Not so easy
For some reason best know to itself my Sky+ HD box decided to record only the second half of Stargate Universe this week. 
No problem I thought, I’ll watch it on the much flaunted updated Sky Player that integrates with Windows 7 which was launched on the 19th November. Installation and registration onto my ASRock Nettop went fine and all initially appeared OK…
Sky's Sales Pitch
I log into the system and only see last weeks episode of Stargate Universe which is a real shame as nobody seems to have added this weeks episode yet (other series I have check before have been OK) . Now I’ll have to wait until they update it before I can watch the whole episode. Poot!
Whilst installing Sky Player it I did notice a few other oddities…
IMDb just turned 19. Yes, Techcrunch’s article reveals that the IMDb is actually older than the web browser. There’s a long ass explanation to that, which we’ll not be discussing here. But certainly, in these 19 years of web existence, IMDb is one of the most visited websites and also synonymous to the Wikipedia for movie lovers like me. We do have other ‘superior’ movie rating systems such as Metacritic or Rottentomatoes, but IMDb totally belongs to the viewer’s rating and is not limited to critics. And hence, IMDb movie ratings are often considered to be closer to the taste of the audience.
The obvious utility of IMDb is that it is the largest compilation of movies and is not limited to just Hollywood or for that matter Bollywood. Every movie lover I know goes to IMDb first to check out if a movie is worth watching or not, or even to just have a look at initial reactions of audiences on a movie. So, for world cinema lovers, this is the one stop to gather information on movies. But other than the obvious use of viewing a movie’s ratings, what are the other ways that you use IMDb for? I have listed a couple of them below.
Initially, when I heard about the idea of a browser on a USB portable pen-drive, I started questioning about its applicability. I mean, why would someone not install an actual browser on the machine itself, and rather have it on a USB pen drive. The answer is simple: Portability. Not only of your favorite browser experience, but also of all that comes with it – bookmarks, addins etc etc. The applicability does not actually matter much if you access internet only at home, through your own machine [ in case of which, its better to just install it]. Or if work does not allow access to USB ports and installing of any new browsers, you are indeed forced to use whatever is available. But, if you do have access to USB ports at work, and you do not want to install your browser [ or are not allowed so by corpo firewall] , and also share your history data, bookmarks etc on your work machine – Portable browsers are the way to go.
Good news is – all your favorite flavours are available in their portable avatars. And here’s the list.
1. Firefox 3.0 on USB:
Portable Apps bring the Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition. So, now you can take your bookmarks, passwords, history, extension with you. Visit the PortableApps website - Mozilla page to download the browser. It is just 9 MB in size, and after installation it expands to 27 -77 MB. I really don’t know what that * sign, beside the 77MB figure, means on the Download button.
Works fine on Win XP SP2 onwards, Win Vista SP1 and Win 7.
This one is different you say. Filmfresh lets users purchase Legitimate DivX rips of latest Hollywood releases ranging from the Watchmen to the just released on DVD -17 again. The catch here is that it is not DRM-free, but can be played on all DivX supporting players and Sony PS3 etc. Also there is no expiry date on the downloaded movies. So it is not a rent model, but more like owning a lower Quality rip also without the DVD extras. The cost per movie download is 10$ -13$ which is on the higher side, since DVDs cost just a few bucks more.
Considering all of this, do we see a future for this particular business model? Take this.
