Zattoo TV

I bumped into the Zattoo player recently. After a little playing around I’ve decided that it’s quite a good little technology.

It streams Live TV (in the UK BBC1/BBC2/BBC3/BBC4 and some others).

The technology is a proprietary P2P platform.

It connects quickly, and the quality is lovely in comparison to some of the other P2P video platforms.

Pop along and sign up for the beta, it’s certainly worth playing with. If some more of the channels from the UK/European are come on line it will be cracking.

The small issue at the moment, is to keep the broadcasters happy they limit the streams to local broadcasters, and those that don’t mind being broadcast in other territories. This stops us in the UK from receiving US and some European broadcasts.

zattoo

24 Season 6 Leaked

24leak.jpg24 Season 6 episode 1, 2, 3 and 4 have been leaked onto the net. The episodes first appeared on an Asian BitTorrent site, and now are available pretty much anywhere.

If you want to download them and have a look what it's all about then they are available on Easynews

Episode 1 , Episode 2, Episode 3 and Episode 4 

They are just brilliant! Jack back to his best.

The talk however is will it kill off Fox's launch of season 6 next week? Well no, most of the people that will download it and are in the states will watch it anyhow, plus the other people not in the states are just going to download them anyhow, go get them, and get into the season early.

The source of these episodes seems to be a leaked copy of the Season 6 Disk 1 disk getting out into the wild.

Desktop Support

This was an internal teambuilding video. The video was meant to be to detail what the desktop support department at work do, we don't use them much (support our own stuff), so we did this instead! Click through for the video

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Pearl Harbour II

I really don't know how I missed this one, Pearl Harbor II - Pearlmageddon.

It's funny, decently edited, clever FX (for the budget).

Pop along and download yourself a copy (QT Required).

Sky by Broadband uninstall

I’ve noticed over on AVForums that some people are unsure as to what get’s installed, and more importantly how to remove it.

Well what it installs, the main part of Sky by Broadband is not the part you see, it is actually a P2P service (Kontiki), this is the meat and bones of the SBB application, as this actually does the downloading/uploading parts (just as a side note, the BBC trial uses this P2P application as well). Ports used by this application seem to be 80, 443 and 8080.

The less significant, but more visible part is the Flash based front end of the application that allows you to choose what to download or watch.

The third and final part of the application is actually Windows Media Player 10, this is what is used to actually play the video back again (all downloaded video’s use Microsoft’s DRM for ‘protection’)

Now to remove the application?

First do a standard Windows uninstall of the Sky by Broadband application, this however usually does not remove the Kontiki stuff, for that their is an application supplied by Kontiki to do the job (Download here).

Obviously you could then uninstall the Windows Media Player 10 package from Windows as well, however no real point.

The last thing? Well I have been asked how to ‘Un DRM’ the files downloaded, well it can be done, no security is infallible, however it is certainly not a simple task. If you would like to research this then have a look here.

Invasion

I have just watched ABC’s Invasion that premiered (in the UK) on channel 4 earlier. Now with the sad(ish) news that Threshold is to be axed this could be just the replacement I was looking for.

It’s sufficiently ‘creepy’ to keep the tension up, has EBE’s (Extraterrestrial Biological Entities) in it, and is decently acted by a competent (on the whole) line up. Let’s hope that this does not get the boot.

William Fitchtner plays the ‘baddy’ sheriff fairly well and the rest of the crew most of who are new to me seem decently cast.

Let’s hope the script does not get too complacent (a la X-Files) and the plot does not stray too far from the mark and this could be a decent series.

Lost and Earl

I have watched the latest Lost and my name is Earl (post). Lost is getting better again, the last few episodes were a little weak; this weeks Earl is possibly the weakest of them so far, but it did have a lot to follow after the wedding episode. 

The new series’ over in the UK at the moment are a little weak as well. Rome is truly rubbish, I know now why it went down so weak in the US. Also on at the moment is Threshold, not made my mind up yet on that, some of the acting is week; however it could have a decent story line to drive it. I am still watching season 2 of Stargate Atlantis and season 9 of SG-1 on Sky as well as I did not download them from the USA. 

What I am looking foward too? Well Jack is back in season 5 of ‘24′, that starts January 15th, and Battlestar Galactica continues in January as well. There is also Triangle (mini series, on SciFi) which airs in the US on Dec 5th, and also I might take a look at Manticore (also SciFi USA, staring Robert Beltran), and then there is hopefully a new season of Tripping the Rift next year (13 episodes a season is not enough). 

If there are any other TV shows out there tat you think may be worth a visit please let me know.

Agent 47 on the Big Screen

It seems that Agent 47 (from The Hitman games) will be making an appearance on the big screen some time in 2007. Word has it that Skip Woods (Swordfish, Thursday) has signed up to write the screenplay.

 

That may be good, and even though Swordfish had it’s issues (I hate it how Hollywood have to dictate coding with flashing block’s of lego) it was not bad, and Thursday (his first flick) was also a worth a watch film.

The slight downside (although I don’t really mind him) is that Agent 47 will be played by Vin Diesel, hey at least he has a shaved head.

Lets see what the conversion is like, should be OK as at the end of the day it’s only another special agent movie.

Stand back, there may be a large rabbit dropping!

And that’s just one of the lines from the incredibly funny Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

I was planning on doing a full review of the movie, but that would just spoil it to be honest, so I will let you go and enjoy it without me ruining it for you.

I will however say the animation is probably the best Aardman have ever done, without making it look un Wallace & Gromit like. Some of the touches in it are fantastic; ever wanted to see Bullet Time done in plasticine? it’s brilliant!

Peter Sallis plays Wallace with all his usual vigour, however the voice acting this time out is star studded and no-one is a let down. Peter Kay as PC Mackintosh, Ralph Fiennes as the death hungry Victor Quartermaine and Helena Bonham Carter as ‘Totty’ are all great in it as well.

Like all Aardman movies you have to keep an eye on what’s happening around and behind the characters as well, as some of the best gags are not actually to do with the main story.

Nick Park’s homage to some of the classic horror/monster movies is excellent as well, King Kong possibly being my favourite.

I promised not to ruin it for you, and I was just starting t get into doing just that, so I will shut up.

But PLEASE do yourself a favour and find a child to take to see it, heck you don’t even need the excuse with a movie that’s full of comedy genius like this one! Go see it!

[rate 4.5]