----- Original Message ----- From: "der Mouse" <mouse(a)rodents.montreal.qc.ca> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Wednesday, June 30, 2004 12:54 PM Subject: Re: Buying in the States was Re: HP analyzer probes So what is wrong with having a working TV? While I have not watched network TV much since Seinfeld went off the air, I do like the History Channel, Comedy Central, and HBO.

In message <00fa01c45ec5$258d4500$0500fea9@game> "Teo Zenios" &lt;teoz(a)neo.rr.com&gt; wrote: Nothing wrong with TV per se, but I strongly object to paying ?50 per month, just for the sake of more channels that are even more stuffed with advertising than the crap that gets piped over the terrestrial TV network (BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and "five"). If Sky reduced the amount of advertising on their channels (they seem to own enough of the channels on the Sky network) and/or significantly reduced the subscription cost, I would consider reinstating the subscription. If the British Government continue with their plans to force everyone onto digital TV (i.e. "pay ?120 per year for the 'TV licence' plus an extra ?20 p/m for the DTV sub"), the TVs and VCRs are going. I *used* to like the Discovery channels (mostly Animal Planet - some good nature documentaries) and CNX (aka Toonami, they had some fairly good Japanese anime, e.g. Outlaw Star, Cowboy Bebop). Now I just buy the DVDs. Rant mode off, etc., etc.... Later. -- Phil. | Acorn Risc PC600 Mk3, SA202, 64MB, 6GB, philpem(a)dsl.pipex.com | ViewFinder, 10BaseT Ethernet, 2-slice, http://www.philpem.dsl.pipex.com/ | 48xCD, ARCINv6c IDE, SCSI ... I can't think of anything witty to say right now.

On Thu, 1 Jul 2004, Philip Pemberton wrote: Not that you can avoid the advertising on DVDs anymore. I rented one a few months ago that wouldn't even let you skip them! If I wasn't so lazy at that point I would taken it back to the video store and demanded a refund. -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

Phil, Can you suggest any good sources to learn more about VideoLAN and other products to get around this stupid and the other rediculous DVD "features". I'm not that knowledgeable about DVD but I hate being forced to watch all their ads and other crap. Joe At 12:21 AM 7/10/04 +0100, Phil wrote:

In message &lt;3.0.6.32.20040709221423.008f2a40(a)pop-server.cfl.rr.com&gt; "Joe R." &lt;rigdonj(a)cfl.rr.com&gt; wrote: If you've got a machine that runs either Windows or Linux, you can get binaries and source code from <http://www.videolan.org/>. Although VLC is still under development, it's actually quite stable. It plays nearly anything - DivX/XviD AVIs, MPEGs, MP3s, DVDs, "OGM" (Ogg) video files, "Matroska" video files, plus a few other things. The DVD decoder seems to work quite well on PCs down to about 500MHz. VLC seems to be designed to skip frames if the video is running faster/slower than the audio. Windows Media Player (spit) appears to play the audio and video, and doesn't do a great deal of frameskipping. The nice thing about VLC is that you can have a DVD playing one one machine, then stream it over a LAN, assuming the LAN is fast enough (mine isn't; 10BaseT Ethernet isn't really fast enough for streaming DVD video in realtime). Later. -- Phil. | Acorn Risc PC600 Mk3, SA202, 64MB, 6GB, philpem(a)dsl.pipex.com | ViewFinder, 10BaseT Ethernet, 2-slice, http://www.philpem.dsl.pipex.com/ | 48xCD, ARCINv6c IDE, SCSI ... :.::: ::..: ::.::. :..:: Tagline in Braille