The software that comes with your Vodafone 3G Modem (Vodafone Mobile Connect) is slow, buggy crapware and actually not required to connect to the 3G network.

To avoid using it just create a dial-up connection in Windows with the following details:

That’s it.  Simple.  Thanks to Wil over at SuperUser for the initial pointer.

It’s official, we can now buy magic.  Bottled by our very own magician of presenting Steve Jobs Esq.  Well maybe.  Since it’s announcement I’ve been putting some thought as to why I might buy one and what I might use it for – where does it fit into my life?

Right now my digital landscape (did I just say that?) looks a little like this:  At home I have a powerful desktop with as big a monitor as I was prepared to spend money on at the time.  I have a Netbook (with 3G) which I generally carry round with me any place I go with a bag (commuting, visiting friends, holiday etc) and I have an iPhone which is always with me.

Between those 3 devices I’m generally covered for all the connectivity and functionality I desire (at the moment).  So if I did buy an iPad where does it fit or what does it replace?

The obvious answer would appear to be that the iPad is Apples Netbook in all but name.  If we take that as being the case (for the moment) and I think about how and where I use my Netbook – the iPad looks rather unappealing.  The majority of netbooking is done whilst travelling on the train.  I pull down the table in front of me sit my netbook down and write some emails, tweets, blogs – maybe have some IM conversations.  Maybe I sit back and catch up on some missed TV.  If I replace my netbook with the iPad – what’s wrong with this picture?  It’s flat.  I have to hold it up with a hand, or lay it flat on the table or pull up my knees and rest it on my lap.  If it had a stylus so I could write on it, I could buy that the issue of typing on a flat device that big goes away, but it doesn’t.

Maybe it’s not a Netbook, maybe it’s going to create a category all of it’s own and change the way we behave.  The iPhone was a game changer, but you’d hardly say it created it’s own category.  It entered a market that already existed; mobile phones with installable apps that could play music.  It just did it way better than anyone else and had the benefit of combining it with an already successful product in the iPod.

I am by no means an Apple hater (I love my iPhone) and will watch the iPad’s release with interest – but at the moment I’m having trouble coming up with an excuse to buy one.

dwynne

The Xbox Zune Video Marketplace is another new service in the current Xbox Preview Program, allowing you to instantly stream movies in 1080p HD via your Xbox 360.  Presumably it will eventually replace the existing Video Market Place on Xbox, which requires you to first download the movie to your HDD before watching.  Being that a 2 hour movie at 1080p could weigh in around the 9gb mark this kinda sucks because a) it takes ages to download before you can watch it; and b) HDD space is not something the Xbox overflows with.

As with the existing Video Marketplace, the movies on offer are a somewhat odd-ball selection.  You get a smattering of new releases and then few hundred older movies – some well known, some quite obscure.  I’m not sure what deals Microsoft have in place for content rights, but you’d hope that if this service becomes a success the quantity and quality of new releases would increase.

Prices seem to vary in line with the movies age, with most offering one price for HD and a lower one for Standard Definition.  Once paid up you have 14 days to start watching it, after which you can watch it as many times as you like for 24 hours.

The service uses Smooth Streaming which seamlessly downgrades from 1080p to lower bit rates if available bandwidth demands it to keep the movie running.  I like the fact you get a sorta “signal strength” indicator in the Info Bar (main picture above) which you can check to see whether you’re getting full 1080p or whether the bit rate has been downgraded to maintain the stream.

Although I don’t think Microsoft have explicitly said they’re using Silverlight to deliver the video, we do know that Silverlight was pushed to the Xbox and the Zune Video Marketplace advertises itself as using “Smooth Streaming” – which is a SL3 feature, so it would make sense.

On Sunday afternoon I first watched Event Horizon in HD (380 points).  The movie rebuffered a total of 5 times and dipped in and out of 1080p every now and again.  Not ideal – but actually not that annoying.  Later that evening I joined in Microsoft’s mass stress test by watching State of Play in HD (540 points).  I had one complete halt of play that chucked me back the menu complaining of network interruption, but was able to resume the movie at the point it cut out straight away.  There was no buffering as experienced in Event Horizon and I didn’t notice the stream drop below 1080p once.  It was a truly impressive experience and one that puts the current performance of the Xbox Sky Player to shame.

The Xbox 360’s newest toy, the Sky Player, launched this morning in the UK.  The claim is that you get over 20 live channels and hundreds of On Demand movies and TV programmes without the need for a Sky Dish, Sky Box or a Sky Subscription – none of which I have, so the idea of finally being able to watch live Football at home is really appealing.

What you do need is an Xbox 360, a Xbox Live Gold subscription and a Sky Player subscription that costs £15 per month.  There’s no minimum contract and if you use the XBOX3FOR2 code when subscribing, you get 3 months for the price of 2 at the moment.  The no minimum contract is great and I’m actually pleasantly surprised with the price.  The requirement to have a Xbox Live Gold subscription seems a little bit hokey, but doesn’t really bother me as I already have one.

On Demand

On Demand content is first split by channel, then by category.  Some of it appears to be included in the subscription package and some you have to pay extra for.

So lets say you want to watch some 24, you’d select On Demand > Sky1 > Categories > Action.  You can then choose from the first 6 seasons of 24 (quite impressive, shame there’s no season 7 yet) and then choose an episode.  Each episode is priced at £1.47 GBP so you’re looking at £35.28 GBP per season.  This is pretty steep considering you can buy the Season 7 DVD box set, which has only just been released [in the UK], for less.  It would be great if they had an option to buy the season in bulk for less, rather than having to buy each individual episode.

On the “free” side of things (i.e. included in your sub) you’ve got Movies and Sport.  There does genuinely appear to hundreds of decent movies On Demand and they’re all included in the subscription.  Impressive.

On Demand Sport also appears to be included in the sub – under Sky Sports > Premier League, there are currently 19 different matches listed going back to 15th August, I presume these are matches Sky aired live at the time?  Not sure.  Each highlight package has a running time around the 1 hour mark.

Live Channels

I would list the live Channels for you, but the service fell over halfway through my testing.  From what I can remember you get Sky1, two Sky Movies channels, all five Sky Sports channels (1 – 3, Extra and News) and then a bunch of fluff channels like G.O.L.D and Sky Real Lives that no-one really watches.

There’s an interesting Party option, that lets you watch a live channel “together.”  You can invite people from your friend list into the party, which places all your avatars in a virtual cinema with the live channel being shown on the screen.  You can then make your avatar perform various emotions in reaction to what you’re watching such as happy, sad, bored, funny etc.  Selecting an emotion makes your avatar perform a little animation to let everyone else in the room know what you’re feeling.  It an interesting idea, but one that feels like the novelty could be short lived.

Quality

In terms of picture quality, I was only able to judge the sample content - I’m not subscribing until they sort out the teething problems.  Hoping that their sample content would show case the player in the best light, in truth it was a bit variable (excuse the pun).  When watching Live streams you can choose between High, Medium and Low quality.  I was watching Sky News on High with no problems and the quality was good, entirely watchable.

When watching On Demand content you can choose to watch the video in it’s native resolution - I’m not totally sure what that is, but as you can see from the screen grab above it’s not huge so when it’s stretched to fit the screen, you get the common artifacting issues that come with doing that with any video.  Whilst these were fairly mild when watching the movie sample (Iron Man) and didn’t detract too much from the action – they were only to evident on the old stalwart of video tests; football, which was really quite blocky.

At the moment the service seems really flaky.  I was continually getting the “Can’t connect to the Sky Player service” error whilst navigating throughout the player.  In fact as I sit here now, the service looks to have been pulled, the Sky Player menu option is no longer available - they’ve obviously got teething problems.

Whilst it appears the service might have been pushed too early I’ll still be subscribing because I think it’s a great idea which I’m genuinely excited about.  I’m sure the issues will be resolved before too long – it only launched a few hours ago.

A few weeks ago, after much consideration, I made a life changing decision.  I decided to stop buying CDs.  I realise that I’m hardly blazing a trail here, iTunes is now a common word in the English language, but this genuinely came as a surprise to some of my friends who have long regarded me as some protector of the CD; who liked to own the “real thing”.

I think at one time or other having the real thing did matter to me – I enjoyed my wall of CDs, it was almost a status symbol I guess.  As I get older and care less about such material things, I’m starting to see CDs as more a storage problem - with over 400 albums they’re spilling into stacks on the floor.

Something Changed [Pulp, 1995]

The way I listen to music has changed radically over the last 5 years.  I now want to listen to music whilst travelling on my iPod, at work on my laptop, at home on my PC, streamed to my Xbox 360 whilst I play games.  For the last few years after I’ve bought a CD the first thing I’d do is rip it and then put it on the shelf (if there’s space).

The process of actually buying the CD has also changed – there’s less choice and availability on the high street as the likes of Zavvi and Fopp have collapsed.  Buying CDs online has become tedious, after deciding to buy something you’ve got to wait days for it turn up and in some cases pay extra for the privilege.  Having Royal Mail in disarray doesn’t help either.  It’s just no fun.

HMV are catching onto this fact too, with recent investments in 7digital and diversifying into high street cinema by partnering with Curzon.  They’re all to aware that the huge rents they pay for their large retail stores, stocking vast quantities of CDs just isn’t viable long term.

Set You Free [The Black Keys, 2003]

As popular as iTunes is, it’s a horrific piece of software IMO – slow, clunky and unintuitive.  It’s really got it’s market position due to the fantastic hardware people plug into it.  Whatever my misgivings about iTunes, it certainly has its place in history for changing the way the masses buy music, but it’s not for me.

I want my entire music library to be portable, to be able to play on any device and to be in the same format.  This means MP3 and it means DRM-free.  Whilst technically MP3 might not be the best format, it is agnostic, independent and for all but the audiophile, good enough.

Now big players like Amazon and Play are offering the vast majority of albums as DRM-free vanilla MP3 downloads – I can download an album and then do what I want with it, just like I could with a physical CDs.  I can put a copy on all my computers, my iPod, burn a CD for the car – no worries.  This I like.  This I consider at least to be in the spirit of copyright law, I may be making numerous copies – but they’re all for my own use.

Be Safe [The Cribs, 2007]

I’ve started using Syncplicity recently (which is similar to Dropbox – but a bit more configurable) primarily so I could sync my entire music collection between home and work.  I think I paid $99 [per year] for 100gb of space.  It works really well and in achieving my primary goal of sync’ing my music between PCs, I’ve inadvertently got my entire music collection backed up off-site (or “in the cloud” if you want to be hip).

Future Boy [Turin Brakes, 2001]

Unfortunately the humble CD simply can’t compete anymore and I’m glad I’ve woken up to that.  Now I’ve made the switch, I’m loving it and far from “destroying” the music industry I’m spending far more now that all it takes is a click and not a trip out or a 3 day wait for the postman.