mrblack.co.uk weblog

With little time and money spare we need the help of critics or reviewers to help us in our choices. As a single male with a cynical slant and a hatred of being “sold” anything I tend to take comfort with critics who get rather angry in their specialist area. Here are a few I really quite like.

BBC Five Live - Mark Kermode film reviews
Kermode loves film and is the BBC’s film reviewer who appears on Newsnight review and The Culture show from time to time. His reviews are, I have to say, spot on for my liking. Of cause not everybody will agree but I like this chap for his balls in lambasting a film. His famous rants against Pirates of the Carabiean and Little Man have almost become legendary.

Reading
Kermode film page / podcast links
Wikipedia entry

4Later - Vids
Before channel four filled its nights with quiz channels or 24 hour CCTV footage of some wankers in a house 4later aired and was a gem of my pubescent years. It had odd animations and tv shows which ran on a shoe string. One of the best was Vids, a video review show which looked at the latest VHS releases. Starring Stef and Nigel as two Scottish video shop owners their reviews took place during comedy sketches which I have yet to see repeated. A classic which could make a fantastic come back on the net if somebody could track them down.

Reading
Vids fansite, long since dead.
IMDb information
Google cache of old 4later site.
Dog-Sized-Cat. Nigel’s new site with links to Vids episodes.
4later fansite.

Internets - Angry Nintendo Nerd (aka angry video game nerd)
This chap just makes me laugh out loud. His age is about mine, his subject matter old video games and his anger is constantly at about 10.

Reading
Angry Video Game Nerd Home page
Youtube videos

BBC Four - Screenwipe
The artsy BBC 4 hosting a program where the hosts states “an undercover camera show that filmed children in restaurants and calling them c**ts, thats a show I would watch” has to be worth a peek. I missed it up until now and have only caught up thanks to youtube and some chap pirating them. I would basically describe this show as like ITV’s TV burp, but funny. Plus any show that hires fat-pie.com and Adam Buxton has to get my vote. Classic.

Reading
BBC Four Screenwipe page
Loads of “clips” uploaded to youtube

Amusingly if you downloaded Muse - Knights of Cydonia music video from iTunes a few days ago, you would have received “Hondo” , a western starring John Wayne. So I grabbed it, downloaded about a 1gig of “music video” and chuckled at the cock up.

Today, Apple sent me the actual music video alas not once, not twice but three times. For such generosity I would like to thank Matt, Amy and Lilly from iTunes support . Oh what a lark.

I just hope iTunes will sell these sort of movies at this price (£2) when they finally strike a deal to distribute films in the UK.

Update 22/3/07 12:15 Thanks Kate!! I now have my 4th copy of the music video.
Update 22/3/07 14:16 Thanks Amy!! I now have my 5th copy of the music video.
Update 22/3/07 16:16 Thanks Brian!! Number 6 is on its way.

Readings
Whale Salad blog post
Digg’s “insightful comments”

The beeb is splattering its content all over the web utilising the tactic of an ape flinging shit against a wall and seeing what sticks. Not a bad approach if you have the cash, but tech and blog sites seem to have gone crazy over the latest BBC turd winging its way to the internet wall. The forthcoming iPlayer.

The iPlayer is an online TV catch up service and might well be implementing Microsoft’s Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology. This will mean it won’t work on a Mac, Linux or whatever, you need Windows and/or a device vetted by Microsoft. I’ll be a little peeved if this doesn’t change after the public consultation.

However, its worth pointing out that the ape that is the BBC has had, so far, a very successful podcast trial and are now putting some effort into video podcasts. At the moment these video podcasts seem to be condensed versions of current shows, such as the BBC Breakfast takeaway, Heaven and Earth extra or the Blue Peter podcast.

These podcasts have no DRM associated with them.* They will play on anything from macs to zunes, without any ridiculous licensing, phoning home or any such silliness that DRM suffers from . I can even play around with the feeds and create a crazy new website if i keep to their rules. Hopefully this turd will stick, as its a much better way of getting BBC video and audio on the net compared to the crippled iPlayer.

So how come I actually think the iPlayer isn’t the such a bad thing considering video podcast are so much better?

Well the iPlayer might well have all that DRM silliness, but this sillyness can act as a security blanket for content providers. The beeb might be able to use this blanket to coax its content providers to put their content online, which is better than nothing at all.

Then, I hope, the BBC will continue developing its video podcasts. If done right people will want to have BBC podcasts on their phones, televisions, mobile video players and computers. If thats a big success (big ‘if’ I know), perhaps the other content providers will be able to see the light and want a piece of that yummy DRMless pie with all of its platform independent fillings.

I therefore hope the BBC can lead the way here. Get the content providers to use the iPlayer to test the internet water with arm bands on. Whilst the BBC allows their own video content, that without licensing or other legal issues, to be released as podcasts and not give up (like it did with the ogg streams).

*podcast is an odd word. I could replace this line with “The video files referenced as an enclosure in an RSS feed (which when looked as a whole become known as a podcast) have no DRM associated with them” I suppose.

“Control Alt Chicken� is a new, download only, geek cookery show. The first episode is up for download over at revision3. Its rather scary how bad they are at cooking, but for a first episode which is free and pushing the boundaries of Internet tv its well worth a peek.