Telly?

[JoceAndChris]

Cherry blossom?? :lol: From where? I have a cherry blossom furoshiki somewhere, that will have to do!

My dear, we are living on dried apples and pickled plums. Today I will have to live on plain boiled potatoes as we are iced in. Your life sounds impossibly exotic.

Thank you for thinking of my cat, he sends some British purrs to your far-away land!

 

[LadyArowana]

No chance of real blossom here either, I have some fake stuff that can be re-used but looks OK. Some things get flown in, but I find it rather wasteful to buy new each year. The ornamental orange trees are beautiful, but again they force grow them to be in peak condition for one year and then they mostly get disposed of. I was told that not having one was OK, but as soon as you did it one year it was unlucky not to do it every year. Probably just smart marketing by the sellers of orange trees, but I don't like to poke a stick at a tiger. I had an ornamental bamboo grown in water when we lived elsewhere but had to re-home it when we moved whch was rather sad so never bought one here.

You poor thing being iced in and stuck with boiled potatoes. Sometimes exotic is good, sometimes not so much so :lol: . Singapore is fairly easy but even so there are days when I get grumpy about it not being home. I have to make do with a 3D painted cat, called "Tiddles" incidentally, that I move around the place because it isn't practical to have real animals, so British purrs much appreciated.

 

[Flyfisher]

Cherry blossom?? :lol: From where?

 

[Ushy M]

My dear, we are living on dried apples and pickled plums. Today I will have to live on plain boiled potatoes as we are iced in.

Yes, us stranded too - for the second time in a week. We've been surviving on a leftover-from-Christmas-diet of After Eights and Twiglets and are wearing the cats as scarves. Fortunately the pub remains open!

Thinking about earlier posts in this thread about rural life - Joanna Trollope has one of her characters explain that living in a village isn't always easy - in a town you can pick and choose your friends but being in a village is like living on a ship - you have to get on with everyone. Having moved from London to a market town and now a village, this rings very true. (not a big fan of Trollope J b.t.w., but finding one of hers a soothing nodding off to sleep read, though sometimes feel I should be reading something improving by Trollope A instead!)

 

[Gervase]

I find that any Trollop soothes me, to be honest.
Sorry, I'll get my coat...

 

[LadyArowana]

Cherry blossom?? :lol: From where?

Do they do it in red ?

Yes, us stranded too - for the second time in a week. We've been surviving on a leftover-from-Christmas-diet of After Eights and Twiglets and are wearing the cats as scarves. Fortunately the pub remains open!

Thinking about earlier posts in this thread about rural life - Joanna Trollope has one of her characters explain that living in a village isn't always easy - in a town you can pick and choose your friends but being in a village is like living on a ship - you have to get on with everyone. Having moved from London to a market town and now a village, this rings very true.

You didn't eat the cats and then wear them as scarves did you :lol: ?

Hearing all these tales of woe I have resolved not to complain about living in a big concrete box where I don't know the neighbours and getting sweaty walking down the road. I would invite you all over for a bit of respite care, but by the time you arrived the tea would be cold and all the biscuits long gone. I hope it gets better for you soon. I was in London last year when it snowed and the whole experience was grim.

 

[LadyArowana]

I find that any Trollop soothes me, to be honest.
Sorry, I'll get my coat...

:lol:

 

[JoceAndChris]

I'm laughing at Gervase's comment too.

Singapore? SINGAPORE??? No, m'lady, you are certainly not allowed to complain. I spent two very enjoyable months in your fair city a couple of years ago, and regret, now, not taking up a chance to live there for a while. Oh to be there right now! Please go at once and have a dozen donuts from the donut factory for me, (raspberry dark chocolate- oh, this is actually hurting now thinking about them) followed by chilli crab. And buy me some silk from Arab St?

Cherry blossom?? :lol: From where?

:lol: Yep, that's pretty much the closest I'll get to it!

Ushy M, sorry to hear you're stranded too, if we could only combine your twiglets and my potatoes, we'd have a very interesting meal!

 

[Ushy M]

Lady A - the cats work much better as scarves whilst alive, warm and purring!

Joce - got my tastebuds going now - fantasising about cauliflower cheese with Bacon Fries (which are, oddly, vegetarian) crumbled on top!

 

[LadyArowana]

I'm laughing at Gervase's comment too.

Singapore? SINGAPORE??? No, m'lady, you are certainly not allowed to complain. Please go at once and have a dozen donuts from the donut factory for me, (raspberry dark chocolate- oh, this is actually hurting now thinking about them) followed by chilli crab. And buy me some silk from Arab St?

:lol: Yep, that's pretty much the closest I'll get to it!

Ushy M, sorry to hear you're stranded too, if we could only combine your twiglets and my potatoes, we'd have a very interesting meal!

I can't fully oblige on the food instruction, I don't like chocolate donuts or chilli crab, can I have plain donuts and crab fried rice instead ? Buying silk is entirely my thing though. Next trip to the UK I will be bringing some curtains I had made from silk bought in Arab street. I hope they are the right size and colour.
Two months is probably a good amount of time to visit, after a while it can be rather a small place and some of the planned and controlled aspects of society a little worrying. I liken it to a cheese sandwich, nothing wrong with it, but very dull when eaten every day. Possibly better than twiglets and boiled potatoes I suppose. Hope both of you can escape for real supplies soon, and glad to hear all cats are alive, warm and purring.

 

[Penners]

I find that any Trollop soothes me, to be honest.
Sorry, I'll get my coat...

Including Anthony...? :shock:

 

[AMc]

Referring briefly back to TV dominating your life, there is a solution to passively watching the garbage that's on right now...
There are devices that will record every episode of a TV series and allow you to watch it back at your leisure. You can also pause TV, fast foward through the adverts (hurrah!) and rewind to see things again. I haven't watched live TV bar the odd football match in nearly 9 years. We let TV store up and watch what we want, when we want.

I have (arguably the best) - called Tivo - they stopped selling them here in 2003 and you can now only buy second hand units on eBay. It gets its TV guide from a phone connection and can record from aerial, freeview, satellite or cable. Tivo are coming back to the UK with Virgin Media cable later this year and is still popular in the USA.

There is also Freeview Playback (recorded free digital TV through the aerial), Freesat recorders (needing a dish but no subscription) and Microsoft Windows Vista & 7 have the capability to run Windows Media Center (sic) using plug in tuners it can record from Freeview or Freesat. There is also Sky+ and Sky+HD which need a dish and subscription and the auction of your soul to the devil (perhaps the last bit is optional?)

Freesat set top boxes and TVs will soon be able to access the BBC iPlayer without a computer if they're connected to a broadband internet connection.

Freesat recorders are in the £250-300 region but Freeview recorders can be got for £80 or so. If you watch any TV then I would heartily recommend getting a clever recording device and stopping watching what the broadcasters want you to see and start watching what you want to see.

Can't help with the big box in the corner though

 

[Penners]

Freesat recorders are in the £250-300 region but Freeview recorders can be got for £80 or so.

The principal difference being that the Freesat PVR will receive (and record) HD today. Freeview is expected to have about four HD channels nationwide by 2012.

We have a Humax Freesat recorder, and it's a very high quality machine. I certainly endorse what AMc says about having a TV recorder. It's a wonderful facility.

 

[MdB]

The freeview transmissions are in the process of being updated to HD and of course all the current decoders are incompatible with the HD part (even if you have a freeview decoder built into a HD TV). I would therefore suggest anybody thinking of buying anything with a freeview decoder in it waits at least 6 months to see what becomes available.

Half the UK should be able to receive freeview HD by June this year though it will be three years for the whole country to get it.

 

[Penners]

Good point.

 

[Flyfisher]

PVR devices are certainly very good but they're not restricted to digital services. We've had a Digital Video Recorder (DVR) for a fair while now (where 'digital' refers to it recording onto a hard drive rather than a video tape), which only receives analogue channels but manages to download an EPG from somewhere (teletext I presume) and works in much the same way as the Freesat recorders.

However, none of these devices solve the problem of recording things but never getting around to actually watching them. In fact, I reckon I used to watch far more TV in the days before VCRs. This might just be an age-related thing, but when VCRs became available I started avidly recording things but would then find it difficult to find time to actually watch things. The very fact that I could watch something at any convenient time seemed to take away any urgency to watch at all and seemed to get me out of the habit of watching TV.

 

[Penners]

That's a very perceptive observation, FF, and I certainly recognise the syndrome that you describe.

Although, on a cold evening, when the woodburner's been lit and I've got my boiled eggs and toast, I confess that I'll watch just about anything. :roll:

 

[AMc]

A common misconception about HD is that the picture is inherently better in all situations. There is a crucial viewing distance to pixel size ratio beyond which you can't see the difference without binoculars. If the screen is too small or the distance from the viewer to the TV is too great it isn't possibly to determine the extra 'sharpness' that you get from adding more pixels to the picture. Certainly the difference between BBC HD and BBC1 on freeview isn't dramatic on my 42"TV at 14' away.

Owning a 42" Freesat "Full HD" 1080p TV with no recorder and an old fashioned 32" tube telly with a recorder, the recording aspect is substantially more useful to me. There is precious little on BBC HD & ITV HD to actually watch at the moment and anything shown in HD will also be shown on normal standard definition channels for the foreseeable future, certainly the lifespan of most consumer electronics - IMHO. As there are no Freeview HD receivers available yet I would wait at least a year before the price drops and the bugs are ironed out.

Analogue recorders & VCRs are an endangered species as Granada have already lost all analogue channels in the digital switchover.

The reasons I'm excited about Freesat has more to do with the availability of BBC iPlayer (making that big TV useful without buying a new recorder and managing both at once). I'm also excited about getting proper digital surround sound from broadcast TV.

I'm sure that I'm in the minority in having a DVD player, Playstation3, amp, 6 surround sound speakers and a subwoofer in the lounge. Under my TV does look a bit like Curry's and I make no apology for it

As many of the posts on here are about hiding small TVs in cupboards and corners I wouldn't put too much emphasis on HD. I certainly wouldn't hold on on getting a TV recorder for Freeview HD.

Another big advantage of prerecording ALL your telly viewing is you can watch a bit of a programme then come back to it later. Digital recorders save all that faffing with finding recordings on tapes which made using a VCR more trouble than it was worth to me - they're just listed in a menu.

 

[ilona73]

you just missed one vital thing there!

Another great advantage is that most progammes are inundated with ad breaks... you can really quickly skip them all and resume viewing too!
I hate Ad breaks the most annoying part of Tv IMO.....

 

[AMc]

You can also edit out the inane prattle and the constant "after the break we'll be seeing.." and "before the break we showed you..." nonsense that channel surfers/attention deficit disorder/geriatric decay have foisted on the rest of us.

Our favourites are watching "Who wants to be a millionaire" on fast forward going even faster through the ads - 1 hour programme in about 15 minutes, even less on celebrity editions. Mastermind can be cut down to just 15 minutes by trimming out all the chatting and the person who's specialist subject is the contents of their garage .