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Showing posts with label Digital TV. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Digital TV. Show all posts

Thursday, March 29, 2012


I made the mistake of taking a bathroom break during "24".

If we're watching a program on TV, I usually ask my partner when I return "what did I miss?"

And he will say something like:
"they haven't worked out who did it yet" or
"they are still trying to figure out who is sending the letters"

When I came back after missing what must have been less than 3 minutes of "24" I asked the same question.

"What did I miss?"

"Well...
the plane's blown up,
a cougar's loose,
this girl's missing,
this guy's dead,
this one blew up,
this thing exploded,
they found another bomb and everyone's about to die."


Don't go to the bathroom during "24".




Thursday, June 09, 2011

As you may already have guessed, I am a fan of translations.  Especially when the result fails to convey the correct meaning of what you are trying to translate.  Especially especially when that result is funny....

Our friends at TVFix have put together an awesome collection of badly translated tv titles.   I feel it is my duty to share them with you:





GLEE = LOSERS
Curious English-Russian translation, however I'm inclined to think that Dave Grohl may agree with this one.
 


JERSEY SHORE = THE NEW JERSEY LIFE OF MACARONI RASCALS
Only Japan could come up with this one.  And I Love them for it.  I can be a macaroni rascal myself when I am hungry enough.  Oh, not that kind of rascal...




THE BRADY BUNCH = THREE GIRLS, THREE BOYS
This is a German translation, Germans being known for their outlandish wackiness.  If they wanted to be pedantic, they should have called it three girls, three boys, one lady, one man and one maid who makes wisecracks.  But they probably didn't have enough room...



BEWITCHED = IN LOVE WITH A WITCH
(German translation) I'm sure many people have had this problem. At least they didn't call it "Nose Wiggler"...



MURDER, SHE WROTE = MURDER IS HER HOBBY
Suddenly I'm looking at Angela Lansbury in a new way...  She seems so nice and unassuming... This is also a German effort.  Again, they must have run out of room from trying to call it "Writing about murder is her hobby"...




KNIGHT RIDER = EL AUTO FANTASTICO (THE FANTASTIC CAR)
I'm willing to go along with this one.  That car IS pretty fantastic...


And I've saved my favourite one for last:



THE X-FILES = AT THE BOUNDARIES OF REALITY
French translation.  Talk about taking the awesomeness out of a title.  Why didn't they just go with "Exciting stuff that nobody ever hears about",  "FBI guys with torches who discover weird things", "Nobody believes me that aliens are actually real", or "Even though I have an implant in my head I seem quite normal to passers by".  Again, probably a space thing...  (yuk, yuk!)

Tuesday, March 09, 2010

Firstly, congratulations to Karrie Webb on winning her seventh ANZ Ladies Masters. It was good to see the free to air channels broadcasting day 1 & 2 highlights and full coverage of days 3 and 4, so well done on that front.

The results of the tournament apparently weren't newsworthy enough for Channels 9, 7, 10 and ABC. Not even Sports Tonight. Oh well, just another victory for the greatest golfer to come out of Australia (and yes, that does include Greg Norman!). I don't suppose it has something to do with it being a "Ladies" tournament. Hmm....

Other newsworthy articles were Lara Bingle's naked scandal, some other footballer duffed up somebody else, and oh yes, Richard Green DIDN'T win in a golf tournament overseas, getting knocked off by Camilo Villegas. But his not winning was more newsworthy than Karrie Webb actually... winning. Go figure.

Karrie Webb triumphed with a blistering course record of 11 under (61), and was a joy to watch. I think the Ladies Masters is a brilliant event. I attended this tournament in 2009 and 2008. 2010's tournament was held on the Gold Coast, so it was a little far to travel over the weekend. It would be nice to have some acknowledgment that the tournament actually happened. It's about time that golfers such as Karrie Webb, Katherine Hull and Laura Davies get their fair share of coverage.

Sooo.... given the lack of proper news coverage, here is iseekgolf's Bruce Young talking to Karrie Webb about her 7th ANZ Ladies Masters Victory.






Thursday, February 26, 2009


The great digital television revolution. Ah, the choice, the channels, the unending variety. Or so we thought. This morning Ten HD presented Round 1 of the Accenture Match Play Golf Championship.

Tiger's comeback after months of injury was much anticipated. The coverage began at 6am. The excitement of seeing Tiger back in action and playing against Brendan Jones from Australia was a recipe for a brilliant morning's viewing.

And then... outrage. The coverage of play was cut short to make way for the highly time-sensitive (note sarcasm) "David and Kim" morning show.

The same bloody mind numbing and banal David and Kim morning show that is being shown on the other Ten Digital channels. Obviously Ten HD found it imperative that it be shown on Ten HD just to make sure that nobody misses the extremely missable David and Kim show. All us golf tragics were expecting full coverage - many other groups were set to come through, including little known (note sarcasm again) players such as Ernie Els. It was not that the official coverage had finished, it's just that Ten HD decided not to show it anymore. Surely, Ten HD you can spare one little channel to see the coverage through to its conclusion.

Important note: I have discovered that the coverage begins again at 4:30pm today, which is a welcome relief. Hopefully this coverage includes the wrap up as well.

It's truly amazing that we are getting 15 new channels this year, unfortunately it seems that some of the content has so far been duplicated. With any luck, this will be sorted out throughout 2009.

Monday, October 20, 2008


The Good















The Living End
The first mighty chords blasted through Acer Arena, blowing the Veronica's eye makeup off. It worked. Everyone was awake and alert and ready for a night of great music. The Living End finally received a well-deserved ARIA for Best Rock Album. The band set the bar high in terms of performance and unfortunately many of the acts that followed crashed into this bar like that drunk Russian high jumper.

Nick Cave
Best Male Artist. The quality of the songwriting, the musicianship, the brilliance, the...
*whack!* sorry, I got carried away there for a moment.

Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu
A beautiful, moving performance. I got teary and I realised that I couldn't even understand the words. The beauty of his music transcends language.

Kasey Chambers and Shane Nicholson
Keep on rattlin'!



The Bad

















Gabriella Cilmi
It's dangerous to be carrying six pointy glass things while drunk and balancing on heels. Please stop talking.

Delta Goodrem
Highest selling album ARIA. This speaks volumes (literally!) of the state of the Australian Music Industry. There must be more Australian 12 year old girls than I thought.





















The Veronicas
These miniature Elviras are giving me nightmares. Make the Leprechauns go away, mummy. I promise I'll be good.



The Ugly


The Presets
I can put on a dance beat and whine while holding my nose as well. I just don't make other people listen to it. Dressing up like a Muppet only makes it worse.



Surely this disturbing trend of bad music masquerading as something sophisticated must come to an end. It just requires a certain level of awareness from the general population. Perhaps the abomination of The Presets winning best album will be the last gasp of this rather tedious era. Prediction for ARIAs 2009 - more rock, less schlock.




Thursday, May 01, 2008




I thought it was going to be so easy to set up my new High Definition set top box. I mean, really, how hard could it be?

The answer came to me when I was waist high in cables and instruction manuals, pressing the "menu" button for the fifteenth time trying to work out what went wrong.

I'm going to try and simplify this so nobody ever goes through the same unnecessary troubles that I endured.

These steps are for connecting a HD set top box to a plain old normal television. These instructions are for a Tedelex HD set top box but should be able to translate to other models.

Step 1:

Unpack set top box. Get the cable that looks like this: (red, yellow and white)



and plug it into the set top box like this (it is colour coded so you can't really get it wrong!):




Plug your aerial into "ANT IN" on the set top box:

Then plug the other end into the red, yellow and white bits at the back of the TV.


Step 2:

Turn the set top box on.

Get the HD remote.

(THIS IS THE IMPORTANT BIT!)



Set the format on "PALI" - I presume this has something to do with PAL for Australia / UK TV.

On this particular remote you do the following:

FUNC
FUNC
PALI (on this remote it is the RED button!)

That's it!


Step 3:

Generally normal (older!) TVs have AV1 and Av2 to plug in audiovisual equipment. So, you will have plugged the red, yellow and white cables into eitherAV1 or AV2 which means when you get the TV remote, put the channel on Av1 or Av2. Whichever one shows up the HD menu, that's it!

On this particular model, (Tedelex TE-8200) the instruction manual tells you to press menu, select "TV channels" by pressing "OK" and searching for channels either automatically or manually.

I did an autosearch and found quite a few channels but not TenHD. Which is a disaster because TenHD is the main channel I want for the extra golf tournaments.

I realised that the aerial wasn't in the "Channel 10 spot" when I did the autosearch.

I readjusted the aerial in the Channel 10 spot and rescanned. Lo and behold all the Channel 10 stuff came up.


Step 4:

If you want to watch a channel that is being previewed in a small box on the screen, select the channel, press:

EXIT
EXIT
and
EXIT

Then you can watch the channel. I tell you something, these instruction manuals should actually say what I just said here. In plain English. Why oh why do they just skip over steps like "on what friggin channel does the set top box come through?" or "I've got the TV on, the set top box is on, the remote is working so why the crap isn't the HD menu coming up?" They just assume that you will naturally get to the point where the menu is magically displayed on screen. I ask you, what is the point of having an instruction manual if they think you can jolly well work it out for yourself?

From recent research on HD forums, it seems lot of people have spoken about the difficulty in finding a proper TV guide that includes the HD channels. I would love to find a hard copy but for now here are the online guides:

Yahoo7 TV Guide

CitySearch TV Guide

EBroadcast TV Guide

NineMSN TV Guide

According to recent news reports, Nine HD will not launch until March 2008. I wondered why I couldn't find it on any of the TV guides! Duh!

The picture is amazing. It has gone from something like this:



to this:



It's nuts. It's like watching DVDs all the time.

Hope this helps :-) Enjoy.




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Thursday, January 24, 2008




Oh yes. It will be mine.

I entered the local Dick Smith outlet armed with $130 cash and a few simple questions. Today was the day. I would get the High Definition set top box and open up a new world of extra golf (EXTRA GOLF!!! Haahahaha! Hee hee!) tournaments and movies on the new TenHD channel. It was all so simple.

Or so I thought. The sales girl walked into view and asked if I was being served.

Me: Hi, I'd like to buy a Bush High Definition set top box.

Sales Girl: Nup. Sold out.

Me: Okay, do you know where I can get one?

Sales Girl: Nup. They're all sold out. You can't get them anywhere.

Me: Anywhere?

Sales Girl: (sarcastically) If you want to spend $399 then you might get one.

Me: Hmm. What about the website then? Can you get one there?

Sales Girl: Nup.

(doesn't this girl know any more words?)

Me: No?

Sales Girl: Nup.

Me: (slowly) Could you check it for me?

Sales Girl: (grunts and logs onto the website on the screen in front of her) There. Nup. You can't get it on the website either.

Me: Really? That's weird.

Sales Girl: Yep. It's a web only offer.

Me: Hang on, doesn't that mean I actually can get it from the website?

Sales Girl: (confused) Oh. Yeah.

(snakes alive! She's worked something out!)

Me: (exasperated) Fine. And can you use a High Definition set top box with a normal TV?

Sales Girl: Nup, you need a brand new TV.

Me: That's weird, I've read that you can use it with a normal TV.

Sales Girl: Nup. (Computer says no)

Me: Thanks. (walks out, with sales girl glaring in my direction)

I decided to stop wasting my time at the front desk and called Dick Smith technical support.

Me: Hi, I'm going to buy a Bush HD set top box from the website. Can you please tell me if it can connect to a normal TV?

Tech Support Guy: Yes, no problem.

Me: Do I need a special cable?

Tech Support Guy: The yellow, white and red one will do. You probably already have one.

Me: Yes, I think I do. So that's it? I can get the the HD channels?

Tech Support Guy: Yes, they won't be in full HD because of your TV set but you'll get all the new channels.

Me: (stunned silence - that's it?) Okay thanks.


Why? Why did that girl insist on working in customer service? She could be just as happy as a parking inspector.

"I'm sorry, I was just dropping off some dry cleaning. Can't you give me a break this time?"

"Nup."





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Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Uuhuh uuhn huh!!

Ah....Lorraine. Lorraine Swanson. My favourite character on MADtv.



I found MADtv DVDs from $7.48US ($9.73AUS) at Amazon.com

I am having Mad TV withdrawal symptoms. Thank you, half-arsed Australian television!!! You really know how to program.

Take Mad TV off the air, put on "CSI ...(insert town here)"

Take away Supernatural, put on "20-1 Most Inane Moments in some field nobody cares about"

And sadly, take away the X-Files, put on "The Simpsons 100th episode for the 10,00000th $%@^?&^%@ing time!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

I mean what is going on? Is it a conspiracy?

Are we handed crap TV on free-to-air (sheesh! It used to be called just plain old "Television" - I am so sick of weasel words) so we are forced to....

"JOIN US!!!!!" (sinister voice hissing)


...sign up to Foxtel or whatever and pay shitloads of money every month?

I don't know.

To give you an idea why I love MADtv so much, here is one of my favourite Lorraine moments:

Lorraine Buys a Bed

Buy the DVD, watch it on YouTube, however you do it, Lorraine Rocks!!!

Uuuuhh uuuh uhhh uhhh

huh