Telesausage (soon to renamed “Nelle the TeLe”) have finally finished rolling out their Teleport service. Which is true-video on demand, or IPTV, whichever you want to call it. It’s fair to say it’s taken a long time, as seen as true-video on demand was trumpeted as the advantage cable has over satellite since it was first rolled out in this country over 10 years ago. Any why is south yorkshire always the last to get software updates? Anypoop, its pretty good, when you select a show it only takes 4 or 5 seconds to begin playing (I was expecting it to spend aaages pre-buffering) and the fast-forward/rewind is impressive as they pretty much kick in straight away, although it only seems forward at about 4 or 5x.

Film wise the catalogue is exhaustive, with a lot more movies than front-row/sky movies have at any one time. But the TV shows on offer are less useful, I expect this will improve. There are some complete seasons (select a show, and then select an episode) but the list is a bit lacking, there wasn’t anything I personally would watch. The catch-up what you missed on Tv last week, type section is problematic in that they only have BBC channels, with a few flextech (bravo, living) channels thrown in). It also seems to take 3 days for shows to find their way into the list after their initial air-date. So at the moment teleport cannot match a PVR kit, but it will probably get closer with time.

Negatives, the picture quality is noticeably worse than live tv, I wouldn’t mind knowing what the bit-rate is. It would be better if the STB’s were a bit more modern so that they could use a recent format such as MPEG4. MPEG2 (which i’m sure it will be using) isn’t really idea for streaming bit-rates. But hey, it certainly is watch-able, its only the fast moving scenes that it gets a bit muddy. It’s the STB that causes the other problem too, telewest’s standard STB’s are cranky and slow in the GUI department, navigating around menus is painful, and a service like teleport requires quite a lot of nested menu’s so progress is slow.

I haven’t much to write today and i’ve had a few bevvies. Hmm, where does bevvies come from?

Another mixed bag entry for today.

I give telewest, the cable provider that services Sheffield quite a hard time, and it’s true they are a mixed bag. My current gripe is that they aren’t carrying ITV4 yet, and this is happening time and time again, they hold off carriage rights to get the best deal, and they think they call the bluff the channels but their bluff is always called and the channels launch on all platforms but for telewest. They even resort to such tricks as not renewing contracts and allowing whole channel packages to expire expecting the networks to perspire in anticipation of hitting a golden deal. It happened with MTV 2 years ago, all MTV channels (about 7 of them) went black on telewest because they couldn’t reach a deal, and even funnier was Nickelodeon, they couldn’t reach a deal last year and for a week running up to the channels going black they ran adverts on the nick channels telling kids to get their parents to ditch telewest and go with sky, and we all know how persuasive incessant kids can be. Anyway, i’m only saying this because a lot of people that i know who get their internet from adsl providers seem to have almost simultaneously run into problems. Bulldog famously have fouled up well and truely. And even plusnet, who were once the the pin up’s of good isp-man-ship have started a practice known as bandwidth shaping, where they give preference to port 80 above all else, so p2p advocates are discriminated against, even usenet speeds are now slow on plusnet. Whereas in terms of policy i’ve never been able to fault blueyonder (telewest’s isp), they run a quality usenet service with no limitations, they don’t berrate anyone who hogs bandwidth, in fact quite the opposite, if you complain to them about download speeds they show some genuine interest. They have had problems with email blacklisting however. So I guess in some ways they do act like cowboys and pretend that all their users are angels who do nothing wrong. But in that respect I like to think of them as loveable rogues.

Eddie’s first firework season hasn’t past stress free I’m afraid. It was very unfortunate in fact. 2 Days ago whist I was playing with our beloved puppy in the garden a neighbour decided to let off a few bangers (it was still freaking daylight!) and eddie jumped like never before and ran inside to cower. I ended up holding him in my arms stretched out on the sofa for over 2 hours whilst he shook The poor bean! Then, apparently the day of guy fawkes my parents took the wee soul for a walk in the park (I was busy wrestling with the windows installer) some eejit decided the afternoon , whilst dog walkers were merrily passing by, would be a great time to test some rockets with his impressionable son by his side. Giggling away in the daylight he let these loud fireworks off… Illegally might I add, in a public place with poor pooches walking past. Apparently there were yelps and barking going off all around and my Dad went up to have a word with him, he ignored him and let some more fireworks off. Then the police were mentioned and the guy scuffled off. Shit, despite my shyness issues I think had I been there I would have grabbed one of his Chinese wonders and let it off in the twats face. Suffice it to say, Eddie was not best pleased with these goings on and ran yelping and shaking and no doubt scarred by the memory for life.

Eddie lost a tooth today, actually this is nothing new but it was the first tooth that he thoughtfully placed on the carpet for me to find. Damn strange looking tooth it was too, i had no idea that baby teeth were able to affix to gums with barely no roots. It was a rear tooth and almost flat, apart from a slight indentation and a bit of blood. To be honest I was a tad disappointed, I wanted something evil looking. I’m a freak, we all know this but I also have freakish teeth to go with my freakish nature. When i was a wee blighter I had a tooth taken out, but not after being taken to the nhs dentists to have root canal surgery, the most painful thing you can possibly have done, and as a child! Shit. Yeah, they gave me root canal sugery and then took the tooth out anyway, talk about a bunch of complete arse holes. Anyway, this tooth had dracula, no frankenstain qualities, the roots were distended and one of the roots was in the shape of hook. Yes that’s right, the tooth was hooked into my gums, meaning the dental surgeon had to wiggle and fight to set the tooth free. My gum was almost cut to ribbons.

My god was my mouth sore.