So Comet are no more. I'm sure, behind the public condolences, high fives and bottles of champagne were consumed in the head office of another struggling electrical retailer. With one year in profit out of the last 4, including a loss of over £250 million less than 18 months ago they have much to be cheery about. Let's hope they discover that hubris is a fickle bitch.
I also note that the big money transfer of a senior executive from said retailer to the world's largest purveyor of electronic validation didn't quite go according to plan. Clearly not enough people wanted to avail of extended warranties, anti-virus software, MS Office, laptop bags or suspiciously over priced "services" to justify their continued employment.
In a couple of weeks time these shops will also be filled with peculiarly priced products. You know - the basic toaster selling for £40, the hopelessly outclassed 32" TV at £599, none of which appear on the manufacturers web site. I'll be keeping an eye.
I've spent the last couple of weeks fighting with a DLNA client on a Blu-ray player. This is one of those things which is better in theory than it is in practice. The whole folder / sub folder / file format is so wilfully clunky that it is hard to see the benefit it offers over just sticking a frigging disc in. So how do I play this album by this artist and then that one by another one conveniently stored in a different folder? Not easily. And if it happens to be in a format that your player doesn't support, well that client they've given you isn't going to work. You'll need to buy one which transcodes on the fly, which means all that content you have created in a format this manufacturer as deemed incompatible on your stand alone DLNA compliant media hard drive is as playable as a wax cylinder. So it's more awkward than playing a CD.It doesn't sound as good as CD and if you want to navigate around you either need to have the thing plugged into a TV screen or be skilled in the use of divining rods. Hey that's me sold. My CDs are for the bin....
Recently I posted a question on a Surround Sound forum asking a guest "star" what the difference was between someone selling a second hand disc for a grossly inflated sum, where the artist receives nothing, beyond the initial royalty when the disc was sold, and downloading said content from a hooky website for free? Isn't the net result, the artist getting nothing beyond the initial royalty when the disc was sold, exactly the same? I don't know what their response was. The friggers deleted it. Still I wonder if they care? They could press more, charge a wee premium and watch the sad hi res (like me) lap it up. But no. You want buy it? Then buy it "new" from ebay such as Roxy Music's "Avalon" on SACD going £750. Bargain. Can I have two please?
