Michele Neylon :: Pensieri: tv Archives

Sky Player On Mac - Quick Review

By Michele Neylon on August 17, 2010 7:23 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Sky have been promoting their Sky Player service for quite some time.
At the moment you can access it on the XBox, though for some odd reason the XBox version doesn't have access to the "premium" content ie. Sky Box Office.

So if, like me, you don't have a phone line setup with your Sky box and you don't run Windows, your options are a bit limited.

You can, however, watch Sky Box Office on your desktop.

Word of warning. To use the Sky Player you will need to have the latest version of Microsoft's Silverlight installed.

For some bizarre reason the player will load fine in Firefox, but trying to watch anything using Firefox will not work. You might have better luck than me, but I ended up switching to Safari. In Firefox it seemed to be stuck permanently "buffering".

So what's the experience like?

To be honest I can't really complain. I'm using a 27" iMac, so once I was in a comfortable chair I was able to enjoy a couple of films without any issues. You can easily view the films in full screen view and the quality on a 27" screen was fine. It wasn't as good as watching on my TV with my full surround sound, but that was my choice (albeit one dictated by circumstance).

Renting films is pretty easy. Once you have an online account with Sky you can signup for their "wallet", which you can add funds to in order to watch films and other paid content.

It is unfortunate that the standalone player software is not available for the Mac as I suspect it might give more options in terms of quality and control. The Silverlight powered stream works fine, but has very little in the way of controls.

All in all it's not an unpleasant way to watch Sky Box Office films legally!

BBC Revamps Sherlock Holmes - But Only 3 Episodes?

By Michele Neylon on August 2, 2010 4:51 PM | 4 Comments | No TrackBacks

Sherlock Holmes is one of my favourite fictional characters. I've read all the novels and short stories - most of them more than once. I've seen a lot of the TV and cinema adaptations. Some have been good, others not so much.

The BBC is currently showing Sherlock. Their interpretation of Conan Doyle's character transposes Holmes to the 21st century. His sidekick, Watson, is a veteran of the Gulf War.

The first two episodes were both excellent. While some people may not like the idea of a Holmes in 2010, I for one loved it.

What I don't "get", however, is why they only ordered 3 episodes.

3 episodes of any tv show is incredibly short. In many cases you'd expect a 3 parter to be possibly the dramatisation of single novel.

So what is BBC playing at?

Why are they teasing us with good quality drama like this only to pull it away from us after a mere 3 episodes?

Spartacus - Lots of Blood.. and Silly Tshirts

By Michele Neylon on February 9, 2010 1:34 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Spartacus Blood and Sand isn't going to be showing in Europe for a while I suspect ..

For those of you who have been able to see it the tshirts it has inspired so far are quite amusing.

Who'd have thought that you could get so much inuendo into a simple Latin word like "ludus" ....

More info here

Getting Friends With Flowcharts

By Michele Neylon on January 27, 2010 1:35 AM | 1 Comment | No TrackBacks

Over the last couple of weeks several people suggested that I watch "The Big Bang Theory", which is an American comedy (if you, like me, weren't aware).

I finally succumbed and "gave it a go" and am now totally hooked.

One of the shows main characters, Sheldon, seems to get some of the best and funniest lines (and scenes).

Sheldon isn't very good with human interpersonal relations (and that's putting it mildly!), so when he had to become friends with a colleague from work he decided to apply logic and a flowchart to the "problem".

The result was hilarious.

So what you say.

Well I'm into my "geeky" and "funny" tshirts, so I came across this one over on ThinkGeek :

I'm not sure how well that would look on a tshirt, though I'm willing to give it a try!

If you're "into" crazy tshirts there's even a site dedicated to the tshirts worn by Sheldon in the series!

24 Redemption

By Michele Neylon on November 25, 2008 12:27 AM | 4 Comments

Image via Wikipedia

24 Redemption was shown on Sky 1 earlier this evening, as a two hour "special event", as I mentioned earlier.

Without ruining the story for those of you who missed it...

Jack Bauer is still Jack Bauer, but there's no CTU (as my mother reminded me!), so it's a lot more focussed on the "lone wolf" than the previous series.

Of course it's also nearly 22 hours shorter than a normal 24 series, so you can't really expect it to be anything like the normal series.

While watching it I was wondering how they'd manage to come up with a "full" story in 2 hours, when they're used to doing a real time story that lasts 24 hours... I needn't have worried - it works. It may not be a chef d'oeuvre, but it's still damn fine tv entertainment.

Jack Bauer Fans Delight

By Michele Neylon on November 24, 2008 9:05 PM

Image via Wikipedia

24 Redemption is being shown on Sky tonight.

24 Redemption is a 2 hour feature length special that is meant to bridge the gap between day 6 and day 7 (series 6 and series 7 in non-24 speak). It aired on US television last night, so I suspect quite a few people will already have downloaded a torrent version. Personally I prefer watching things on my TV if I have the choice ie. if I don't have to wait 6 months!

Stargate Atlantis

By Michele Neylon on July 20, 2008 1:31 PM | 6 Comments

Image via Wikipedia

I don't like watching single episodes of TV shows, which is one of the reasons why a Sky+ box makes sense for me. The other problem I have is that I forget which evening or time a programme is showing!

During the week the Stargate Atlantis Season 4 boxset arrived from Amazon, so I spent most of yesterday watching it. Funnily enough Season 5 has started airing in the US already, so I was able to watch the first two episodes of Season 5 shortly after watching the grande finale of Season 4.