RCD's - why 30mA?

[Mike]

And somewhere there is a bunch of cowboy builders called Norfolk and Good.

Plus a camper van specialist

[Mike]

Would you go all funny if you found out that oxygen free copper isn't used anywhere in the electricity supply system anywhere on the planet?

[Andy Champ]

*I* don't call that 1080p capable. But your right to warn that some salesmen might.

Andy

[Andy Champ]

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Sorry - I'd just been working on a new MDF for this monitor...

[Bob Mannix]

Never mind the quality, feel the width - 35mm^2 earth leads! Bet he's got a Russ Andrews £800 mains lead or two. Really, as his house is effectively on a radial circuit he should plug his devices in to separate houses down the road.

I love esoteric hi-fi - "it's better, you just can't hear it and it messes up your house"

The happiest (or cruellest) joke of all is that, by the time you can afford to buy the kit, your hearing is on the way out anyway, and you can't buy yourself out of that one!

[Frank Erskine]

I hope the actual 'earth' is oxygen-free.

[Ron Lowe]

er, you did see my follow-up post that this was a joke, right?

[Ron Lowe]

er,. yes >> There's currently a new version of BD+ which Slysoft's developers claim

[Andy Champ]

Missed that. 5 weeks and counting...

Andy

[Ron Lowe]

The arrogance of Richard Doherty of the Envisioneering Group that BD+ would take 10 years to hack, and was then ( in its then form ) hacked by slysoft in some weeks was astounding.

Of course, the thing with BD+ is that is's an ever-moving target.

A game of cat-and-mouse.

And as I say, the people who *really* suffer are regular consumers, who just want their stand-alone players to play the genuine disks they have bought. Every few months, they will need to upgrade their player firmware to play the latest releases. Is that acceptable in the consumer arena?

The techno-classes ( us ) will update our firmware no problem. The 'bad boys' ( us / not-us ? ) will simply wait a month or 2 occasionally untill slysoft have got if fixed.

This stuff affects the genuine users far more than it inconveniences the bad guys is by basic point.

[John Rumm]

Indeed. I always feel that even from the advent of ordinary DVDs the consumer has been victim of a sophisticated "bait and switch" con.

We were all sold on the convenience of true random access to our films - no need to wind though bits you don't want to see etc - jump straight in where you want. Plus loads of "special features". It interesting to see now the format dominates just haw many controls they try to impose. You must watch the copyright warnings, the trailers, and any amount of other crap to get to the main menu even, an the player controls are disabled until the producer of the disk deems it allowable for you to have the use of your own player again. Even many of the so called special features are nothing more than advertising for more of their wares.

(still full credit to Techtronics who chipped the first DVD player I bought more than a decade ago - it still plays and defeats every attempt at region coding, or player control restrictions) ;-)

[Bob Mannix]

Ah, you weren't outrageous enough and merely wrote what might actually have appeared in an esoteric hi-fi magazine! I'm easily confused!

[Rod]

Their stealing of our time and convenience is a crime against an innocent consumer. I have no pirate (or otherwise dodgy) DVDs. But I am jolly tempted to if that means I don't have to decide to watch something several minutes ahead of time just so that they can force my machine to play those clips/warnings. And it seems especially bad when it is a multi-DVD series...

[John Rumm]

There are some discs where I have ended up making a stripped out[1] copy of my original which I keep in the same case - and play instead of the original since it is so much quicker and simpler to get to the bit you want!

[1] DVDShrink is good in that respect - you can re-author a disk to just include the main movie and nothing else if you want. Particularly good if you buy any ex-rental DVDs, as many of these seem to have the most irritating restrictions and often lack any worthwhile extras.

[Ron Lowe]

I also have done this. I use backup DVDs in the car, so the kids don't damage the originals.

I prefer to watch back-ups, since they skip straight to the movie. I find it an irritant nowadays to have to wade through the crap.

[1.1] Slysoft's CloneDVD is also good in this respect.

[Andy Champ]

Trouble is there are people out there making a business of copying DVDs

- and this stuff slows them down. The MPAA reckon that they do lose sales through illegal copies, and that it's worth them paying people to try to stop it. And that it's worth putting scary stuff on the front of the disc to remind you that if you copy it, you *are* breaking the law - even if you don't agree with the law, you're still breaking it.

Don't forget, movies are expensive to make, and if they don't make profit they'll stop making them.

Yes, it's a PITA. Just like the locks on my doors.

Andy

[Rod]

I know! But does it really slow them down more than marginally? Sitting here waiting until House M.D. Season 4 DVD gets to a sensible price increases the temptation to buy a pirate vesion of some sort. (The legit version seems to be going up again.) It already feels a bit rich charging the same for the truncated season (16 episodes) as they did for the full seasons (24 episodes).

[The Natural Philosopher]

You can really trace the decline in the music industry to the rise of the cassette tape.

I know, I was working in it, and essentially record sales plummeted when the cassette came along.

And have never recovered. It wasn't so much organised piracy, as every student copying his mates Lp's onto cassettes.

There seems to be no way out of it now.

Like software, its too darned easy to copy unless you put in so many hoops that it becomes liable to fail in legitimate situations.