In case you've been cut off from the world for the past couple of weeks, here's Chris Crocker who we mentioned on this week's show. This is what it takes to get yourself a show in the US.
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Ross phones every episode in.

Zing!

Against all logic, 576p is officially HD in Australia. I think Alston saw 576 on a bit of paper and said 'wow, that's a lot of lines!'

In most/all of Europe, HD is 720 and higher. You know, a higher resolution than standard definition. Which would make sense to anyone who can blink and walk.

LEAVE HIM ALONE, BRETT! YOU'RE JUST HORRIBLE!

*WAILS*

Well, I agree with Seth Green, CB.

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Tangible!

Adam D, I'm not sure if it's "against all logic" - technically 480p and 576p are HD specs.

It doesn't seem that illogical to me, as even 576p is double the number of lines of standard analogue TV.

True, but when HD goes up to 1080 lines and freakin' PAL is 500-odd, 576p is an incredible cop-out. It's like selling a stereo with one very good speaker and calling it THX compliant.

What you end up with, of course, is networks like 7 having a 576p HD channel and making loads of noise about how wonderful it is. When it's not.

The networks bragging about it is what's crap, not that it's classified as HD.

Anyway - there seem to be a few misconceptions about broadband in the USA being spoken by Brett(?) as I listen.

They haven't had broadband "forever" in the States. They used to have ISDN and crap just like we did. The fact is that broadband is unavailable in much of the US... thanks to monopolies. They didn't adopt it much faster than we did. What has happened is that Australia has been slower to improve speeds.

I'm not sure why you get the impression that the US is some sort of utopia of competition and quality in the communications sector. Trust me, you wouldn't want to deal with most of the American companies. They even do dodgy stuff like one carrier just changing your mobile phone to their account, without permission. Customer service is even worse than it is here.

When it comes to speed and cost, the US lags far behind countries like South Korea. And penetration is miserable in the US. Certain companies have local monopolies, even in big cities - and in some areas the only option is satellite, which can barely be considered broadband.

The situiation for internet access is screwed up in both Australia and America. Don't fool yourself that it's somehow wonderful there. And the telcos are pushing against "net neutrality" and want to throttle access to servers that don't belong to their media partners.

jimbo, you is very funny mans.


Great ep, guys - you've got plenty of fodder for discussion. Here are my opinions, for what they're worth....

NOTHING, and I mean NOTHING, is taboo in comedy. Some things aren't funny in their delivery, but that's just crap comedy, not a crap topic. Mr G is VERY FUNNY.

Battleship?? That implies a level of excitement that doesn't exist; but I'd love to see Lisa McCune in Bad Girls.

My immediate reaction to hearing of Sunrise Election was, "you've got to be joking" but, on reflection maybe, just maybe, it will encourage some disaffected / usually uninterested types to engage with the whole process, which isn't a bad thing. It's not like those people would ever watch the ABC coverage (ooooh Antony Green *fans face*); nor will the wannabe wonks like me be checking out K&M, except out of idle curiosity.

The commercial networks will never change their habit of running over time, because if they win the majority of the 15min block (ie: >7.5mins) they can charge advertisers accordingly. The programs are only there to get you through to the next ad break.

I watched a couple of eps of Mad Men, and what irritated me was their ham-fisted way of drawing attention to all the things that have changed quite a lot in society. Whilst the opening scene of the first ep with its blatant racism was absolutely credible, I found scenes such as the argument with Rachel Menken and Salvatore's closetedness (did I just make up a word?) to be a bit OTT. It was like they created some scenes to specifically point out the differences b/w then and now, rather than developing the story and writing the dialogue accordingly. I'm sure it's all quite relevant to the story, I just found it clunky. And slooooooooow... I'm sure The House of Eliott had more happening!

Ross (I hope), I really enjoyed the second episode of Curb. The whole anonymous thing with Ted Danson and the stain on the teddy made me laugh out loud. Really funny. First episode was not as good.

I agree Mike about this ep of Curb - although I liked the first ep too. I just finished watching it (just then). So many funny lines like Larry trying to explain that the stain was "ejaculatory" and Susie talking about "some kind of revenge masturbatory payback".

Gold.

I hadn't seen the YouTube stuff you've posted until now.

This no-name headcase can get fucked.

But the fuckwad TV exec who commissioned him to be in a show can really get fucked!

To quote Ainsley Hayes, used to be you had to sing and dance.

Also, have just heard of a very interesting new show being made in the UK, from the creator of Life on Mars. More on Monday perhaps!

I hadn't seen the Youtube stuff because I didn't care about it!

As for Channel 9's Commerical thing, they had another show in there that I shoved in the PVR to watch in 16x (mine doesn't go to 32) called "I-caught" which was a guy talking about Youtube videos, so its not suprising that it got replaced with this

As for the 90Gb download limits on Comcast users (BTW its cable not DSL) there has been a fair bit of debate about this. Its probably P2P shaping which is being done by a lot of ISPs in the US because they are trying to keep costs down as well as the RIAA/MPAA off their backs. As for actual competition in the US, its only in the bigger places, which is why so many smaller towns in the US are looking at "council based" ISP systems because they are getting screwed by the big companies. From what I hear the US is just as bad as we are, but they have better download limits.

On that topic, with respect to "Fast Tracking" I'll be watching them on the channels that do it. The time when I'm tempted to download is when something is on Channel 10 or 9 because I know it will be abused, say Torchwood or Sopranos. I'm happy for them to Fast track stuff if it means they will give it a go. Then again I'm a timeshifter so I dont really count.

BTW with respect to Channel 10 has anyone actually offically heard whether the second channel will be an SD or HD broadcast. My PVR is only SD so I'm hoping its SD only. Also anyone know when they will start broadcasting on this or is it just "Pie in the sky"

technically speaking, 720p is considered the lowest form of HD.

and i believe Sea Patrol prefers the name Knight Boat (Oh, every week there's a canal. Or an inlet. Or a fjord. )

great episode guys...

The PVR/STB issue with only receiving SD channels was why I asked if the new 10 and 7 channels would only be HD.

As for internet connectivity in the US being as bad/worse than here, to paraphrase Paul Keating, if you're not living in New York or California, you're camping out. Back in 1996, standard dialup modems were becoming outdated and ISDN was becoming standard. In 1999, DSL was the hot new tech. Meanwhile, back in Melbourne, Telstra refused to roll out ADSL because they'd belatedly installed ISDN and didn't want to provide an alternative that was much better.

Telstra's still holding us all back, attacking the ACCC and the government rather than living up to their responsibilities that were a condition of the sell-off. Of course, the federal government screwed things by selling Telstra off in the first place.

Telstra's recalcitrance with extending broadband speeds and coverage has been matched by Coonan claiming 256kbps is fast enough for anyone - patently untrue - but it's not going to change until there's a couple of changes. If only there was some way to retrospectively divide the infrastructure business from the phone service.

Telstra's required to operate as three separate business units, but with Trujillo in control it doesn't seem to be working that way.

If any infrastructure/telephony divide were to occur, the existing three units would have to be dissolved first. Enormous work involved in that. You're talking the relocation of several thousand people, and with that the potential loss of many, many valuable staff.

Right now Telstra's not in a position to cause an upheaval of that magnitude -- politically, financially or otherwise. Which sucks for the consumer.

Perhaps a Labor government will buy back the backbone.

What I would like to know is... How easy is it to hook up a HD settop box to TV which has Foxtel digital as a gateway between the arial and the TV ?

Should be automatic, shouldn't it? If Foxtel normally passes the RF to your telly, it should do the same for your set top box.

Why does the Foxtel box need RF input anyway?

"What I would like to know is… How easy is it to hook up a HD settop box to TV which has Foxtel digital as a gateway between the arial and the TV ?"

Why not just have them both plugged into your TV separately and switch between them on the TV?

If you get a nice HD set top box or PVR with HDMI or DVI output, the last thing you'd want to do is run it through a standard def box with analogue outputs.

Maybe I'm not understanding what you're saying though.

Regarding shows starting on time: Not an issue at all with recording padding. Something can be 20 minutes late and it doesn't frustrate me at all. Timeshift! Timeshift! Timeshift!