (from what I hear is crap) at the $599 price. There was a huge buzz about the price drop, with people saying that this is the quickest price drop of a console ever (false, Microsoft dropped the price of the Xbox one month after release in Europe).

Then, after the buzz, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe dropped another bombshell – this price drop has a “while stocks last” condition.

But wait, there’s more. SCE America later reported that those claims were false, and that the two configurations were going to sit side-by-side one shelves:

Those quotes from David Reeves are not accurate. He said that if they had lowered the price in Europe, that territory would have run out of their current inventory by the end of July… As announced this week, SCEA’s product offering in North America consists of a 80GB PS3 available in August at US$599 and a 60GB PS3 available now for US$499. We have will have ample supplies of both models to meet the needs of our consumers for the foreseeable future.

After having a stellar E3 press conference (after last years headache of one liners), this is certainly not what Sony needed.

New Zealand, Australia and Europe customers won’t see this price drop however. SCEE will be releasing a bundle version, with an extra SIXAXIS and two games – Resistance: Fall of Man (want) and Motorstorm (don’t want), for the same price. Why don’t they just give us the price drop too to spur growth as has already happened in the US?

In fact, why can’t we get a new price more closely aligned with our (better) US exchange rate, even if our console price is tethered to the UK’s price? When the PS3 price was confirmed, our dollar to the US was wavering at $1NZD = ~$0.45USD. These days it is $1NZD = $0.78USD. Current PS3 price is at $1200. Using the power of Google Calculator, the $599 price would make it closer to $770 here, and the new $499 price would make it ~$630 here. While it doesn’t include shipping over here or anything, it still makes us wonder why we are getting the raw end of the stick. We are getting charged double that with conversion – it’d be cheaper for us to buy from the US! Stupid SCEE.

The guys at Insomniac have been busy working hard on the next chapter of Ratchet and Clank, exclusively for the PS3. This game perhaps has some of the most detailed graphics out there yet, and looks like a must have and a console seller – exactly what Sony needs for its platform.

• Watch the trailers and footage at GameTrailers (make sure you pick the HD versions!)
• Especially the one demonstrating the Groovitron (HD)

Send an e-mail to facelift@gibson.co.nz to join the weekly e-mail list where you can watch the latest sketches before they’re even on air!

Facelift, Mondays 10pm on TV One

TVNZ has announced an Australasian first by making a deal with Google to put its own content on YouTube.

The channel will show clips of popular TVNZ shows such as One News, Close Up and Shortland Street from TVNZ onDemand.

This goes in line with TVNZ’s on-every-screen strategy that started with the onDemand website. However, it still needs to get a bit beyond the computer screen if that’s to happen – perhaps by removing the DRM off downloaded video from onDemand and making free shows available to download too? (Currently, free content only plays in the embedded flash player and paid content lasts seven days unless you pay up again.)

Telecom T3G customers have been able to get certain TVNZ content on their mobiles for some time now.

• TVNZ onDemand on YouTube

At long last, C4 is to start running 24 hours a day on Freeview and Sky Digital from 7th July. About time.

And at the end of July, TV One and TV2 will be going widescreen.

Time to use that student loan to buy an HDTV I think

The Scissor Sisters are going to release their fourth single off Tah-Da called Kiss You Off - perhaps my favourite track on the album. The song is lead by Ana Matronic and has that classic 80’s feel about it. Go listen. It’ll be out May 28th with a mix by Mr Oizo.

Also while looking on YouTube I discovered that Ana Matronic was featured in a song by 80’s group New Order from their latest album with the song Jetstream. Very pop, but good pop.

TV3 and C4 have appeared on their transponder on D1, along with Radio New Zealand’s National and Concert. They are on frequency 12456000Hz, polarity H at 22500000 symbols/sec.

Freeview launches officially next Wednesday. For more, see the Freeview website. It appears they only have two set top boxes that are official and they cost about $300. The benefit of Freeview is because the channels are not encrypted you are not limited to them.

I’m thinking of writing up a few articles on how to make your own MythBox. Maybe.

May 2nd is the launch date of FreeView. That’s when TV3, C4 and the appropriate Radio New Zealand stations all jump onto the Optus D1 satellite. Currently off the satellite you can get Māori TV, TV One and TV 2.

So, I’ve been busy fixing up my MythBox to get ready for the launch. Still need a larger hard drive, but put in a new PSU as the old one blew out while we were away (and it didn’t record Vicar of Dibley dammit!).

Previously I had been having troubles tuning into the currently single FreeView transponder and been getting TV off the Sky ones. This was because MythTV was recording the values differently for some unknown reason. But I found out with help from the MythTV NZ mailing list. After scanning the channels and picking them up in mythtv-setup, you’ll have to dig into MySQL. As I had PHPMyAdmin installed on my personal computer, I just modified the configuration to use the MythBox’s server. Otherwise, you can just SSH in and use MySQL on the MythBox itself.

The database is called mythconverg, and the username and password can be found by going to Settings » General in MythTV.

If you look in dtv_multiplex, look for the row with the correct frequency 12483000. Delete all the other rows and take note of the mplexid as we’ll need this later. Make sure symbolrate is 22500000 and the polarity is h. modulation also tends to be auto and MythTV should have at least picked up the correct fec as 3/4.

Don’t ask me why MythTV bungled all those values that you typed into the setup to scan the channels!

Jump into channel and have a look to make sure each row has mplexid equal to the one that we took note of above.

Remember, this is what you do after scanning the channels. If you cannot scan, then check your DiSEq settings, making sure that the LNB LOF is 11300000 for both its min and max settings.