I think, given that throughout the downturn corporate new car purchases have outnumbered consumer ones, most people have been taking the middle option of buying a car that's just a couple years old with low mileage. You miss the biggest depreciation hit and you get a car that still has some manufacturer's warranty on it.
We wanted a Nissan Note. New they're something like £13k for the way ours is equipped. A one year old one with 8000 miles was just over £9k. It may as well be new. You have to factor in that most people don't want to switch cars all the time. It may be economical, but it's also a pain in the arse. Plus you get used to things, and so on. We only swapped the 05 Micra because we had another kid and needed the space - we're normally the sort to drive a car until it's no longer economical. A modern car easily puts in 10 years service if you look after it well, so it'll be a helluva long time before I have to bother with this nonsense again.
If you love cars and can fix them yourself, it's an entirely different story. But that's not exactly a huge portion of the populace, is it? And I stress the "love cars" part, because while I'm perfectly capable of performing basic repairs, I seriously can't be arsed to on an economy miniMPV that's our daily driver. Back when I had an E24 635CSi that only saw sunny weekends, different story. :)
Certainly the QNAP does (I own one), and I'd be very surprised if the Synology didn't as well. The QNAP and Synology ones are the most polished, but also quite expensive for what you get.
That being said, the new 2GHz Marvells are fast enough to run quite a lot of things. I run Logitech's Squeezebox Server and Serviio for streaming music and video, respectively, with nary a hiccough. (Runs the printer, too. But I don't think that takes much oomph.) The only time I've seen the little ARM chip choke was on a live HD stream in a format that needed to be transcoded. But even the Atom-based ones can choke on transcoding live HD streams.
By the way, I'm quite technically competent. But what I don't have is tons of spare time and a lot of room. The QNAP makes perfect sense and sips a fraction of the juice a home-made solution would anyhow. It'll even do a quasi-transactional database for writes, somewhat like ZFS. But unlike ZFS there's quite a write speed penalty for it (it roughly halves write speed). But since I have a toddler who thinks power switches are fun, it's worth it to have the disks re-sync in 30s instead of a few hours.
The Tefal Actifry is better for that sort of thing. It uses a tablespoon of oil, which gives a lot better results for food that needs to be fried while still keeping the fat content down.
The Actifry's downside is that it uses a paddle to move things around and fry all sides of them. It can remove the coating on some things like fried chicken.
Exactly what I came on to post. I'm sure they've made it a bit safer than a G-Whiz (Renault uses safety as a selling point, and they've managed to "break" the NCAP tests), but it's still unbelievably dangerous compared to even the cheapest Kia.
I was thinking that the specs were a bit stingy compared to the QNAP I have sitting here (2GHz ARM, 512MB of RAM). But then it's just over half the price of it so I can't complain too loudly. The problem is that 256MB of RAM precludes running a lot of things - I run a Serviio DLNA server on mine, but there's no way it would run in 256.
My Samsung has no problem playing anything I stream to it. I don't even use my PC for streaming, just a lowly ARM-powered NAS running Serviio. I'd highly recommend giving Serviio a try if your TV isn't playing everything you want it to. Usual caveats apply - You need a Samsung B-class or newer (C and D are best), you don't get embedded subs in MKVs and you can't play a straight ISO. This applies to pretty much everything over DLNA though.
Personally, I'd been waiting years for a telly to do all this and I embrace it with open arms. iPlayer built in was just a bonus. The problem is that people need to consider the whole picture - it's not just buying a telly now. Have you got a NAS? Is there a wired network nearby? If you're on Sky or Virigin it's easier to use their streaming services (I'm Freeview only), etc, etc...
Cyanogen, the most popular Android ROM, ships the stock dialer. Some excuse about how notifications from the stock dialler can't be supressed. Which is fair - I noticed some oddness with call notifications on my Desire before I rooted it - but I feel the advantages outweigh the cons. And as you say, most things ship with a smart dialler.
The old Micra handled considerably better than it let on, so this is somewhat of a disappointment. I think that the old car was probably better in many ways (my wife loves the styling and my opinion doesn't count there), but this new engine is admittedly truly impressive.
Many TVs (*cough* Samsungs) dump unprocessed sound out of the digital out port, which tends to end up being 80-90ms ahead of the TV. Samsung argues that any half-decent home theatre system is able to add a delay to the sound. Is this thing capable of that without being connected to an A/V system (and thus defeating the point of it)?
And for twice the price, you can buy a whole new 40" television that does most of that (except record one thing and watch another - yet to see a dual tuner TV). It's just not worth that price to most people. The component costs are quite low, so I imagine it's mostly profit to them.
Both Samsungs have iPlayer in their review and not in the chart.
Also, it would be nice to have prices in the chart. The LED Samsung is a lot nicer than the CCFL one, but it's also double the price.
Not being able to play MKVs from your NAS on the Samsung is a failure of your NAS' DLNA config, not the television. I play 1080p movies over the network on a C650 all the time, no recoding.
Most of these devices will only record HD content locally due to DRM issues. You can't be certified for Freeview HD or Freesat HD without implementing some fairly draconian DRM. Even if they allowed you to record to the network, you wouldn't be able to play the file back on anything else. I've tried taking the disk off my C-class Samsung TV and reading it, but the file is nonsense to any of the players I tried.
That said, my 2010 TV seems a bit better at DLNA playback than this 2011 BD player. Maybe a step back for Samsung there? I've yet to have any compatibility problems, but then I am streaming from a PC and the software I use (serviio) has Samsung as its primary target platform.
I don't believe the firmware's been completely reverse-engineered the way the A and B models have been. Yet. If you've got a 600-series, there is a hack to enable PVR functionality but that's about it thus far. That said, someone is working on it - it's only Linux, for heaven's sake!
I only bought the app-enabled one for iPlayer, but with a little one in the house the Youtube app has proven pretty useful as well.
For what it's worth, DNLA playback on my C650 has been great. It doesn't see embedded content in matroska containers (you need to rip out your subs to a .srt file), but it's been otherwise flawless over the network.
The two of them even share a panel factory, that's how similar some of the sets are.
Whilst the Samsung C650 series lacks Five Live from its internet services, it's *far* more compatible with a variety of file formats over a DLNA connection than the Sony is. That's what sold me on the Samsung. It was down to either that or the Sony for me.
It's at least nice to see time-shifting in a lower-priced model from someone. Unlike Samsung, who want you to go up to the 3D-capable 7-series for that kind of ability. I'm expecting someone will reverse engineer the firmware and bring PVR ability to the 6-series (fantastic buy, those, and the hardware is certainly capable of it), but it's disappointing that they feel it's a "high end" option.
Pity about the rest of the set. My C650 spends more time playing tv and films off our LAN than off the aerial.
The B-series is indeed crap, but the E-series is *just* over the £50 mark and is even nicer (IMO) than the Clip+. Sony needs to adjust the prices on the lower spec units down a bit. It seems silly that the 4GB one can be had for £55 when the 16GB one is under £90.
So the Samsung from back in July is still the best buy under £800 then? Not that I'm disappointed terribly, given that I bought a C650 myself, but I'd have thought we'd see better by now. I'd love to see someone break out 4OD as well as iPlayer.
A second drive bay is worth a whole lot more than Synology's utilities. Granted, an empty DS210j is about the same as the 500GB myDitto so that would make an interesting comparison. I want to performance statistics on this thing. If it's fast (and the Synology j models are a bit pokey), it could be of interest.
What a novelty! I thought everyone had moved on to getting their phones and contracts from 3rd parties (Carphone Warehouse and the rest). You get an unbranded, unlocked phone that's free of crapware and easier to sell down the line.
...for the life of me, I couldn't figure out *WHY* I would want to log into my home PC.
I can see it for those using VNC or SSH - they've got servers running that may need tending to. But for the normal home user, why on earth would you want to use your phone to log into your PC? To download a video and cremate your monthly data cap? Even then, there are plenty of cheaper (free) options to share a drive as a secure web site.
Can someone explain this to me? I'm obviously missing something big here.
Register
21 posts • joined Thursday 15th July 2010 07:50 GMT
Re: Modern Cars
I think, given that throughout the downturn corporate new car purchases have outnumbered consumer ones, most people have been taking the middle option of buying a car that's just a couple years old with low mileage. You miss the biggest depreciation hit and you get a car that still has some manufacturer's warranty on it.
We wanted a Nissan Note. New they're something like £13k for the way ours is equipped. A one year old one with 8000 miles was just over £9k. It may as well be new. You have to factor in that most people don't want to switch cars all the time. It may be economical, but it's also a pain in the arse. Plus you get used to things, and so on. We only swapped the 05 Micra because we had another kid and needed the space - we're normally the sort to drive a car until it's no longer economical. A modern car easily puts in 10 years service if you look after it well, so it'll be a helluva long time before I have to bother with this nonsense again.
If you love cars and can fix them yourself, it's an entirely different story. But that's not exactly a huge portion of the populace, is it? And I stress the "love cars" part, because while I'm perfectly capable of performing basic repairs, I seriously can't be arsed to on an economy miniMPV that's our daily driver. Back when I had an E24 635CSi that only saw sunny weekends, different story. :)
Certainly the QNAP does (I own one), and I'd be very surprised if the Synology didn't as well. The QNAP and Synology ones are the most polished, but also quite expensive for what you get.
That being said, the new 2GHz Marvells are fast enough to run quite a lot of things. I run Logitech's Squeezebox Server and Serviio for streaming music and video, respectively, with nary a hiccough. (Runs the printer, too. But I don't think that takes much oomph.) The only time I've seen the little ARM chip choke was on a live HD stream in a format that needed to be transcoded. But even the Atom-based ones can choke on transcoding live HD streams.
By the way, I'm quite technically competent. But what I don't have is tons of spare time and a lot of room. The QNAP makes perfect sense and sips a fraction of the juice a home-made solution would anyhow. It'll even do a quasi-transactional database for writes, somewhat like ZFS. But unlike ZFS there's quite a write speed penalty for it (it roughly halves write speed). But since I have a toddler who thinks power switches are fun, it's worth it to have the disks re-sync in 30s instead of a few hours.
Re: "Airfryer"
The Tefal Actifry is better for that sort of thing. It uses a tablespoon of oil, which gives a lot better results for food that needs to be fried while still keeping the fat content down.
The Actifry's downside is that it uses a paddle to move things around and fry all sides of them. It can remove the coating on some things like fried chicken.
Re: Just like a G-Whiz
Exactly what I came on to post. I'm sure they've made it a bit safer than a G-Whiz (Renault uses safety as a selling point, and they've managed to "break" the NCAP tests), but it's still unbelievably dangerous compared to even the cheapest Kia.
I was thinking that the specs were a bit stingy compared to the QNAP I have sitting here (2GHz ARM, 512MB of RAM). But then it's just over half the price of it so I can't complain too loudly. The problem is that 256MB of RAM precludes running a lot of things - I run a Serviio DLNA server on mine, but there's no way it would run in 256.
My Samsung has no problem playing anything I stream to it. I don't even use my PC for streaming, just a lowly ARM-powered NAS running Serviio. I'd highly recommend giving Serviio a try if your TV isn't playing everything you want it to. Usual caveats apply - You need a Samsung B-class or newer (C and D are best), you don't get embedded subs in MKVs and you can't play a straight ISO. This applies to pretty much everything over DLNA though.
Personally, I'd been waiting years for a telly to do all this and I embrace it with open arms. iPlayer built in was just a bonus. The problem is that people need to consider the whole picture - it's not just buying a telly now. Have you got a NAS? Is there a wired network nearby? If you're on Sky or Virigin it's easier to use their streaming services (I'm Freeview only), etc, etc...
Cyanogen, the most popular Android ROM, ships the stock dialer. Some excuse about how notifications from the stock dialler can't be supressed. Which is fair - I noticed some oddness with call notifications on my Desire before I rooted it - but I feel the advantages outweigh the cons. And as you say, most things ship with a smart dialler.
The Opposite
The old Micra handled considerably better than it let on, so this is somewhat of a disappointment. I think that the old car was probably better in many ways (my wife loves the styling and my opinion doesn't count there), but this new engine is admittedly truly impressive.
Par for the course?
How is 480x320 par for the course so long as you can buy the Orange San Francisco with a full 800x480 screen for under £100?
Can you add delay to it?
Many TVs (*cough* Samsungs) dump unprocessed sound out of the digital out port, which tends to end up being 80-90ms ahead of the TV. Samsung argues that any half-decent home theatre system is able to add a delay to the sound. Is this thing capable of that without being connected to an A/V system (and thus defeating the point of it)?
Getting squeezed out of the market
And for twice the price, you can buy a whole new 40" television that does most of that (except record one thing and watch another - yet to see a dual tuner TV). It's just not worth that price to most people. The component costs are quite low, so I imagine it's mostly profit to them.
Chart and article do not match
Both Samsungs have iPlayer in their review and not in the chart.
Also, it would be nice to have prices in the chart. The LED Samsung is a lot nicer than the CCFL one, but it's also double the price.
Not being able to play MKVs from your NAS on the Samsung is a failure of your NAS' DLNA config, not the television. I play 1080p movies over the network on a C650 all the time, no recoding.
Network recording
Most of these devices will only record HD content locally due to DRM issues. You can't be certified for Freeview HD or Freesat HD without implementing some fairly draconian DRM. Even if they allowed you to record to the network, you wouldn't be able to play the file back on anything else. I've tried taking the disk off my C-class Samsung TV and reading it, but the file is nonsense to any of the players I tried.
That said, my 2010 TV seems a bit better at DLNA playback than this 2011 BD player. Maybe a step back for Samsung there? I've yet to have any compatibility problems, but then I am streaming from a PC and the software I use (serviio) has Samsung as its primary target platform.
Not yet....
I don't believe the firmware's been completely reverse-engineered the way the A and B models have been. Yet. If you've got a 600-series, there is a hack to enable PVR functionality but that's about it thus far. That said, someone is working on it - it's only Linux, for heaven's sake!
I only bought the app-enabled one for iPlayer, but with a little one in the house the Youtube app has proven pretty useful as well.
For what it's worth, DNLA playback on my C650 has been great. It doesn't see embedded content in matroska containers (you need to rip out your subs to a .srt file), but it's been otherwise flawless over the network.
Sony/Samsung conundrum
The two of them even share a panel factory, that's how similar some of the sets are.
Whilst the Samsung C650 series lacks Five Live from its internet services, it's *far* more compatible with a variety of file formats over a DLNA connection than the Sony is. That's what sold me on the Samsung. It was down to either that or the Sony for me.
At least some feature-sets are moving down market
It's at least nice to see time-shifting in a lower-priced model from someone. Unlike Samsung, who want you to go up to the 3D-capable 7-series for that kind of ability. I'm expecting someone will reverse engineer the firmware and bring PVR ability to the 6-series (fantastic buy, those, and the hardware is certainly capable of it), but it's disappointing that they feel it's a "high end" option.
Pity about the rest of the set. My C650 spends more time playing tv and films off our LAN than off the aerial.
Wrong Walkman
The B-series is indeed crap, but the E-series is *just* over the £50 mark and is even nicer (IMO) than the Clip+. Sony needs to adjust the prices on the lower spec units down a bit. It seems silly that the 4GB one can be had for £55 when the 16GB one is under £90.
Not much has changed
So the Samsung from back in July is still the best buy under £800 then? Not that I'm disappointed terribly, given that I bought a C650 myself, but I'd have thought we'd see better by now. I'd love to see someone break out 4OD as well as iPlayer.
Not a fair comparison
A second drive bay is worth a whole lot more than Synology's utilities. Granted, an empty DS210j is about the same as the 500GB myDitto so that would make an interesting comparison. I want to performance statistics on this thing. If it's fast (and the Synology j models are a bit pokey), it could be of interest.
Phones from Carriers?
What a novelty! I thought everyone had moved on to getting their phones and contracts from 3rd parties (Carphone Warehouse and the rest). You get an unbranded, unlocked phone that's free of crapware and easier to sell down the line.
I looked at these sorts of RDP apps and...
...for the life of me, I couldn't figure out *WHY* I would want to log into my home PC.
I can see it for those using VNC or SSH - they've got servers running that may need tending to. But for the normal home user, why on earth would you want to use your phone to log into your PC? To download a video and cremate your monthly data cap? Even then, there are plenty of cheaper (free) options to share a drive as a secure web site.
Can someone explain this to me? I'm obviously missing something big here.