I can see two reasons why this is not a bad thing.

Firstly, take the Transformers movies of recent years. Big blockbuster spectacles. They didn’t exactly resonate well with a lot of the existing fandom, but there are many vocal fans who appreciate them despite not really liking the movies.
The bay-verse Transformers certainly revitalised interest in the franchise, and interest in the toyline. And even if you don’t like the look of them, it allows Hasbro to put money into other TF toys. For me, I bought my first transformer in about 20 years this year. Is was Reveal the Shield: Wreck-Gar – part of a line inspired/funded by the success of the movie toys but of an old character from the 1980s that would (and did) appeal to people who remember him from back then.

It’s also probably at least partly down to the success of the movie that the new series Transformers Prime can exist. It is definitely not the movie-verse. But some of the styling take a few cues, yet are more smooth and rounded and, to be honest, more like “real” Transformers…

…but without the movies, probably no Prime.

Secondly, have you ever seen an in-season movie? I’ve seen a few. Between some of the Japanese shows that I follow and stuff like the X-Files that I used to watch a bit back in the day.

These movies fall into two major categories. They are either totally standalone or pretty heavily integrated into the season mythology. So you’re either paying big money to see a story that doesn’t really count, or paying big money to see an important part of a story that you’re following on a TV channel you already pay for… neither sits well.
Then there’s a third, minor, category. The story that kind of fits, but doesn’t really gel with continuity. They can still be fun to watch, but when character and situations line up that don’t fit with the main show’s plotline, it can take you out of it. Suspension of disbelief can only go so far when the same movie has a character that definitively left or changed at the same time as a power or ability or item being used that was not around when the other character was. Minor, maybe. But if you’re spending more time wondering when it fits, you’re not enjoying the movie.

So, yeah. Something that is its own take on DW would actually sit well with me. As it would either be a really cool what-if, or something crap I can class as not counting.

iOS5, on the iPad anyway, has a shine new “Music” app that sorts and displays things totally differently.
It will put the contents of podcast playlists into the podcasts section (sorter by show, not in your order), but it won’t show the actual playlist anywhere. I found a workaround that works for me, though.

1. Add a music track to the end of your podcast playlist
2. Put the playlist into a folder
3. Ensure the playlist is selected for syncing both under Music and Podcasts
4. Re-sync your device (this might require turning it on and off first, it might not)

You will now find the playlist on the main page (i.e. under Music), under it’s folder. Order or tracks is preserved.

Now, I don’t have the same attachment to the originals that many fans have. I’m in my thirties and didn’t see the complete trilogy until I was about 18. Also, I only saw the whole thing once, maybe twice, before the cinematic rereleases which had the first round of edits. I didn’t mind the changes because the original scenes weren’t lodged in my brain the same way.

Although it wound me up that by the DVD versions they had inserted scenes but couldn’t redo the lightsaber effects to be 100% consistent across all six movies – new and old.

But the bulk of the changes… whether I agree with them or not,  I personally don’t have a problem with them.

Even before I saw any of the Star Wars films, I was an avid reader of books. I was used to the concept of the revised edition. I was used to the minor edits, the changes for consistency and simply a few changes to reflect where the story had got to and where the author was planning to take it next.

I’d also seen first books in the series where they hadn’t been revised. Going back to book one can be really jarring.

There have also been a lot of Director’s Cuts these days. In most cases, they’re seen as a definitive edition of a film. Whether it’s for the DVD, or something revisited years or decades after the fact. They add bits missed out. They change concepts a little. It can feel like a different film. And so often it is taken as how the film should be.

As soon as the director is George Lucas, though, and the films are Star Wars, people don’t want anything except the version they saw first. At all.
And I’ve heard people who had trumpted other Director’s Cuts as being the best (admittedly fixed) versions of films, but who will then slate any changes to the Star Wars films.

I guess the thing that winds me up a bit is that it becomes a double-standard. If you create a movie, you can go back and fix it up except if it becomes a dearly-beloved fan favourite. At which point you back off, as original is the One True Version.

And I think it all comes down to people latching hard onto certain aspects of a story. It’s what winds me up about other topics, too. The story becomes those aspects and any change (even those that serve a story) is… challenged.

Isn’t that right, Ianto?

It definitely had First Episode Syndrome, What with introducing new characters and catching up with old ones at the same time as setting up the Season Arc. It still had Torchwood humour, though, along with action setpieces. Oh, and some pretty crappy compositing.
I accept that you can’t have a real explosion, a lead actor and a young baby in the same physical space. It doesn’t really excuse letting you see the “join” though.
I loved that the baby had little pink ear-protectors on when the guns came out, though.

All in all, an interesting start to the season. And an interesting look at what it would mean if death just… stopped. Some people left sick/damaged but undying. Others able to properly recover because they were kept extra-alive just long enough for treatments to kick in.

I can’t wait for the next part.

And it seems easy enough to wait the almost-week between the US airing and the UK one. No farting around trying to find a filetype that works with my setup, just watch it on Freesat HD.

Basically, Work and Personal lives are clashing over the whole concept of time-to-fix.

In the case of my home tech, when things don’t work it’s a case of “sit back and be patient”. Nothing can be done to speed things along. Whether it’s getting a phoneline installed or having said phoneline checked on behalf of my ISP owing to broadband failure. Right down to things waaaay outside my control like the PSN Store being down.
I don’t like it when things don’t work and I have to wait, but as I’m a techie by trade I accept that this is how things are. after all, haven’t I blogged to that effect a good few times here?

Problem is, I’m a techie by trade. End-users don’t like the idea of waiting. If it’s broken, it has to be fixed. Right now. Being without working tech is simply not an option. No way. no how.

Now on a personal level, I get where they’re coming from. It pisses me off to no end, as I mentioned above, when my stuff takes “too long” to get fixed. But that doens’t make it any quicker to fix. Or change my basic overview.

So basically, I have to choose one outlook and stick to it. As I can’t be one way at work and another way at home. It’s one of the other. Only, which do I chose?

Do I become an Unholy Terror towards any support-lines I have to contact? Taking noting short of “it’s done” as an answer? Refusing to accept the fact that things might involve an inconvenient level of downtime?
Or do I become totally unswayable at work? Reposing to every “urgent” query with “things take time to sort out” – and potentially getitng a bad reputation of being unhelpful.

I can’t be neither, though. That’s for certain. The idea of not only switching sides on a world-view but always taking the side that is going to cause more hassle for me is really not an option. As it’s doing my head in.

Yes, the tone was completely humourous but the points I raise are valid. The feature-set of the iPlayer, along with some of it’s most persistant bugs, really let it down in comparison to other… less official means of acquiring TV content.

It all becomes clear whe you realise that, above all else, BBC iPlayer is a legal download service. As such, it has to distance itself from any other method of viewing content via thw internet, just to make sure that nobody gets confused and uses… other means for catching up on what they missed.

“Unofficial downloads are illegal. BBC iPlayer is not.”

Good start good start. Fantastic in fact. This is exactly how it should be. So now we’ve got our theme, lets run with it.

“Unofficial downloads are free of social sites such as Facebook and Twitter. BBC iPlayer ensures you are not missing out of the social networking revolution”

Ummmmmm. OK. I guess. I follow a lot of people on Twitter whose recommendations I trust. Were I to use iPlayer, this might be useful. Maybe.

“Unofficial downloads can work on almost any platform you can name. iPlayer makes sure that you can only use the hardware and software we endorse.”

If you say so… After all, you’re the BBC. Anything you don’t support obviously isn’t worthwhile as a media player.

Although… I do seem to recall my Xbox 360 handling DVD, downloaded and streaming content quite well. But I must be mistaken. After all, no iPlayer. So it can’t be any good. Right?

“You can watch unofficial downloads offline. Whereas with BBC iPlayer, all but one of our solutions works purely by on line streaming.”

Good. Good. Because I wouldn’t ever watch to watch files when out of signal. Or during a peak time of the day. It’s not like those hours I’m asleep or at work could be used by any of the devices I might have when I’m not in the lounge.

“Unofficial downloads can be kept after you’ve watched them. BBC iPlayer deletes things before you’ve even had the chance.”

See. Another feature that you don’t get from the Torrent sites. No why would anybody wish to break to law when we offer functionality such as this?

So yes. It’s a marvel of success. BBC iPlayer is a download service that works nothing like the non-legit ones. There’s no way anybody could confuse the two whatsoever. 100% legal. 0% like Torrents. After all, it’s not like any of those “other features” could ever be of use to anybody…

- Tiggs
(with tongue firmly in cheek)

It’s not that I don’t see the Big Picture. I know that the economy is messed up, but I can’t see the proposed changes being a good thing at all. Maybe that’s to do with my job.

I work in University IT.

Back in 2007 we had a major restructure at work. So major it took a year from proposal to implementation. It was all in the interests of cutting costs. And, personally, I think we’re almost back on balance three years on. I certainly don’t see anywhere on campus that’s not struggling due to staffing levels. Admin staff were decimated. Or at least, it bloody well felt like it.

I’m sure the long-term big picture effects of it will turn out for the best. But i don’t see the higher-up view. i see things from shop-floor level. And that’s what I see with the budget. Public Sector cuts are going to have a major impact on universities. An impact I’m not sure all of them will survive. We’re not VAT exempt, and the state of technology is moving at a furious pace. And a pace that many students these days keep up with. And if we’re to keep up with them, maintaining the Student Experience, we’re going to be buying pricier kit with less funds. Fantastic.

Add in the inevitable Tuition Fee rises and the students, understandably, feel like customers. They demand a higher level of service. And, to be honest, why shouldn’t they when they’re paying for it? Problem is, we don’t see the money. Not really. They pay more, and expect more, and we get less with which to provide it.

Bollocks!

We’re being asked to perform better with less. It’s obvious that the Chancellor’s not a techie.
And, yes, I know I’m slightly biased here.
Occupational hazard – I never trust financial types with technical decisions.

So yeah. Tough times ahead. I’m pretty sure I do earn just enough to be hit by the pay freeze. And everyone gets hit by the VAT rise. Petrol prices will rocket. Oh, and I’m trying to move house this year. Make my first steps onto the property ladder.

Good job I don’t have a history of depression, (social) anxiety and stress. Oh, wait…

The long-term big picture may indeed improve. But all I can see is no end to the nightmare. The light at the end of the tunnel has been removed for the greater good.

Many people bring up the quite valid point that the restrictions are seen as stupid because people getting caught out by them will just turn to Bit Torrent.
This is not to say that it’s legal. Just that ot’s convenient, and such acquired media files tend to work with pretty much any media player going.

The responses against that tend to be “this is illegal”.

No… kidding… Sherlock!

But that’s missing the point that people are trying to make.
They (we) are not trying to advocate illegal means. We’re trying to say make the legal means easier and more convenient.

To put it simply, illegal downloads are a competitor. This does not make them legal. But them being illegal does not make them any less a competitor. You need to make the legit options appealing, convenient, and pretty much paltform-agnostic.

Everybody “loves” a car analogy. Mainly as they suck, and everyone loves to slate them. So here’s mine…
Only, it’s more of a car boot analogy.

The BBC iPlayer is like a drive-in movie theater. It has a certain barrier to entry, naturally.
Between the limited platforms and DRM requirements, it is like having a dress code (or restriction to certain specific car brands) to get in.

This is the only legal way to watch the content. We’re not arguing that other methods are legitimate.
We’re just poking at the idiocy of the situation that trying to pitch a platform-limited legal alternative whilst Bit Torrent exists is akin to the following part of the analogy…

You’re opening your drive-in accross the street from the weekly car boot sale where Pete’s Dodgy DVDs operates on a constant basis.

The alternative is not legal. But it’s convenient, accessible, and doesn’t have the same barrier to entry.

The thing is that the moment you drop your barrier to entry then people don’t need to visit Pete’s car boot. (Or whatever torrent aggregation sites are popular and active on any given week).
But the problem with this is that the people who mandate the barriers honestly think that merely being legal is enough of an incentive. Even if it restricts someone’s choice of player.

Well here’s the real choice you give people by locking the content down. If people don’t like the restrictions, they go one of two ways.
They acquire it anyway. You lose. Or they just don’t watch your content at all. You still lose.

Just because your work is stalled ‘cos your PC is broken does not mean we have any more time to fix it.

If you can’t afford the downtime, don’t get your machine virus infested in the first place.
Because maybe, just maybe, the time simply isn’t available to fix it yet.

First one I looked at did look ever so slightly on the grainy/fuzzy side. It was still an improvement over what I useually get when SD is upscaled on my modest 22″ TV. But the edges seemed to lack a little. Nothing that would seem to justify the wailing and gnashing of teeth that is increasingly common on the BBC Internet Blog.

Then I looked at the TV next to it.

Major difference. Seriously. It was the exact same feed, but there was a subtle-yet-significant increase in clarity. The edges looked a lot clearer and the overall picture quality seemed improved. From the same channel. At exactly the same time.
This suggests to me that some equipment does a better job at displaying the channel than others. This brings up the very real possibility that when BBC staff insist that the channel looks fine when they watch it that it actually does. It would also go some way to epxlain why some people don’t see the same level od quality degredation, and even that some programs have simultaneous conflicting reviews of good and bad quality. Maybe it really is people’s setups.

It was actually quite interesting to watch about 7 screens all on one wall, all showing the same channel, and all displaying it in subtly different ways. Some reminded me of the screencaps of poor quality that people post. Some reminded me of watching a Blu-ray at home. Again, this was from the exact same programme.

A bit later on, I was in another shop that also had the same channel on. I didn’t see the same level of quality variation, but I did notice a couple of things.
For one, there was a TV next to them that was showing a standard BBC channel. Even during a couple of glitchy HD shots (see below), the HD output was noticeably better quality than the upscaled SD. “Barely better than SD” seems ever more hyperbole to me at this point.

I did notice one sequence that didn’t quite work. A pan up a skyscraper had a little bit of “tearing” as the camera panned up.

Then again, I’ve seen worse on a movie in a cinema. The Matrix: Reloaded. Multiple Smiths. The heads all tore. Badly. And, like broadcast HD, that was new technology at the time. Several years on, the same thing can be done so much better.

Things will improve. And they already look pretty damned good to me.

Now if only I could get HD before moving this year. (Damned minimum contracts)

Addendum: (January 10th 2010)
Someone has added that they hope the BBC doesn’t think they’re “just a vocal minority of whinging users”. Well I’m sorry, but that’s exactly what you are. And you come over that way even to people outside of the BBC. (see my prvious post…)

The other problem I have is that there are some people commenting on the blogs whose opinions or motivations I actually respect quite a lot. Sadly, that whole side of the argument is spoiled for me by some persistent axe-grinders.

What also doesn’t help is the shifting goalposts of what the complaint actually is. Many times, people will say that “this is no better than upscaled SD”. But as soon as somebody who signed up after the August ’09 change of encoders and birtates, this changes to “people aren’t saying it’s not improved over SD, just not as good as it used to be” – but that’s not what people are saying. They are atually saying that there isn’t much of a difference to SD at all.