Oliver's Blog

I’ve had a bit of a run on Sony gadgetry recently. This latest toy, the PlayTV, is just a bog standard Freeview tuner at heart. It plugs in to your Playstation 3 and that’s when the fun begins. The PlayTV software has a really slick interface that other manufacturers should take note of. The program guide is nice and smooth, with a nice clear line down the screen at the current time, fading old programs out, and current programs boldy in view. Channel changing includes a nice fancy flying in fade and program information is easy to read too. Basic PVR functionality is also included, letting you record your TV programs, pause / rewind live TV, schedule recordings from the program guide and more.
Sadly missing from the feature list is the ability to series-link recordings, or record two programs at the same time (you can record one and watch another though) – the latter presumably being a compromise allowing games to be played at the same time as recording takes place, the former being almost unforgivable. My main reason for buying this gadget though is it’s compatability with the PSP and the Remote Play service. If I connect my PSP to a Wi-Fi hotspot somewhere in the world, in theory I can connect back home over the Internet to my Playstation 3, it will auto-power on and all I need to do is load up the PlayTV software and start viewing streamed Freeview, or catch up on one of my recordings. This does work, sometimes. The problem as I’ve discovered is down to the locked nature of Sony’s Remote Play service. When you turn your PS3 on, it registers your current IP address (your unique ‘number’ on the Internet is the best way I can describe that!) with Sony’s servers as belonging to you. Then, when you are out and about and your PSP attempts to connect home, it starts by asking Sony’s servers what the last address they have that your Playstation back at home used… Then your PSP establishes a connection with that IP address and all should be great. Are you seeing the problem here? Yup, what happens if in the time between your Playstation last being used, and the time you want to connect remotely, your internet connection at home has been reset and you now have a new IP address? Sony’s servers only know about the old IP address which is now useless. The solutions to this are either to get a static IP address from your ISP (which isn’t possible with most providers especially on budget packages), or for Sony to open up a little bit and let you tell them a host name or IP address you would like to connect to in order to connect back home. Then you can use a Dynamics DNS hostname or similar and everything would work.

All things considered though, despite the PlayTV being a really great bit of kit with a lot of potential… potential is all that it has. It just isn’t ready to be used as a main living room PVR with the initial loading time and lack of series link being my biggest critisisms against its use for that purpose. And as for Remote Play, come on Sony, what’s wrong with a ‘custom options’ page? It’s a real shame, the interface is superb and the whole concept of a single device for gaming, media streaming, Blu-Rays, IPTV (BBC iPlayer), DVDs and Freeview+ is very appealing and the utopia of home entertainment…. please Sony, keep trying – you are so close!

The village school held their annual Halloween Disco this evening and Poppy had a great time. She dressed in her specially purchased ‘Pretty Pink Witch’ costume we bought at the weekend and danced along to The Music Man, Superman, Fifi and the Flowertots, Lazytown and many more tunes hand picked by the ever enthusiastic (and slightly mental?) Mr Shepherd. The costume survived and will be used for trick or treating next week, weather dependent of course….

I took the final exam for an Open University course today that I’ve been studying since February. The course, T325: Technologies for Digital Media had a promising title and the course information looked good too. Sadly though I was a little disappointed with the content of the course. It went in to far too many topics in great detail for me to be able to cope with, and I usually like this sort of thing. It’s the first time the university has run this course so I’d expect a few rough edges, and the lack of past papers didn’t help things either. But the exam I took today just took the p155… I won’t go in to details, I’ll just say that if I managed to scrape a pass I’ll be happy. If anyone out there is reading this and thinking of taking that course, I’d suggest you consider other ones until the OU have had the chance to refine things a little.

Sorry guys, I didn’t have any dreams that I could remember last night so I assume that this series has come to an end – things do tend to come in threes. Anyway if you would like to assist towards my therapy costs then click on one of my adverts.. thanking thee!

Last night, another mentalist dream which fully crosses the border of surrealism. I was part of a ‘crew’ performing a set-up stunt in the style of TV’s The Real Hustle. We were in the process of preparing for ‘the con’ which would involve stealing some sort of paper document and placing it in a car belonging to the same person who owns the aforementioned paperwork. Here’s how it went: Set in the backdrop of May Lane shops (see map here) the first part of the dream I can remember was me and someone else carrying a very large roll of paper (about 6 foot long) wrapped in a dark green plastic bag out of one of the shops (I think it was what used to be the hair dressers), down some steps and in to Stars newsagents. It must be noted at this point that none of the shops were actually shops in this dream, they were just emptyish glass fronted buildings… Somebody saw us taking these documents, raised the alarm and a security guard starting chasing us. We made it in to Stars and put the documents in the car (a silver Toyota MR2). Once we got in there though we were trapped.. the door was locked and other people in the shop weren’t impressed either. As this was supposed to be a TV show and the various celebreties who were meant to pop up during the show hadn’t turned up, coupled with us noticing that the film crew weren’t around either we got very worried and panicked. I decided, in agreement with my unknown colleague, that I should go and get help from the cast of Most Haunted as we were sure that Yvette Fielding and Derek Acorah would know how to get us out of this mess (!?). I managed to escape through the front door of the shop (wasn’t it locked?) and this is where it all went a little strange (yes, that first part wasn’t strange). It turns out that this row of shops isn’t actually a row of shops, it’s a row of buildings on the top deck of an enormous submersible ship with climbing ropes and rigging all over the place. I clamber across the ropes to get to a door which takes me down in to the ship. I’m presuming by now that the ship is owned by my employer as I’m seeing many familiar faces from my workplace in the ship. The walls, ceiling and floors are all painted a bright green and I make my way to the front of the ship through many doors, passing lots of people I know. When I get to the front of the ship I see a poster on the wall with a layout of the ship on it and as I turn the corner to my right, there’s a bit of a party going on. Drinks are being handed out (to more people from work) in cocktail glasses but you aren’t allowed to walk any further around the boat because yellow and black tape blocks the way. And then the dream ended…..