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Virgin TV is the Cat’s Whiskers

By Dave F in Reader

Posted in Digital TV, Apple on October 6, 2009 at 12:35 pm

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I remember, as a kid, my gran telling me about listening to the radio on a cat’s whisker crystal radio set.
She was telling me how the signal was so hard to find and would drift off as you were listening and I (in my youthful arrogance) declared I’d rather do without than endure the frustration. She tried to explain that it was both exciting to hear stuff and to fiddle - it was what you did (if you were part of the “new technology”) and the skill was part of the thrill. I remember it well because I think it was a very early experience for me of trying to understand a whole different experience and point of view.
However, maybe it isn’t such a different experience. I have been trying to watch “on demand” TV from virgin cable and yes it can be a bit fiddly to set up and there is a danger it may disappear in the middle of your program. Though to be fair only if you pause it, it tends not to un-pause and you have to re-start from the beginning, (not very) “fast forwarding” to where you were.
After three failed attempts to load the program I did think of giving up but by pulling the mains out of the box and shoving it back in (the only way to reset it) it did load and played OK - even with  short pause!
Most of us want it to “just work” but not many of us actually prefer going without to fiddling around to get it to work.
By the same measure, that state of the art Mac may never go wrong (?) but where’s the satisfaction compared to nursing my ancient Windows laptop into running anything?

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Comments

Comment by Memory Cards - October 8, 2009 on 11:19 am

I find it hard to believe that Virgin Media provide an average Broadband speed of in excess of 7Mbs. MY average from them, over about two years, is less than about 600Kbps!

Comment by Luis - October 8, 2009 on 3:50 pm

i agree Virgin broadband is great since i upgraded to a 10mg line i have recieved betweenn 10 to 11.1 which is impressive… i would recommend them 100% cable rocks!

Comment by DaveF - October 8, 2009 on 4:47 pm

I use
http://www.top10-broadband.co.uk/speedtest/ for speed tests - they come up pretty consistently at 5.5M. How did we get from films to download speeds? Do you need a 7M download to watch tv? Obviously I haven’t got it! The picture can get blocky on high movement

Comment by ddr2  - October 10, 2009 on 3:09 am

I love how complex it is, most of the people don’t realize that its just not the whiskers that are the amazing feature, did you notice how fluid its motion was.
Maybe those whiskers could also identify the touch of a human skin?

Comment by flash speicher - October 12, 2009 on 4:58 am

I don’t see why this souldn’t be the way to chose the recipient of your organs. After all these are parts of your body, they are yours and you have the right to chose to whome to give them.
I think it’s a great idea.
Yeah, giving both kidneys is kind of waste, maybe they will reconsider there in the next edition, but still, I’m sure it will be great success. And after all the decision will be up to the lady, not to the audience, so why not?
I’d prefer to give my organs to somebody I like and respect, than to just wait for the system to give them to anybody.

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