The 50 engineers ARE chained to their desks, but Sony has tasked them to come up with dozens of new ways to cripple the public with DRM technology.

Technology within technology that restricts what the host technology can do - now there's progress for the world!


KultiVator

David wrote...

>Hey Pure, make some for US!

Don't you need a national digital radio broadcasting network first?

DAB radio is pretty nice, but has taken some years to establish in the UK and even today most new cars do not include a DAB radio receiver. Yet this is the way I manage to listen to the superb Virgin Radio, despite living nearly 100 miles away from London (e.g. I'm well outside the FM broadcast radius for this great station). So all the advantages of living in the "big smoke" without the traffic, pollution, endless vistas of concrete, mouthy Londoners.


KultiVator

It is personally important to me that Blue-Ray does not win the next-format war. Sony have acted with complete arrogance and a stupendous disregard for their customers for too long - and they deserve to hurt a lot - forcing them to have a rethink about their corporate values.

HD-DVD may be cheaper and may not carry the prestige of the Sony name - but lets hope the early reviewers comments are true and that the quality of the HD-DVD playback is superior to Blue-Ray and that Hollywood Studios (At least the ones not owned by Sony) see the light!

It's bad day when I realise I'm siding with Microsoft rather than Sony!


KultiVator

A unit almost identical looking to EP729 is being rebadged by Dell (or at leastit is here in the UK) - the variant I had a quick play with featured a DVI input (including a VGA adaptor cable) coupled with S-VHS and composite inputs for lower definition video feeds.

The image was very bright and the unit is one of the most compact LCD projectors I've ever seen.

It seems strange to see it with a different badge now - but then I wasn't under any illusions that Dell actually manufactured this nice piece of kit!


KultiVator

Am I seeing things or is that a vent on the side of the case (look at reflection beneath the PC for clearer image)?

Doh!

I likes the look of this here tiny cubic pc.

Would make for a nice looking Media Centre PC.

M.K. is not a bad place - the snowdome is pretty huge (can't vouch whether it's the biggest in Euroland) - but refreshingly for a UK city, the place is quite well planned and includes a shed-load of leisure opportunities for folks young and old.

I don't live there, but do make regular trips with my wife to use the ice rink, go shopping, spot the wooden acrobats and the concrete cows (only kidding about the cows!) and I also strudy at the Open University (HQ in MK) in my spare time.

Lucky for me, the concrete cows are a 35 minute drive away! Better yet, those damn Aussies are around 26 hours away on your average passenger jet.



Jinx

I guess the airports would argue that anything you can buy inside the secured departures-area is safe to go on a plane.

Remember that the main threat was thought to be from liquid explosives triggered by an electrical device. Since WH Smith don't sell liquid explosives (at leats not to the general public) I'd guess that bottle of coke they just stiffed you £2.50 for is a safe bet for air travel!!!


KultiVator

Sharp have had a great little DAB tuner with "Pause Live Radio" and recording features available in the UK for some time (Sharp DAB FV-DB2E).

Aguably nicer styling than any of the Pure units... unless you're a BIG fan of the retro-minimalist look that Pure keep rehashing.

Great sound quality and various (optical + line) outputs make the Sharp unit a better buy for anyone who wants a DAB unit with some versatility.

It's certainly nice to be able to wake up to Virgin radio, rather than some crappy local station with a half-baked brain-dead DJ churning out chart cr*p.



KultiVator

Unfortunately for the intelligent US citizens out there, the rednecks and ignorati amongst you have gotten the US a reputation for arrogant introspectiveness and for lagging behind the rest of the world on major issues such as "Social and Environmental Responsibility".

Also dubbed as "Canada's noisey, nightmare neighbour!" and "bone-head capital of the world", you only have to witness the attitude of a high percentage of US gamers on Xbox 360 Live, when they hear a European accent to appreciate the bigger picture.

Classic Amercian stupidity I've witnessed in Xbox live...

1) Wow you live in England... have you met the Queen?
2) Your Spanish accent tells me that you're Mexican scum!
3) Ahhh Holland... so you can buy a beer in McDonalds?
4) Everyone in Europe is a peasant!
5) WW2 was an American victory.
6) So which country is Norway in?

So let's just say it's nice when I get to meet your more intelligent countrymen (of which there are many).