Prices

$49 and $99 eh? So that'll be £99 and £149 when it gets over here then.

Getting there.

Well it sounds very nice - anything that can handle MKVs immediately gets a gold star from me. Unfortunately it's still up around the price tag for a complete HTPC which would be able to play back disc media as well.

A title is required.

Stick an nVidia 8 series or later chip in there - Nvidia CUDA is much more accommodating than DXVA for hardware h264 decoding. Only downside is you need CoreAVC to access it which isn't free (but it is cheap and very good). In a box this small you need every bit of processing power you can squeeze out, which with DXVA sadly isn't very much.

Down is not the issue.

How about instead of working on 200 meg DL connections you give us a 2 meg down and 2 meg up connection?

TV station bug

Comments from around the web seem to indicate the bug is slightly more serious, resulting in the digital tuner completely dying, meaning a replacement set. However I still want one for the parents so I can finally be rid of VHS.

@David Wiernicki

Get the right upscaler and the results can be amazing - thus a PC will outperform almost any standalone. PureVideo and a 1080p telly via HDMI = unbelievably good DVD playback.

As for BD itself, until it's as easy to play any and all BDs regardless of region as it is with DVDs I'll probably hold on to my cash.

@Nick

Two drives, at exactly the same time?

@Dave

Fair enough, I'm not a network engineer after all. So what exactly is coming down my coax line from the street box?

Paris because apparently we know the same amount.

Hazardous

I liked the beta - much more polished than the pre-betas (obviously)... but then it trashed two of my hard drives (apparently). Anyone else had random spin-downs using Maxtor SATA drives?

Other than that (admittedly rather major) issue, I really like Win7. The description "Vista pretty but without all the crap" seems quite apt.

Title is required

And no-one complains that Safari is included as default with Mac OS? Or are they not important enough?

@ Ash and Kev

I too get exactly as advertised - 2mb for the first GB (during peak times, then 1mb for the next 5 hours), otherwise full speed. Customer service is crap but at least the line is pretty damn stable. It's gone down I think once in the past 6 months, and that was at their end (evidenced by flashing "sync" and "ready" lights on the modem).

Just out of interest...

How many of this type of unit *do* support MKV and h264? It seems to be the one thing that is almost non-existent - if this does indeed support everything it may just be awesome. Network port would be even better however. HTPC for £100? Yes please.

(although I do like having a full HTPC and WMC)

Network-wide Oyster card

and be quick about it.

The "notches in different places" idea...

Sounds a bit iffy with regards to keeping the blades balanced.

Oh for crying out loud.

They can't fix their browser so they want the internet to be fixed instead?

@Matthew Ellen

Ah yes, methodology. I believe the only correct place for that term is as a heading for the section of your work where you describe and discuss the methods available to you for whatever it is you are doing. The method is what you actually do.

Main article:

"Brainstorming"? That's hardly new.

"At the end of the day"? I find it useful for "what will/should happen regardless of the method you employ" or "what it turns out like regardless of how you think it should happen".

MacBook Air...

...has only one USB port though...

@TheBigYin

VideoReDo is your friend - will take in any form of mpeg2 stream including .dvr-ms and spits out a bog standard .mpg

Required, a title is.

I want one of those fancy ruby prism keys from Da Vinci Code

@ AC 13:22

XP with an Aero interface? Perfect.

Displayport?

Does anyone or anything actually use that?

Paris, because she displays... yeah.

Good to see...

..the El Reg hive mind in full swing.

Re: Cumbria?

Fireman Sam was in Wales, Postman Pat was clearly up north somewhere.

Title is required

I think an old-fashioned "large" sim shares the same form factor as a chip-and-pin smartcard, which would explain why they keep the superfluous plastic - easier to stick in a reader/writer

Firefox 3...

...makes light work of the site not filling the screen - "Zoom" insted of "Text Size" for the win!

I'll live with it.

It's quite nice, clean look etc. Put the old comment icons back and you'll hear no quarrel from me.

One more thing...

You might want to add "overflow-y : scroll" to your CSS to stop it jumping around when the page isn't long enough to warrant a scrollbar, too.

@Cameron Colley

Theatre != Cinema

Revolver or pistol

The picture on the Revolver card in my box is definitely of a semi-automatic pistol, and ditto for the actual playing piece itself.

Paris, just because.

RIght then...

...get Torchwood on it.

Google-Yahoo

Hasn't this all happened before?

Paris just because...

@ Odin

To make it three times faster, natch?

@Scott

Too right, I suspect a plot by the boss to have past episodes float by unnoticed...

No need to ring the 08 number

Look up VM's numbers on saynoto0870.com and you should be able to find a geographical number for customer service. They have been blocking them off one by one but if you can find one it's well worth it (especially if you get free minutes on your mobile)