This is a long overdue review since the Sky Player was released on the XBOX 360 for UK users on the 28th of October. Well, I have been keeping busy. But nevertheless, I am here writing this review. Sky player’s introduction into the Xbox could be a major game-changer in terms of sheer innovation, control, and distribution channels that this medium opens up, and the game console can finally state as it has arrived. Frankly because, Sky is certainly the lion’s shareholder when it comes to Cable and Satellite TV distribution. All the major sporting events – Sky Sports; Movie channels – Sky; TV Entertainment – Sky 1 shows – House, Fringe, Modern Family and Stargate Universe amongst others. So there is no denying that Microsoft did choose the right partner to collaborate with. But does the Sky Player meet all the expectations or does it disappoint? The answer is a mixture of both.

After the Jump, Full Review of the Sky Player on the XBOX 360 including screenshots.

Now, to begin with, the Sky Player on the XBOX took sometime to get configured. I tried to get it on the XBOX Dashboard, and I have still been unsuccessful. If anybody knows how to get it there, please shout it out in the comments.

What you need to get it started is given here: http://skyplayer.sky.com/watch/xbox360/

I did experience a lot of problems to get it started initially. The morning of 28th Oct, even after proper installation, Sky Player kept on showing Access Denied: Failure to connect. Talk about successful rolling out. The Sky website page for XBOX 360 was down. And Sky even released an apology notice.

We’ll not go into the installation part, and get straight into the Good, the Bad and the Ugly. The interface and the UI used is as simple as it can be. Just use the game controllers to scroll and browse around the contents.

To go to the Sky Player, I currently go to Quicklaunch–>Latest Downloads–>and then select Sky Player. This means, that unless I am not downloading much stuff in the coming days, I am safe to use this method. And so I need help here to get the Sky Player on the dashboard. Now, once it is installed, and you have configured your login settings using your XBOX Live card, and your Sky ID, what you get is this.

As mentioned, the UI is simple. The channels can be browsed according to genres, and also the movies – Sky Movies, Movies on Demand etc.

The TV Guide reminds of the new EPG – which is still to be rolled on the Sky Box that we got.

The Live TV section is the one which disappoints the most. There’s no BBC or BBC iPlayer, no Freeview channels, and not even Sky1. All we have in the Entertainment section is – GOLD. And some programmes are not viewable in Live TV Broadcast. A message is displayed when it is so:

The Live broadcast as suggested by Live TV isn’t actually live as on selection of a channel, the following clearly indicates Buffering:

Finally, when the Broadcast does start, the output is quite amazingly good. At the current average bandwidth, the picture quality at a selected High Quality is normal Standard Definition broadcast as shown below.

Although the OnDemand service shows a lot of channels, the content isn’t as flashy.

And by not flashy, I mean this: The On Demand service on Sky 1 contains only few programs- There is no House, Fringe or Stargate. What you get is UK Border Force.

And even though, I am a subscriber of Sky1 as well as Sky1 HD, I need to pay a rental fee to watch these on demand programs. How much you ask?

Yes, you saw that right. Almost a pound to see these programmes, when I can just simply Sky+ them, or may be not even care about Sky+ them, coz these programmes are just not good enough for me to record.

On a positive note, one of the most fun parts of the whole experience is : Party Room view.

Feels like you are viewing in a huge hall with a wall of Telly. What’s even more exciting is that you can rotate the view using the gamepad controller, and the back-view of the party room has a wall LCD TV too.

And yes, I was just watching Drake and Josh on Nick – for testing purposes!

Coming to the Movies section:

Can be browsed on the basis of Genre, Alphabetic, Latest Releases, Live Movie Channels etc.

So what’s the verdict?

Skyplayer on the XBOX 360 is a remarkable feature and is indeed a giant leap in the usability of the console. The simple UI makes it easily accessible to anyone and everyone and with a huge line-up of movie on demand, and movie channels and sports channels – this is a perfect choice – provided you have the relevant subscription. But to me, the content needs to deliver more to make the arrival more dashing.

The Good:

I’ll say it again, Love the UI.

The fun Party Room.

Movies on demand, and Good n Fast Live Streaming at Standard Definition.

And the best of all: To use Skyplayer on the XBOX, you need just £15 per month for the XBOX Live subscription and no dish at all. Each Sky Player account can have four PCs attached, as well as one Xbox, and those consoles and PCs needn’t be in the same household as the satellite dish.

In other words, Sky is offering here is a second subscription for use anywhere you like, or a second set-top box for those wanting movies and sports in a different location other than your main viewing area.

The Bad:

It is still £15 for the subscription which doesn’t even have all Live streaming channels of Freeview.

Again, no BBC, iTV or any Freeview channel. All we get in the name of Entertainment is GOLD.

MTV cannot be played all the time as some programs are not available for viewing on the Sky Player.

The Ugly:

On demand Service for Sky has very less and unlikely to be rented content.

More so, the rental fees to watch on demand episodes is just ridiculously expensive. Who’d pay a pound to watch UK Border Force?

Why there is no iPlayer in the On Demand service? The On Demand Service needs to carry all the On-demand providers contents on it – from BBC, iTV, Channel 4 and Five.

So, as I said before, that with the inclusion of much more content, and more features with a subsidised pricing, the Skyplayer on the XBOX  is certainly a catch. But as of now, it doesn’t dazzle me.

P.S. For the entire pricing plans go here: [Sky Player Pricing Details - Guardian]

1. Homepage:

The Homepage has a lot to offer by itself. The headings on the homepage are:

Tops at the Box Office: List of Box Office top grossers

Opening this Week: The releases of the week

Coming Soon: The upcoming releases

New on DVD and Blu Ray

Other than these, the trivia section on the Homepage is a lovely addition. Movie/TV quote of the day, Born today and Did you know.

2: IMDb Top 250:

We all movie lovers consider this as the Holy Scroll of movie favourites. The list of the Top 250 movies of all time. I do remember when Dark Knight’s soaring popularity made it an instant hit and how fanboyism votes made it quickly rise to the no.1 spot and dethrone its predecessor GodFather. But it wasn’t for long there. As of now [ Oct 19, 2009 ], the Shawshank Redemption is at the no.1 spot with a total of 449,943 votes and a rating of 9.1, whereas the Dark Knight is at no.9 with 8.8 .

But did you know how the rating is calculated? Here’s the formula:

weighted rating (WR) = (v ÷ (v+m)) × R + (m ÷ (v+m)) × C

where:

• R = average for the movie (mean) = (Rating)
• v = number of votes for the movie = (votes)
• m = minimum votes required to be listed in the Top 250 (currently 1500)
• C = the mean vote across the whole report (currently 6.8)

for the Top 250, only votes from regular voters are considered.

BTW, there’s also a Bottom 100 list.

3. Movie browsing by categories:

By Genre: Action, Sci Fi, Horror, Fantasy, Drama, Comedy etc.

By Year/Decade:

4. Archives:

Award winners down the years.

All Time Box Office winners.

5. Movie details and People profiles:

Not only the movie rankings, but all related information. As in, who is the director of a particular movie. What other movies has he/she done. etc etc.

IMDb also has recorded information of Film personality profiles and a chronicling of their works.

Have I missed out on any other utility of IMDb that we use. Shout it out in the comments. Cheerio!

Here we’ll be focussing on how to select a range dynamically and perform further operations to it etc.
For e.g. If we have a Sheet “Input” of which one cell is required say column B, and we need to perform some kind of mathematical operation on them – viz. average, sum, etc. we need to do that by selecting the entire range of non-empty values of those two cells.

The problem here is that the number of entries in column A will vary from time to time, but we want a command button which automatically knows the amount of non-empty values and accordingly runs the mathematical operation. This is known as Dynamic Range Selection.

In other words, in case 1, if Cell B has values from B2 to B300, The Average formula should read: =AVERAGE(B2:B300), and in case the number of entries increases, the second input parameter in the average formula should change. The way to overcome this is a simple VBA code which records the number of entries in a particular cell and stores in a variable defined as a Long. This is:

mlngRange = CLng(Sheets("Input").Range("B2", Range("B2").End(xlDown)).Count)

Here, mlngRange is the Long variable in which the number of values in cell B from B2 onwards is recorded. Please remember if the declaration of mlngRange is done as a Long, include CLng as VBA by default, processes output as a String.

If the start point of selection is to be changed from B2 to say B4, this needs to be edited in the above code.

Limitation: The limitation of this code is that it recognises the first empty value in a cell, and considers it as the end-point. In case of column B having a few empty values in between, the remaining cell values will not be counted in mlngRange.

Hence, the next code is necessary. This code is unlike the previous one, which counts in a downward direction from the top columns to the bottom ones. Instead, this code counts in an upward direction, from the last non-empty cell onwards. The code is:
mlngRange = CLng(Worksheets("Input").Cells(Rows.Count, 2).End(xlUp).Row) - 1

Here, the ‘2′ denotes the Column. As in A=1, B=2, etc. The (-1) in the end denotes that the first value in Column B should not be considered as in this case, Cell B1 is a label. If the count is to be considered from B2, this should be replaced by (-2)  and so on.

So what after storing the value of the range in a range variable?

Performing mathematical operations:

The output formula can be:

ActiveCell.Formula = "=AVERAGE(B2:B" & mlngRange + 1 & ")"

Please let me know if you face any issues with this. Cheerio!

Let’s deal the sections separately. First up – personal blogging.

Personal blogging is about finding individuality and one’s own personal interests and chronicling them. It can be a mere note about a day’s random event or a personal comment on a political event. A recruiter is interested in the specific skillset that a candidate brings to the table. But in addition to that, recruiters are also interested to see the all-round personality of a candidate. Blogging as a hobby infers a person’s ease at expressing oneself, command over language and written communication skills. If he/she is a podcaster or a vlogger, the communication skill goes beyond just the writing board. A keen interest over a particular topic also reflects personality and knowledge. These are indeed plus points which go in favour of the candidate.

Next up - Professional Blogging.

Pro-Bloggers, as we like to call ‘em, are often well connected in their niche networks via social network groups and hence, know more of their business closely. For e.g. tech bloggers participate in various events, expos and discussions online and offline to interact with their peers and seniors. Also, they market and advertise their own small venture and have a crystal clear view of their business model.

The question is: Where and why would a Pro-Blogger go for a job?

Most pro-bloggers, because of the fact that they earn their living via blogging, are offered jobs in publications or their online versions because of their body of work and also because of their contacts, and the audience that the blogging medium targets which traditional media cannot.

I hope this post has been helpful and has inspired you to churn out some good posts, and in case you still do not have a blog, seriously, go start one. Let us know when you do.

Cheerio!

Image courtesy: JustinBess

Yes, you read that right. You can download Megavideo videos for free online without any software installations which load bunch of spywares and adwares into your hard drive.

For starters, Megavideo is a video hosting site, which unlike other video streaming websites like YouTube, DailyMotion and the like, has no upward time limit for videos. The range of content on Megavideo has been similar to its parent data sharing website  Megaupload – [ if you know what I mean]. The catch here is that Megavideo allows non-premium users to view only 72 minutes of content at once. After this time is exhausted, the video streaming is halted. There are other work-arounds as mentioned in my post here [Firefox Hack: How to watch Unrestricted Full videos on Megavideo]. But if you are one of those, who just want it downloaded on your PC,Mac whatever, just follow the instructions below.

Step 1: Go to the page of the Megavideo video that you wish to download. Copy the URL of the video. This can be found in the addressbar, or if you are watching the video from a blog/website which has the embedded video, double click on the video will take you to the original video source website.

Step 2: Copy the URL of the page, and now go to ClipNabber.com

Step3: Paste the URL in the text-space where it says: Paste the URL Below. Now click the button : Nab Video!
This opens up another larger text space which asks to paste the HTML source code of the video page.

Step4: Go back to the video page, and copy its source code. In Firefox, Chrome, Opera this can be done by pressing Ctrl+U. Or just right-clicking on the page, and going to the relevant option ( View Page source, etc.). In IE, it can be done by going to View–> Source, or by right clicking on the video page and choosing View Source.

Step5: Copy the entire Source by selecting all and pressing copy. Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+A followed by Ctrl+C

Step6: Go back to the Clipnabber page and paste the entire source code in the space given. Once this is done, press Nab Video again.

Step7: A video download link similar to the one shown below will appear. Right Click and Save the video file.

Step 8: The video is in FLV format. Once the download is finished, you can play it any standard FLV player viz. SMPlayer, GOM or VLC media player.

Lemme know if it doesn’t work or Clipnabber no longer supports Megavideo. Cheers!

Stan Schroeder from Mashable raised an interesting question of the frequency of visitors now to the main homepage of Google, i.e. Google.com ( etc. depending upon your geographical location). It is true that with browsers which have in-built search functionality in the address bars viz. Chrome and Opera, the middle layer of the Google homepage has been largely eliminated. Add to that, other browsers like Firefox, IE and Safari include a search bar. It’s pretty safe to state that the entire spectrum has been covered. So, is anyone really using Google homepage and why?

One of the major reasons for people still using the Google homepage is that fossilised browser that it still breathing. Yes, IE6. There are no search bars, and the only option to search is Google. Of course, users here would be able to install Google Toolbars and stuff. According to W3counter statistics, as of Sep 2009, IE6 still maintains the fourth position in browser usage share with 13.28%, behind IE7, Firefox and IE8. It is difficult to segment the share of people out of this percentage who use search solely through Google’s homepage. There were no Google toolbar statistics to help us out.

Secondly, mobile devices and gaming devices have their own apps to surf and search through the Google search engine. So no interference here from the homepage.

Having said that, we must not forget the technological knowledge of the common user which cannot be gauged properly by us who use Google 24X7 in our address bars and are very conversant even with the exact syntaxes of Google hacks. If I was to tell my mom to search for anything over the phone, I’d just say Google it. And the first thing she’d do is to go to Google.com. The percentage of users who go to Google.com by default is also not only influenced by the ease that Google’s homepage suggests, but also by habit. Of course, we by now are quite used to typing straight away in the addressbar. But who will install Chrome on my mom’s laptop?

And lastly, I don’t believe that people return to Google for the doodles. Those doodles are just buzz creating tributes to legends and historical figures, and in a way one of those brand marketing exercises which never fails. The blogosphere will never fail to mention them, and other bloggers who read them will surely give it a visit. [ Guilty as charged. See here, here, here, here and here].

So, did I give you enough reasons already? Shout it out in the comments.

But just because it is so cool to unbox your new gadgets, (blogs like Gizmodo and Engadget have done zillions of such posts), I decided to do the same when my box arrived last evening. So just enjoy the pics below.

The Box is so bigger than the actual Tablet.

*****More pics after the Jump*****

Lotsa Air Bags. Just in case it needed water landing.

There it is! My Trust Tablet TB-7300

Got a bit carried away. Damn Meerkats. So funny!

I know, lotsa booze. No one’s paying any attention now.

It is indeed widescreen.

Covered in Plastic…It’s fantastic!

Final level of unboxing.

Unboxing done.!!

Front-View -ish!

Sexy side-view!!

The digital pen..is mightier than the …whatever!!

Let’s rock in Apple style!!

*******More pics after the Jump!!*******

Matt Parkman from Heroes, I mean that guy who plays Matt Parkman…yeah, you know him!

We all love some Microsoft bashing, don’t we?

Look who’s back!! It’s Steve!

The line-up for the show!

The new iPod Touch range, with even more space.

Love those Graphics. The polygons override.; pardon the pun

One more thing; iPod Nano has a cam; Oh, but the iPod Touch doesn’t. Shame!

The Nano also got an FM radio. But why didn’t it before?

The colors and the hues!

Someone has to give the ad-agency some brownies!!

Yada Yada…Bla Bla!

Oh Norah! Sigh!