And wuv, tru wuv, will fowow you foweva...

Posted by Conor O'Neill on Sunday, April 17, 2005

We are nearly a week into our Sky+ Box ownership. It’s not often something far exceeds your expectation but this bloody thing does so with ease. The wee beauty can record two channels at the same time. There is some very impressive buffer management going on in there. We have set a bunch of recordings of weekly shows plus any movies that catch my eye no matter what time they start. Of course a VCR can do a lot of this but not with a browse feature and saved program information too. We can now record Nip/Tuck and Grand Designs Abroad at the same time. Why is it that so many of the programs we like clash with other programs we like?

And whilst I’m on the topic - that new Masterchef was fantastic, but 6.30pm? Get a clue you dim-wits. That is when most people who like cooking ARE cooking. Presumably the tristans (to steal an AA Gill term) who scheduled it eat out every night and wouldn’t know what the little people do. Anyway, 7pm, the dead zone, is a far better time for most of us.

Back to Sky+; The live-pause feature is the piece de resistance (yeah, I’m too lazy to figure out how to do french accent symbols). Having three kids creating mayhem and refusing to go to bed during the new series of Doctor Who is no longer a problem. Start watching, Ois?n screams, hit pause, come back 5 mins later, hit play, fight erupts, hit pause, back 10 minutes later, hit play. Overall program finishes 15 minutes later than the original. I hate complimenting Rupert over anything but they really have done a fantastic job on this thing.

As for Doctor Who. Hmm, undecided. Totally tongue in cheek, but then so was Tom Baker. Dislike his constant grinning (did Baker do that?). A lot of the humour will unfortunately date very quickly (bringing out a jukebox millions of years in the future and saying “we believe this was called an iPod”). But at the same time, it is rollicking good fun. The bi-pedal pig last night was hilarious and the aliens are nearly scary. I think my darlings (5, 3, 1) are still a bit too young to watch it but Oscar is showing definite interest in having a look.

And that sound of the Tardis as it disappears still gives me the willies.


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