When you visit a forum and it’s all:
You last visited on Sat Nov 26, 2005 3:37 am
The time now is Sun Nov 27, 2005 7:05 am

Damn that forum. Damn it to hell!

“For a large fraction of the population, digital terrestrial television represents nothing of benefit whatsoever,” said some clever blokey in parliament.

Yes, but we’re still being forced by the government to switch over in 2009, when the analogue signal is switched off. This will be a bit of an annoyance for me, since the only way I can receive digital television is via satellite. It will be less than convenient to install a satellite dish for every TV in the house (of which there are three).

More importantly to me, do I want to give Rupert Murdoch (owner of Sky, of course) lots of money just so I can watch TV? Here is a hint: no.

And I’m one of those lucky people who actually understand the technical workings of this digital TV malarkey. I can do it with the minimum of head-scratching. Despite this, even I can’t be arsed with the switchover. Analogue television delivers a 625-line colour picture and stereo sound perfectly well and digital TV gives you, er, well, the same thing actually. Except with added MPEG artifacts and a cheery “no satellite signal is being received” message when it rains.

Bloody onward march of technology.

Demo cabinets for the Xbox 360 are apparently popping up across the country, and who was I to resist? This morning I set out on a mission to track them down!!! By which I mean pop into Game and Gamestation and look for them.

And yes, they both had them. Both playing Kameo. Do you like first impressions? I do!

First, the looks. Unlike the original Xbox, the Xbox 360 doesn’t look hideously ugly and it isn’t the size of a Challenger tank, which is a bonus. It might look a little bit like a tower PC, but it’s a sleek and shaggable tower PC, at least.

The vast improvement was thrown into sharp relief by this monstrosity for the original Xbox, on sale in Game.

Kameo looks tasty from a distance - lots of lighting, depth of field effects and lovely creatures flying around - but from closer quarters it looks horribly pixellated. Urgh. This is probably down to the very shiny plasma display the display cabinet was using, but still - wot no Hi-Def? I’m a bit surprised by that, as I had assumed Microsoft would be driving their demo displays at the highest possible quality, regardless of the experience the average (standard bedefinitioned) home user will be getting.

I’ll probably sneak back at some point for another look, hopefully when there isn’t some girl monopolising the machine - oh yes, it will be mine.