Sky+

Sky Plus info

Sky Plus is only £99 for a Digital Reciever and Recorder that stores over 40 hours of TV.

'Sky plus is in essence a Sky standard service, bundled with a personal video recorder (PVR). This mean that you can pause live TV to grab a snack or rewind to review a great goal over and over again. Sky plus also lets you record up to 40 hours of high quality digital television right on the box; so there is no need for old tapes or expensive recordable DVD’s. Another great feature is the possibility to program Sky plus from your mobile phone, so you don’t even need to be at home when it springs to mind that you want to record something to view later.'

'You don't even have to be home to record a show. If you are on the go, just use your mobile phone and use either mobile internet or send an sms to your Sky box. If you're stuck at the office, you can schedule your recording online using the very easy to use 7 day programme guide. Sky is the first TV provider in the world with these three great ways of remote recording.'


Key features

* Digital Receiver and Recorder
* Record up to 40 hours of TV
* Pause and rewind live television

Pricing

* Box £99
* Standard installation £60
* Sky Plus Subscription is Free (if you sign up to Sky Sports Mix or Sky Movies Mix, otherwise £10 a month)

Pro's

• Pause live TV
• Great TV guide with series link
• No hassle of tapes or dvd's
  

Con's

• Once you’ve recorded 40 hours of TV, you will have to free up space by deleting some shows

I would definately consider having Sky Plus, it does seem better than normal Sky mainly due to the storage of shows which saves buying videos/DVD-R and also the memory can also be upgraded i think.

Laptops to sell out Desktops

Desktop PC's are vastly being scrapped for Laptops. Laptops have many of both advantages and disadvantages. In my opinion, i think desktops are better to laptops on everything apart from ability to take them where you go, although a desktop's main unit is gradually getting smaller and smallerso easier to take to places but not to use on the move.


'The report predicts the laptop market will grow by 16.1% year-on-year until 2011, compared to 3.8% for desktop PCs.'



Laptop VS Desktop

Each type of system has its advantages and disadvantages, which can be summed up as follows:

	Pros	Cons
Laptop	Portability, access wireless networking in public locations	Less powerful, harder to upgrade, more expensive, less resistent to theft, more prone to component failure
Desktop	More powerful, easy to upgrade, less expensive, more resistent to theft, less prone to component failure	Not portable, hard to store during summers

From this i see that Desktops have more pros and Laptops more cons. But a Laptop's pros are more futuristic and newer than a desktops so it really depends on whether you want new technology or more technology.

Virtual Worlds

As i stated in my Social Problems blog virtual worlds such as Second Life are very popular but there are many problems especially socially. Although, recent news has stated that ' Virtual worlds are 'worth $1bn' '.

http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6470433.stm
'More than 10 million people will subscribe to MMOGs by 2011, and many millions more will play online games driven by other payment schemes, such as advertising and virtual purchases, the report predicted.'

This shows that virtual worlds are extremely popular and also will maybe prove to be extremely popular in the near and far future.

Also :

Mr Harding-Rolls said a number of new MMOG genres were emerging, including:

Virtual world building games, such as Second Life

Virtual pet rearing games, such as Neo pets

More casual MMO puzzle games

Sports games in which you have to buy items and build up your character

"The inherent social and community-building aspects of MMOGs are widening the sector's influence on other social networking sectors and online games markets," he said.

The site also stated that:

TOP FIVE MMOGs*

World of Warcraft (above)

RuneScape

Final Fantasy Online

Everquest

City of Heroes/Villains


'Virtual worlds' do not appeal to me really, they re slightly bland and i dont see what all the fuss is about.
I know someone who plays World Of Warcraft and is ALWAYS on it when online or on the computer and i played on it and i just got a bit bored and it gave me a headache. I just don't see what other see in virtual worlds.

Playstation 3

As with most game consoles (apart from Sega Megadrive and now Nintendo Wii =P) i am not interested in this product much at all. I have a playstation 2 and would much prefer to have a nintendo wii and im sure if a Wii 2 came out i would much prefer an old Wii =P
I have not myself played on one, and if i do i will probably like it. but at this moment i would much prefer to play on my Playstation 2.
I do not think that the PS3 will be as good seller as the Nintendo Wii or the PS2 for this matter, mainly due to it very large price. Yes it may be good in the future due to it's ability to play HD DVD's but for now i o not think it will be as popular as the PS2 was.

Playstation 3 characteristics
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6132212.stm

Price Comparison:

PlayStation 3:599 euros (£425) for the 60GB version

Xbox 360: 415 euros (£279.99) for the 20GB version, £199.99 for the Xbox core system (no hard drive)

Nintendo Wii: 249 euros (£179)

Some of it's characteristics basically resemble a mini-computer or laptops features. It has a harddrive of 20GB or 60GB with Wi-Fi availiable only on 60GB. USB ports and Media Readers are also on this console.

BUT

Not all PS2 games will work on a PS3 which will be very annoying for gamers but PS have provided a list of games that WILL work.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6471649.stm

'In order to play the older games, PlayStation 3 owners will have to update the console's system software, called firmware, either online or via a disk.'
It can play the newest form of DVD, High Definition(HD).

YouTube

There are many problems with YouTube such as:

• Copyright
• Misuse of videos
• Lack of TV viewers of actual television

There are also many advantages with YouTube such as:

• Being able to see things before they are on TV, for example TV series from the USA a few weeks/months before they are released in the U.K
• Ability to show videos that you have made to a extremely large audience.

Problems with YouTube are usually based on problems for companies and advantages are usually good things for the audience and individual creators. But, there are also good points for companies because they can put across their adverts and trailers for shows or movies to a much wider audience and if more people start to view YouTube TV ratings will fall because soon many things will be able to be viewed onYouTube.

YouTube has many copyright problems too. Users can put on whatever they like on Youtube to an extent and this means TV programmes that they have illegally recorded for example like piracy from a cinema. This means people can watch TV shows that have been illegally 'recorded' and this is bad for companies once again.

There are some problems for parents, as children can view explicit content on YouTube by lying about age etc. which is extremely easy to do.

I like to use YouTube but sometimes having to go through all the trash that people put on there to try and find one thing that you want to watch is just hassle. People make a video of them and their friends messing around and then name it something like 'Take That' or something that people are highly likely to search and if many people do that it can be a right hassle trying to find one thing from 100's of results because some stupid child is trying to do this.

There are some well known users and contributors on YouTube who put their videos very regularily, usually diary type entries and usually talk about nothing that is interesting AT ALL, are of no interest to me at all either and i don't see how they interest other people, it's just completely stupid! It is an example of Wiki because people put on their own work and it is user generated. Without the users, there would be no videos and nothing to watch.

There are only a few reasons why i use YouTube and they are:

• Put my own videos on so i can put them on websites
• To watch things again that i have watched on TV
• To watch things before their on TV or before i see them on TV(e.g Music Videos)

Overall, i think Youtube is full of crap mainly apart from some stuff that is actually worth watching and i think there should be some sort of filter or sections that they can put headers and make sure that in the 'Music Videos' tab there are not stupid kids that are singing like strangled cats to their favorite songs in it.