RetroVaders 1.34 - coming soon

After receiving a bug report that RetroVaders crashes on Windows 7 (and finding that it also seems to do the same on XP Service Pack 3) I've delved back into the code and fixed a couple of other minor issues.

The new version will be available once Virgin Media sort out write access into my damn FTP site.

A week without Broadband

Broadband Internet access is something that I tend to take for granted these days, so when it is taken away it comes as a bit of a shock to the system.

What triggered this tale of woe was when I contacted Virgin Media to try and get the date of my direct debit changed. This is the second attempt at this as the first one resulted in them changing the billing period on my bills, but the direct debit date remaining the same.

This has (hopefully) been changed now, but while I was on the phone I was offered a free upgrade to the 20 meg service (well, free for 12 months). I'm actually quite happy on the 10 meg service, but what the Hell, it's free so I'll have it!

Time passed and my broadband speed didn't increase. I phoned again and got them to check, yes, I'm on the 20 meg service, but I was still only getting 10 meg speed. "I'll give it 24 hours, reset the modem and see if the speed increases," I thought.

That very afternoon something happened to my modem. All connectivity went and the only lights showing on the box were the power, ethernet and a rapidly flashing "sync" light.

Following the instructions on the modem I powered it down, waited 30 seconds and brought it back online. . . . Still no sync.

Try again, three minutes. . . . Nope.

As there was the chance that Virgin might have been experiencing problems I left it overnight and tried again. . . . and still it didn't work. At this point I called the technical support line, who arranged for a technician to come out on Friday - after, of course, they talked me through turning off the modem, waiting a couple of minutes and turning it back on. Three days with no Broadband access! Dear God NO!!!

The technician arrived at the appointed time, swapped the modem and left. Total time taken: 3 minutes. It took a couple of attempts to get the sign-up working, but after that - full speed internet! YAY!

However there was a "hidden problem" but I'll post about that later.

Mono gets useful

Regular readers will know that I am not a fan of restrictive formats, and especially DRM. The reasons against them are too numerous to go into right now, but the main one is that they tend to prevent Linux (and often Mac) users from accessing content.

A case in point is the ITV catch up / watch live TV service. Available to Linux users? Nope, because it uses Microsoft's Silverlight. Yes, there are third party "solutions" to this, but lets face it, nothing beats being able to just go to the site and view the videos as originally intended.

Although Moonlight - the Open Source re-implementation of Silverlight - has been around for quite a while now (generating controversy wherever it goes) it hasn't supported enough of the Silverlight 2 standard to allow the multimedia content to work on the ITV website.

Until now.

Yes, if you go to the Moonlight site and download the latest beta plugin then that will allow you to play the video (you may need to right-click on the video and allow it to install the Microsoft codecs first).

It is still a bit of a CPU hog - even when compared to the likes of Flashplayer on Linux - but it does actually work! How much of a CPU hog? Well, even on a 2.8ghz P4 it will still take up most of your CPU time when trying to play windowed video. Full screen? Forget it.

Still, as a first step it is good to have it working, and at least now I can watch Coronation Street without requiring Linux.

Erm.

Maybe I'd better just uninstall it after all!