Editorials

First Call: Moving Scenes

Before handing over the reins temporarily, one of the last actions taken by editor Phil Lattimore was to gaze at my current mobile phone with a mixture of disdain and incredulity before suggesting I upgrade. I haven’t had it that long and it’s several eons more advanced than the previous one, the generous proportions of which made it particularly difficult to lose. But his look said as much as the stream of news stories I’ve read detailing the exciting blur of change in the industry.

This month’s issue chronicles that state of flux. Just when you’re getting used to colour-screen phones that sell themselves with pictures rather than words, along comes one that records bursts of video. More announcements too in the games world, with the arrival of downloadable games – some old, some new and several, in one form or another, blue. And the entry into the UK market of Daewoo and Chinese manufacturer DBTEL, injects some new blood into the market.

With the enormous costs of those just-over-the-horizon 3G licences to recoup, the industry is talking a good fight over its future income. A few briefings I’ve recently attended highlighted forecasts that spending on mobile services would steadily increase for some years. Hopefully, the increased competition will create choices allowing us all to enjoy the fruits of the new technology at a reasonable price. We don’t need Alvin Hall to tell us that mobile phones have financially embarrassed more people than unpaid library fines. Let us help you balance the books and add colour to your calls.

Gareth Mason
Acting Editor
What Cellphone November 2002

FIRST CALL:

LISTENING IN COLOUR

Walking down Kentish Town Road one recent lunchtime, I was accosted by two attractive blondes. Just another typical day? Strangely, no. For they were enthusiastically taking pictures of all who passed within the fixed range of their camera phones. And not any old camera phone, but the very one splashed on our front cover. They are the latest in the swelling ranks of new hybrids riding the crest of a promotional wave now breaking onto our high streets.

What’s more, Panasonic seems determined to shed its minor player image in the mobile industry by launching a product clearly not designed to merely fit into its rivals’ footsteps. Our review of the GD87 reveals it to be more than just a pretty fascia. Features aplenty, a diminutive frame and a screen displaying 65,000 colours are a good start.

And if we can count on one hand the number of MMS handsets today, tomorrow you’ll need a list as long as your arm. We do just that with a comprehensive roundup of all the models expected on the market by the New Year.

From taking pictures to giving presents, look no further than the Daze of Xmas. Here we lead you merrily by the handset through the ultimate mobile maze: trying to work out what mobile phone to buy for someone else.

This segues neatly into the MobileXtra – a free supplement featuring half a dozen of the most popular mobiles we’ve reviewed over the last year. And for those who can resist the lure of the new model, Unlock Stock explains your options when the SIM-card at the heart of your phone is closed to the advances of a new operator.

Gareth Mason
Acting Editor
What Cellphone December 2002

FIRST CALL:

GENERATION GAME

It’s a fertile time for the mobile phone industry. And trust me (I’m a journalist), we’re not just saying that to shift a few more copies. The splashes of colour screens spreading about the greyscales of our old mobile existence are now commonplace while the chiming and chirruping of polyphonic ringtones, though dangerously dependent on the humour and taste of their user, have become part of our city soundscape.

So, it’s no real surprise that in this, our annual awards issue, the contenders are largely drawn from the fresh fascias of recently launched handsets whose USPs may be standard features on new models by next spring. In fact, two of our review samples this month have both made a late dash for glory, though I won’t spoil the surprise by telling you which topped the podium. And it’s not just mobile phones gunning for What Cellphone’s ultimate seal of approval. The best network, online service, accessory and innovation of 2002 are all revealed from page 39.

If that wraps up last year, what of the new one? Java games and MMS picture messaging look set to figure heavily in mobile ad campaigns. Java games are covered in Mouthpiece and Game Academy, and as for MMS, the networks will look to make these all-seeing devices affordable for the masses they need to hook. So, it won’t just be smug technology hacks showing off in the pub with nowhere to send their pictures.

And we may finally get our first glimpse of 3G. Our report discusses how 3G will help us see, feel and hear in ways we’d never have imagined. Ok, so ‘feel’ may have to be covered by the vibrating alert for the moment, but wait till the next issue…

Gareth Mason
Acting Editor  
What Cellphone January 2003

FIRST CALL:

WE WILL PHONE THEM ON THE BEACHES

Winston Churchill, now officially Britain’s greatest son, wouldn’t have recognised the contents of a magazine like What Cellphone as he bellowed (rather too conspicuously): ‘I’m on the front line!’ Today’s ever-shrinking handsets take a back seat in Antique Mobile, a homage to these big, and dubious, fashion statements gaining a cult status.

Little else in the mobile industry bears much resemblance to its humble, over-sized origins. Certainly, little offered by 3G – the next generation of handsets and services – the details of which are finally emerging. If initial pricing suggests your average punter will be happy to stick with the current crop for a while longer – we’ll help find the best of these with our upgrade feature. Meanwhile, Lords of the Ring tackles a commonly heard complaint – your mobile may have 35 fancy ringtones, but can you hear any of them?

Otherwise, a product-packed issue features several new models with a distinctive appearance. A chameleon-like Motorola is reviewed alongside a console-impersonating Sagem and a Sharp whose sleek lines house a digital camera.

Finally, this issue brings my brief tenure at What Cellphone to a close, heralding the return of Phil Lattimore to the editor’s seat, upgraded and recharged by four months away. Personally, having worked in different areas of the consumer electronics industry, it’s been interesting to see the parallels between its rapidly converging parts. As with the computer world, the mobile phone industry has been successful in creating a niche for its wares in the lives of all but the most inveterate Luddite.

But it’s not the only parallel. Sadly, a near-guaranteed market sometimes compromises the way customers are treated – a dangerous habit when the industry now needs our billions to survive. The symptoms cover such ailments as poor service, inflexible contracts or customers footing the bill for networks not talking to each other. Another is the selective manual that neglects responsibility for how the product actually works. As Apple Mac fans love to point out, doing clever things needn’t be a chore. If you want our money, don’t make us work too hard for it.

Gareth Mason
Acting Editor
What Cellphone February 2003

VIVE LA REVOLUTION!

It’s that D-word again – so well-known they named a magazine after it. Can all this airplay be justified? We think so, seeing as it won’t be long before everything will be measured in ones and zeroes. The revolution is well under way in the UK, where you will soon be able to receive digital TV via cable, satellite or even your old aerial if you’re feeling nostalgic. And that’s not all…

Whether it’s TVs, mobiles phones, amplifiers, camcorders, decoders, cameras, VCRs, MiniDisc players, set-top boxes – just about anything containing the word ‘consumer’ or ‘electronics’ has been hit with the digital stick.

In this, our first issue of What Digital, we’ve got a clutch of hot new products to review. These include an MP3 device for downloading music from the Internet, the world’s smallest MiniDisc recorder and the world’s first CD recorder. We’ve even got Lara Croft – the world’s first digital woman – though I’m sure there’s life still in the analogue variety.

What’s more, we’ve drawn from our expert reviews on our leading consumer electronics titles. You’ve got the complete digital compendium. We hope it answers a few of your questions.

Gareth Mason
Editor
What Digital Spring 1999

Editorial:

GO WITH IT

Okay, so maybe boys like their toys. But it’s no longer a closed shop. They’re all at it now. Behinds the curtains of suburban homes, down dark alleys, sometimes – shamelessly – in broad daylight. They’re letting those digital devices seep into their lives. It starts with a few snaps on a harmless-looking, low-resolution digital camera. Before you know it, you’re shooting Digital8. Don’t kid yourself, you’re hooked. Men and women in all their extreme forms are up to their necks in it. When the current is that strong – all you can do is go with the flow.

TVs and satellite receivers are just the start. And where there’s a TV, there’s a VCR so you ought to know about JVC’s thoughts on the world’s first digital version. Perhaps you find the idea of recording 21 hours of programmes unimpressive? Well rent a video – sorry DVD – if it’s home cinema you want.

Too much of a life of indolence for you, perhaps? Well, get out in the sun (okay, fog) and live a little. You could always record it for posterity with a camcorder – which captures the action somewhat better than your Uncle Edgar’s Christmas slide show. Or perhaps, just take a few snapshots for those absent friends. Stick them on your PC and blast them across the Internet so they can splice you with their pet dog for a screensaver. Or better still, make a movie about it. And if music be your lifeblood, then read on. If they’re not playing your tune you can always call a friend. But what if you need a little bit more from your phone? Well, give it Internet access. Happy now?

In fact, there’s over 100 pages of technological wizardry to help make the daydreams come true for the well-heeled, the window-shopper and bargain-hunter alike. And if you’re still not interested, well you can… win an Internet TV. Like we said, go with it.

Gareth Mason
Editor
What Digital Winter 2000

UPFRONT:

THE PRICE IS RIGHT

The current debate over why many products are more expensive in the UK than on the Continent or US is sure to finger the electronics industry.

Good thing too, as you can usually estimate the cost of a stateside product coming here simply by changing the dollar sign to sterling. So, it was good to hear Samsung is launching a DVD player, exclusive to Comet, Woolworths and MVC, which will retail for under £280. Entry-level it may be – but early impressions suggest its performance will not fall far short (if at all) of its rivals. Images of cats and pigeons spring to mind.

Talking of unexpected surprises, DTS has finally arrived in these pages with Denon’s DTS AVD-1000 decoder, and more significantly – the sight (and sound) of some films encoded with the 5.1 channel alternative to Dolby Digital.

Also in this issue are reviews of Sony’s entry-level Digital8 camcorder, a group test of all the set-top boxes currently available and a feature on the merits of renting digital TV. What more could you want? That’s rhetorical, by the way.

Gareth Mason
Editor
What Video & TV May 1999

UPFRONT:

A FREE MASON

If I write one more editorial about digital TV deals, you can hang me up with a Scart lead and leave me till they switch off analogue broadcasting. But those news-mongers at Ondigital have forced our hands once more. The terrestrial digital broadcaster has picked up BskyB’s gauntlet by offering free STBs, with the proviso of signing up to an increased pay-TV package. With that gesture of resignation, we can look forward to Sky, Ondigital and the cable companies creating a package which convinces even conservative consumers that digital is a step worth taking. Fingers crossed.

AV playmate of the month must be Hitachi with two more innovative products: first the C32W35TN TV, which uses the Progressive Scan technology we urged the company to bring to the UK when first glimpsed two years ago; and second, the VT-FX880, the first VCR to play the programmes you want without the adverts you don’t.

Also on display are some of the hottest new players evolving from the DVD world, and the usual eclectic mix of products. They range from VideoLogic’s budget Dolby Digital package to a 52in home cinema experience you can wear on your head. And, as it’s my last issue, it really will be the last time I write an editorial about digital TV. So, the next person to occupy this AV throne will have to find a more ingenious way to avoid it. I shall leave you in good hands.
My physical appearance in last month’s Upfront may have shocked a few, most of all myself – the parallels with the Sophie Rhys-Jones affair are uncanny. And no, of course it wasn’t a mocked-up picture. Happy reading and may all your purchase be bargains.

Gareth Mason
Editor
What Video and TV August 1999  

Editorial:

E&M

Rumour had it relations between the paper industry and associated pressure groups were thawing. This is not the impression given by events in London over the past week when Greenpeace UK suggested at a press conference, which excluded the major protagonists, that Canada would become the ‘Brazil of the North’ if clearcutting policies continued.

The aggrieved parties, the Canadian Pulp and Paper Industry and MacMillan Bloedel, chief recipient of the malpractice allegations, were quick to issue statements, and sufficient concern was evident for the premier of British Colombia, Mike Harcourt, to make an appearance on their behalf.

This is the UK launch of a campaign that began in Germany and which resulted in paper users such as Gruner & Jahr and Otto Versand pledging not to buy the Canadian product. It coincides with the release in Germany of a Greenpeace publication ‘Paper – natural product or chemical cocktail?’ This less than conciliatory tone is at odds with the belief that the warring factions are currently enjoying a détente.

Suggestions – on the one hand, that the paper trade represents a ‘soft’ target, and on the other, that Greenpeace may have a point – should not be written off.
The argument is not as clear as the alleged destruction meted out on the Clayoquot Sound region but the implications, for both industry and landscape, are very serious. It is not dissimilar to the chlorine-free debate where progress is undermined by marketing campaigns that confirm customers prejudices.

Perhaps the industry could use a third party as intermediary where the expertise from both sides could forge a more definitive road to progress. Their collective marketing skills would be invaluable in persuading the public to follow it.

The paternal touch might have to come from stringent and better informed legislation. The Forest Practices code, a discussion paper from the British Columbian government, is a good starting point. This way, the common aim of conservation might not be submerged by a counter-productive urge to outwit the opposition.

Gareth Mason                 
Deputy Editor February 1994     

Walking With Camcorders

Gareth Mason raises a bushy eyebrow and wonders if a new millennium is a good place for a 20th century format…

With the emergence of digital, the VHS-C format doesn’t have the support it once had. In fact, that dwindling minority inhabiting this world are perhaps the AV equivalents of a Neanderthal man scratching his oversized forehead with bemusement at the more successful antics of the smaller, hairless wonders frolicking around him. But evolution does, for a time, allow such species to live alongside each other. In the AV world, this is usually due to older formats dropping their prices so that their higher value outweighs their antiquity.

At £400, the NV-VZ15 a close relative of the NV-RZ15 but adding a 2.5in colour LCD, is near the bottom of the price chain. But its existence still raises an overgrown eyebrow. For instance, the demo mode greets you with the repeated phrase: ‘Yes, it’s VHS!’ a statement which begs the response ‘Yes, but surely you’re extinct?!’. The same mode repeatedly drops that frighteningly modern ‘d’ word into its conversation whenever quality performance needs to be empathised with vague onscreen outbursts such as ‘digital process’ and ‘high quality by digital’. Is this species envy trying to tell us something? And can VHS-C still justify its continued life when the price-friendly ‘high-band’ formats of S-VHS-C and Hi8 offer a comparable, if significantly lower, performance than digital?

Design and layout

Pushing the scales at over a kilogram with battery, the bulk of the NV-VZ15 is not for the limp-wristed and contrasts sharply with the wonders of miniaturisation. That said, it’s still loyal to the traditional sleek lines of Panasonic though you might have to look at it through a telescope backwards for it to look truly cute.

It’s relatively devoid of features on each side; most are found front left where two buttons and a wheel control the menu functions. Moving about these is straightforward enough though it would be more intuitive if the wheel could make selections when pressed in thus avoiding the need to use three buttons to do one thing. The wheel also doubles for tracking and, in tandem with the ‘Set’ button, for Manual focus. Above these, selections can be made for one of the five Program AE modes, Fader functions or electronic image stabiliser – the last of which we’d recommend as a default.

The Program AE modes are a series of settings designed for shooting in circumstances where point and shoot recording may not get the best results. The nine Digital effects lend a more creative influence on the finished product while Fader can round off the beginning and ends of scenes in a variety of ways. But there’s some madness in the Fader method as holding the button on and off during this tortuous process requires a bit too much attention to do it well and easily.

An info window appears above these displays, rather unnecessarily, whether the camcorder is in VCR, Charge or Camera mode, the last of which is illustrated in an alarming red. Forward of this you’ll find a switch operating the 0lux function for shooting in darkness while the lens barrel opens onto an f1.8 lens with a decent 18x optical zoom – an upgrade on the 15x of last year’s model. Less serious is the 700x digital zoom. Or it would be, if all the manufacturers didn’t collude in pretending this is a useful function by plastering this meaningless statistic all over its products and literature. In reality, it contributes to good footage much as Gazza does to lucid speech.

On the lens is a kind of lens cap without a cause, which comes off easily as you test to see whether it’s a manual focussing ring. Clearly it isn’t, but, as with a well-designed bra, for the full picture, it’s often best left-on. Beneath this, you’ll find the infrared display and microphone and underneath the VZ15 itself is a tripod mounting. Talking of which, use of the tripod will not be impeded by the cassette flipping out sideways from behind the otherwise-bare wall facing the LCD monitor. Might take an eye out though.

The black and white viewfinder, while not extendible, can flip up 90 degrees. In front of it are VCR transport controls which double up for time-base correction (a standard feature for reducing jitter), and backlight compensation for scenes with too much light coming behind the subject of your shots. Pressing Record check quickly effectively slips the camcorder into VCR mode so you can test whether you did just get that once in a lifetime scene on tape or whether you just thought you pressed record. Talking of Record buttons, that can be found just below where a righty’s index finger would naturally reach just behind the Zoom switch (which also adjusts playback volume) and ahead of buttons for Date/time and Eject.

Behind the curved right-hand surface on which the VCR playback speaker is found, you’ll find the Control switch (Camera, VCR), a DC input and a flap in which composite video and mono audio is output. While the VZ15 wears most of its features on its sleeve, the menus reveal a few more, such as Motion sensor. This is designed for shooting where nothing may happen for hours such as with night-time wildlife whose sudden appearance or movement theoretically triggers the camcorder into life.

In a similar vein is Interval record in which the camcorder can be programmed to record for a certain amount of time, say one second, every say, 30 seconds. It’s easy to set up. Less exciting but more commonly used would be the Titler menu in which the language, size and colour of your message can be adjusted for each of the ten pre-set titles. On the VCR menus, there are just a couple of added extras but they are both good ones. Insert edit and audio dub are more commonly found on higher-end models. Applying to pictures and sound respectively, they allow you to replace a section of either of these, insert edit for a chunk of video without affecting the audio, while audio dub does it the other way around.

Performance

First impressions in a reasonably well-lit room were not that reasonable. Analogue artefacts blazed back at us with pictures flecked in grain that suggested a film of dust on the lens. There wasn’t one and the long play shots displayed a dot crawl which literally took the edge off things. Colours were decent enough though if glaring away from the norm in brighter light, and exaggeratedly dull elsewhere.

My yellow cushion faded, my kettle lost five years, and my face came across as more orange than usual. A low band format needs natural light to deliver pictures of decent quality for the merry amateur – the soberer semi-pro is clearly fishing further up the camcorder food chain. And here, even on a grey early November morning, they achieved that respectability.
The fuzziness of its roving auto focus was negated by cityscape shots enhanced by the slight boost of colour the camcorder gave to red brick and green grass. The zoom slid up smoothly through its indicated extremes though it wasn’t far before it starts magnifying all that grain disturbingly. Mono sound was predictably limited in range, tinny and boomy at opposite ends of the scale.

The various enhancements on offer proved a mixed bag. Manual white balance was a real boon, not only did it improve the colour balance of shots in the range which auto white balance covers but it did its job of dealing with the more extreme conditions which the manual clearly explains it’s designed for. Manual focus, though too awkward to select mid-shot, nonetheless sharpens the picture up nicely. Even if the limits of VHS-C make truly sharp pics impossible it’s a useful feature and offers a helpful alternative to the wayward auto version. Interval recording worked and you can’t ask for much more from it.

Less impressive was the backlight compensation which needs to be held down distractingly to operate and made no discernible difference in my Heath Robinson room of many light sources. But the duff feature award went to the motion sensor which generally failed the less than Herculean task of recording when something moved in front of it. Blocking the lens or swinging it round in a circle tended to work, dancing a jig or filming an earthworm eat his supper is less likely to. But ending on a bright note is the 0 lux mode, which but for the twin tracers of its infrared light, carved out a clear black and white picture from the darkness of my windowless bathroom. It’s in the same league as Sony’s Nightshot, if a couple of places down the table.

All in all, the NV-VZ15 has some interesting features for a beginner-friendly model, even if using them isn’t always as simple as it could be, and they lack consistency in their effectiveness. Performance was fine for its type but the first-time user is sacrificing an awful lot of quality to make a not substantial saving on higher band models which will comfortably outgun it for sound and pictures.

What Camcorder magazine 2002

Technology News

Boeing Scoops Raygun Contract

New weapon won’t fall off the back of a lorry
Boeing is adding further to its extensive portfolio with the contract to build a 20-tonne truck housing a laser gun. It’s designed to be parked close to vulnerable facilities such as airports, where it would shoot down enemy projectiles such as rockets, mortars, or indoctrinated clay pigeons. The solid-state electrically-powered laser is a new departure from the ‘household’ version that uses highly-poisonous chemical fuel (rather than, say, diesel).

The High Laser Technology Demonstrator contract was won by Boeing last year but the project has been given a $36 million cash injection with the planes and arms manufacturer now being asked to act as systems engineer for the weapon.

Radioactive pigeons
Boeing has already developed chemical rayguns that can be mounted on aeroplanes to take out targets hundreds of kilometres away, but the literal fall-out from such a weapon going wrong makes an electrically powered version far preferable.

Rapid-fire automatic cannon systems have been used in the past for similar defence work but these are inevitably compromised in built-up areas by the fall out of fist-sized chunks of lead that hurtle from the sky towards the soft heads of those not actively practicing terrorism.

Shooting from the truck
Boeing raygun czar Scott Fancher said: ‘This contract award is an important win for Boeing because it supports a cornerstone of the Army’s high-energy laser program, HEL TD will... counter the difficult threats posed by rockets, artillery shells and mortar projectiles.’
It may also be used in those shooting events at which the US failed to win gold, though admittedly, there’s no evidence supporting this assertion whatsoever.

Facebook Hits 100 Million

Still trails MySpace by country mile
The Facebook phenomenon officially reached the 100 million milestone today – that’s almost the equivalent of double the population of England sitting at home conducting their social lives without whispering a word out loud.

It’s reached that figure in four and a half years – 50 per cent longer than MySpace took. And for all the coverage that Facebook garners, most indications suggest that MySpace is, in the words of one website: ‘Still kicking Facebook's ass in traffic’.

Traffic analysts Hitwise supports evidence of this drubbing. It says that MySpace recieved 72 per cent compared with Facebook’s 16 per cent during 2007 in the US. Bebo trailed in a very distant third with 1.09 per cent. With those figures, MySpace could afford to drop 8 per cent on the previous year and not worry too much about the 50 per cent rise of its main rival.

Facebook trails no-one in press coverage though, possibly influenced by the site’s reputation for attracting the yuppies of the social networking world. But even with an affluent demographic, the site still has to find a way of squeezing the cash from its well-heeled customers. In his self-congratulatory Facebook blog, founder Mark Zuckerberg says: ‘We spend all our time here trying to build the best possible product that enables you to share and stay connected, so the fact that we’re growing so quickly all over the world is very rewarding.’

You can’t put a price on the rewards of friendship and maybe that compensates for the dollars, euros and pounds Zuckerberg is thus far failing to extract from the users.

Applications, get behind me!
How many of those 100 million friends will notice this momentous occasion is hard to say. Only a fifth of the members have bothered to update to the new look site that will soon be imposed on the rest of them. Furthermore, the most anticipated new application is one that hides all of its predecessors.

You can host a party, but once the invites have been sent out you can’t control when the guests turn up and what they are going to do in the swimming pool. You can’t even make them like you. Still, we won't begrudge the site a congratulatory round of cyber cocktails on us. Bottoms up!

 
Greatest Cyber Heist In History

Or tabloid muck raking: you choose
Scottish tabloid, The Sunday Herald, has announced ‘the greatest cyber-heist in world history’ – claiming an Indian hacker stole a database with the details of eight million customers from a leading international hotel chain using a Trojan Horse program.

The report calculates that up to £2.8 billion could be scooped by wrong-doers on the basis that the average internet fraud costs the victim £356. Best Western International begs to differ. The hotel group reckons ten customers were affected from just the one branch in Berlin, in whose cyberspace the hack took place. It also says that the FBI has been called in along with other international crime-fighting agencies.

Oh, those Russians!
Technology editor for the Herald, Iain Bruce, says that the hacker accessed the personal information of all the customers who visited the 1,312 European-based hotels since 2007. His story went onto claim that the database was sold onto an underground network run by the Russian mafia.

Bruce has produced screen shots that appear to reveal the hotel’s reservation system along with the guests’ personal details accessed using a tool that was able to search records back to 2007. While Bruce is sticking to his story, he has offered no proof that millions of customers details have been compromised.

Substantiate that
Meanwhile, Best Western interprets his article as being ‘grossly unsubstantiated’ and ‘largely erroneous.’ The chain claims it removes its guest details within a week of their departure though this is no guarantee that the information cannot be accessed with the right technology in the wrong hands.

TechRadar will keep you up to date to establish if this really is ‘the greatest cyber-heist in world history.’ The relative infancy of the internet over the last five million years (see Evolution) suggests the tabloid is erring on the side of hyperbole.

With 4,200 branches worldwide, Best Western claims to be the largest hotel group in the world. As well as credit cards, it accepts payment in used notes.

Games Degrees Inadequate

Industry chiefs slate UK training
Training for the games industry in the UK is not up to scratch. So say several industry bigwigs who have criticised the graduate programs available. This has turned up in a(nother) report by The Daily Mail – a media organ known for the gimlet eye it keeps on the values and machinations of the gaming world.

‘Shocked and surprised’ was the verdict of David Braben, founder of Lost Winds studio Frontier Development, when he described the skills of many of the graduates, while Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios Europe vice president Jamie MacDonald said, ‘I can’t remember the last time I employed someone from them.’

Four degrees of less obvious education
Four degree courses are officially accredited by Skillset, which represents the creative media industry. Two of these are available from the University of Abertay Dundee and one each at the University of the West of Scotland, and the Glamorgan Centre for Art & Design Technology. According to the Mail, over 80 other such degree courses exist in the UK. That gaming degrees and the name ‘Mickey Mouse’ have been linked is no great surprise particularly when the connection is made by The Daily Mail, self-appointed protector of Middle England, and crusader against change in general, and immoral video games in particular.

More than 200 British firms are joining forces to promote ‘Games Up?’ – a campaign that aims to highlight the danger to the UK's share of this lucrative £18 billion industry. TechRadar will be keeping a close eye on these developments as will, no doubt, our friends and rivals at The Daily Mail.

Add More Cowbell To Your Music

Website lets you add that crucial ingredient to your MP3s
Is your music collection lacking that Ingredient X? Are thousands of MP3s sitting listlessly on your computer and PMPs, listless and forlorn? There may be a solution. Cowbells. And Christopher Walken. In the loosest sense, science has proven that these two factors can put the lead back in your music’s collective pencil.

Bunch of comedians
This was demonstrated by a Saturday Night Live sketch from back in 2000, which has been voted one of the show’s most popular ever. The long-running show is an American institution that features comedians in sketches that appear to have been written quickly in the preceding few minutes.

The skit in question featured Christoper Walken playing music producer Bruce Dickinson alongside Will Ferrell as a fictional cowbell player, showing the band Blue Oyster Cult's attempts to record a song.

From that momentous episode the term ‘More Cowbells’ was born and Walken finally ditched Russian Roulette as his game of choice for house parties.

The happiness which that skit brought to the free world, can now be replicated in bite-sized chunks thanks to morecowbell.dj – a website that allows you to add cowbells and Walken to the uploaded MP3 of your choice. Crucially, clever sliders allow you to adjust the level of Walken or Bell that suits your personal needs.

Scent Of A Laptop

How would you like your laptop to smell? Might odours labelled Floral, Cologne, Ocean or Grass draw you amorously towards your keyboard? Might turning your computer on have a whole new connotation? Is this the ultimate computer geek's substitute for flesh and blood? Asus thinks so. Or it’s possibly just having a laugh.

The Nature part
While the guts of this laptop are nothing to get overexcited about – it’s the gimmicks that will earn it the (minor) headlines. Not only will it smell of Karate perfume, pollen, salt, or your dog’s garden deposits, but it's got a patterned lid and a carbon fibre wrist rest. The wacky designs made an appearance in Las Vegas (now it’s starting to make sense) this week as part of Project 200 in Microsoft's Spotlight on PC Fashion. Aside from the four scents, it comes in either pink, blue, green or black too.

The Science bit
The ASUS F6V is the rather prosaic name for a hunk of metal trying to be anything but. It has a 13.3in screen, Core 2 Duo processor, 320GB of storage, ATI HD 3470 graphics card, fingerprint authentication, HDMI port, and 1.2MP webcam. It’s available from Amazon for $1,300. You want more? We’d advise you to check out the website. I mean – look at the headline – did you really think this was a review?

Palin Covers Digital Tracks In US Election

Pythonesque subterfuge over Troopergate
Hockey mum and US Presidential candidate Sarah Palin is not looking as transparent in her political dealings as she would like us to think.

The woman with whom Republican nominee John McCain hopes to lead the US in some direction or other is refusing to hand over more than a thousand emails in connection with an investigation into ‘Troopergate’.

The latest ‘gated’ controversy concerns her allegedly prominent role in the firing of her former brother-in-law, and his boss. Both appeared to be motivated less for professional reasons and more for the temerity of falling out with the Palin clan.

Let there be transparency!
Pro-reformer Palin is claiming executive privilege despite the fact that many of the emails were clearly nothing to do with sensitive state business. Using unofficial email accounts such as gov.sarah@yahoo.com and devices such as BlackBerries, she is seeking to avoid letting the courts see them as public records.

This is a tactic that was taught by the angels of the lord, the Big G himself. We refer, of course, to White House aides protecting George Dubya from prying investigators over the allegedly political firing of government lawyers.

The same administration 'lost' millions of emails after an ‘upgrade’ to the White House system shortly after George Bush ‘won’ his first election. (We should point out the excessive use of qualifying speech marks here is entirely beyond our control).

Lipstick on an elephant
A lawsuit launched by Republican state legislators is designed to delay the Troopergate findings until after the election. The present brouhaha highlights the difficulties of holding people in public office to account when they know that leaving incriminating evidence on official channels could bring them down.

Admittedly, this didn’t stop Richard Nixon from recording his own dodgy dealings on the office tape recorder. But he was the exception that made the rule and had a few devious plans to back up his machinations such as getting his secretary to tape over the bad bits, and pretending not to understand the question.

Palin, who supports the teaching of creationism, and believes living in Alaska gives her a good grounding in foreign policy, will no doubt have ample opportunity to exercise her imagination even more in the coming months.

Deletionpedia: Makes Wikipedia Look Good

So you thought Wikipedia had no standards?
The internet, like space, is pretty much endless to the limited imagination of the humble human. The great random beast of subjective knowledge, Wikipedia, appears too to have an opinion on pretty much everything, even if, like the fickle humans it serves, it changes its opinions from time to time, or becomes an expert in some field in which it was once a mere amateurish hack. But you would be wrong to think this – much like the on-line encyclopaedia is often accused of being.

For there’s plenty of reasons and examples for material not making the site.

Rise of the eternal archivers
In his article for ars technica Nate Anderson says: ‘Plenty of user-generated content simply isn’t very good, or doesn't fall within established parameters, or violates copyright, or does something that gets it yanked from the sites that host such material, but sites like Deletionpedia and Delutube have sprung up to archive the deletions.’

And Deletionpedia is a 60,000 strong archive of material not considered good enough for Wikipedia. In his article, Anderson gives examples of some of the subjects nearly deleted from the world’s data banks. Weapons of the Imperium, for instance, a vast listing of the arsenal available to inhabitants of a computer game, was taken down from Wikipedia after a mere two and a half years.

It was resurrected by the faithful for Deletionpedia as was a list of bounty hunters from Star Wars. In the last week, Deletionpedia was itself close to being axed, in an twist that was almost lost to irony lovers forever.

Following the recent Wiki report on Vernon Kay being effectively ‘un-dead’, TechRadar news editor Patrick Goss warned of the folly of taking Wiki’s relatively uncollaborated word on anything without checking elsewhere too.

But then he would say that: he's still waiting for his profile to be posted up. Give it a week. And then check elsewhere.

Fusionman Flies Across Channel

‘If I get it wrong, I take a bath’
In a follow up to our story about Fusionman earlier in the week – Yves Rossy, the part Swiss, part eccentric ex airforce pilot – crossed the channel with nothing but the wing on his back. And those four jet engines placed a few scary centimetres from his soft, easy to burn flesh.
The flight, which was postphoned twice this week due to bad weather, was broadcast live on the National Geographic channel. Earlier in the week, Rossy was quoted as saying ‘If I calculate everything right, I will land in Dover. But if I get it wrong, I take a bath.’

The four engines powered him across the 22-mile stretch between Calais and Dover earlier this afternoon at speeds up to 125mph after being dropped out of a aeroplane 2,500m up over France. The eccentric, but fortunately, brilliant 49-year-old followed in the flying footsteps of Frenchman Louis Bleriot. Ninety-nine years ago, Bleriot was the first to make the trip in the relative luxury of an aeroplane, basic variety or not.

Eat his shorts, David Blane

It took Rossy just over 10 minutes, much as he had predicted, which was handy, as that's how long his fuel was due to last.

Rossy told the BBC that his flight felt ‘Great, really great. I only have one word, ‘thank you’, to all the people who did it with me.’ We like him so much we are going to count that as one word. And let's face it, I think even the backroom boys and girls would have let him take the credit for this one. Before landing by parachute, Rossy looped his rapt audience, always an impressive feat for a flying man with no way of steering beyond twisting his head and back a bit. Fusionman, we salute you.

All stories were written for TechRadar website.

Technlogy Blogs

Hollywood's New Dirty Dozen

Slagging off US foreign policy is a widely practised form of abuse from Basra to Bonn, and London to Lima, but surprisingly, it’s now being preached in the home of US propaganda: Hollywood. 

From the staged exploits of Errol Flynn and John Wayne in their west coast theatres of war, to Rambo and Chuck Norris SWAT-teaming foreign stereotypes like flies, Hollywood’s leading men and women have generally proudly flown the stars and stripes. But the emergence of a dozen or so movies criticizing current US policy suggests writers and directors feel the nation is ready to take a harder look at itself.

Among the anti-war  movies slated for this year are Lions for Lambs, directed by Robert Redford and featuring Tom Cruise and Meryl Street; Rendition, starring Reese Witherspoon; and The Valley of Elah, based on a true story about a soldier with PTSD, drawing on the talents of Tommy Lee Jones, Charlize Theron and Susan Sarandon. All question US involvement in various present conflicts.

A burgeoning anti-war climate is making these story lines more palatable. The influence of 24-hour news in bringing these horrors ‘live’ to our homes may be another contributory factor as is the increasing tendency of modern filmmakers to bypass the Pentagon for ‘help’ with military hardware and the unofficial script approval that may influence such co-operation.  

US paranoia over the enemy within is rarely based on hard fact. Despite the ranting of ‘Mad Dog’ McCarthy, communism wasn’t rampant in 1950’s America and the high-profile actor-activists lampooned in Team America have rarely spearheaded movements that have successfully mollified aggressive foreign policy. And while most Vietnam movies portray war as hell, those who suffer on screen are invariably the innocent grunts of the US. The hordes of cannon fodder represented by the forces of the invaded are invariably filled by faceless extras rather than the craggy familiar faces of the leads.

Perhaps this new genre represents an honest maturity in many Americans to re-evalute their nation’s role in shaping world events. Placing ourselves in others shoes is a major step towards understanding the other and as lack of empathy is a prime characteristic of a psychopath, it might not be such a bad thing.  

Get Stauffenberged!

Germany has declared war on Tom Cruise’s ambitions to star as the man who tried to blow up Hitler in the film Valkyrie. Defence minister Franz-Josef Jung has turned down a request to use the Berlin courtyard where Count Claus von Stauffenberg was shot after the bomb he planted failed to kill the Nazi leader.

Behind it is the German government’s refusal to recognize Scientology as a legitimate religion. A taskforce, which has been investigating the group closely for more than a decade, claims it advances the cause of totalitarianism. Civil servants have been banned from belonging to the sect. 

The bad blood is likely to stem from the comments of the sect’s founder L Ron Hubbard some 30 years ago. The science-fiction writer criticized Germany in a lecture – a viewpoint partly attributed to his belief that he had fought the Germans… as a Roman soldier in another life.

The Scientologists built a Berlin HQ earlier this year to launch its own publicity counter offensive along with the bridgehead established by its office in London. Bryan Singer, director of The Usual Suspects, is due to start filming on July 19, the day before the plot’s 63rd anniversary. He may need a creative location scout.

Welcome Flood Of Foreigners

No doubt the Albert Hall will soon resound to a chorus of Briton’s Never Will be Slaves as the Proms wind up to their nationalistic conclusion. And if you forget for a moment the Romans, Normans, Angles, Saxons and Jutes, the cheery flag wavers are almost right.

But maybe the island mentality towards invasion by outsiders is becoming more nuanced … because foreign films, like fine cheeses and wine, have been increasingly slipping beneath the radar of our popular culture. Without a BNP picket in sight, thousands, nay millions of Britons are queuing up to admire and enjoy the produce of Johnny Foreigner flooding our multiplexes.
In the 90’s, nine foreign language films broke the million pound mark. In this decade thus far, 23 subtitled movies have broken that barrier. This year’s offerings alone cover French, Chinese, German and the Esperanto of the Ancient Mayan world, Yucatec. Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto was responsible for the latter and followed on from the use of street Latin and Aramaic in The Passion of the Christ.

The most significant change is in the demographics. The English middle classes have always had a sneaking admiration for the French way of life. But alongside their delicate corn-fed posteriors are the wider slung butts of the lumpen proletariat, whose very ancestors gleefully waved two fingers at the French before delivering upon them another wooden arrow from their longbows. Saint George must be turning in his grave. If only we knew what country that swarthy Greek was buried in.       

Virus Of Video Nasties

In Russia, a student has been arrested for posting a video on the Internet purportedly showing two gagged migrants being savagely murdered beneath a Swastika.

It appeared on a right-wing website linked to Russia’s most popular networking site. A caption refers to the executed as foreigners, while a masked man beheads one victim, before shooting the other in the head and screaming ‘Glory to Russia!’ The video reflects the extreme end of a wave of violent nationalism in the country, which Amnesty International last year described as ‘out of control’.

The content echoes the grisly video of the murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl last year when covering the War on Terror. Snuff movies were known about 20 years ago but few people had actually seen one. The Internet’s all-seeing eye now brings them to every household.

Back in Britain, Panorama recently highlighted the trend for posting videos of schoolyard brawls on sites such as YouTube. Adverts placed alongside these fights from big name companies like Pepsi, eBay, Starbucks and Sony provoked further outrage.

Currently, video hosts rely on others to complain before removing violent material. Pornography rarely lasts long, but despite the comparative lack of consensual fun, violence tends to be seen more ambivalently.

Websites like the ironically named www.nothingtoxic.com blend scenes of extreme violence with ‘humour’ in a tone suggesting the two are natural partners. As I sit in an office with the sounds of adult colleagues gleefully butchering each other on the latest video game, I wonder whether we have passed the tipping point. 

Past Master

Gareth Mason’s lifelong ambition to step back in time was achieved with a little help from the happy owners of a 28-year-old HMV 2712A…

When Ethel Elvy bought her HMV Colourmaster in the early 70s her son and daughter-in-law drove from Croydon to Whitstable to catch a glimpse of the brave new world of colour. Grand-daughter Nicola is now the proud owner of one of the first wave of mass-produced colour TVs in this country. And like her relatives, Nicola sees no good reason to replace it.

Her mother Petra and father, communications expert Peter, once bought a video player which didn’t record. When Peter was on telly – they simply got their cameras out and took photographs of him. And they still have an undimmed affection for a TV which just refuses to lay down and die. With this being our anniversary issue, we thought we’d take a sidelong look at how a past master has stood the test of time.

The 2712A is distinguished by its bulging screen and expanse of blond hardwood veneer on a chipboard frame – covering space on which a modern TV would be stretching its screen. Despite its bulk, its17in picture would now barely register as average. From the bottom, front fascia controls are found for brightness, colour and volume, above which are four clunky channel buttons. A Reset button is found rearwards, like today’s personal preference settings, but random in its workings. A kind of Russian roulette with an electron gun instead of a six-shooter.

Close by, you’ll find the Contrast button (too risqué for the front panel?) and an aerial socket. While light by today’s standards, it’s densely packed and had enough sharp edges to flatten my index finger to the thickness of a postage stamp as I lowered it onto its stand. The 8000 Series chassis used by this and many other models from old hands such as Ferguson, Ultra and Marconi was designed to bring colour TV to the masses. This required a TV selling beneath the magic £200 mark. While still a princely sum – it massively undercut the £350 average for CTV – moving colour closer from its luxury status to the commodity product it is today.

It conformed to the same PAL 625-line 50Hz standard and the Delta gun picture tubes are still used on modern monitors. Its performance was inevitably compromised compared with its more expensive siblings – notably by colour fringing at the picture edges. Otherwise the innards are differentiated by the many capacitors, resistors and transistors used to decode the colour signal which would now be replaced by a single chip. Their complex configuration also makes this TV more prone to problems caused by one or more discrete elements being knocked out of alignment.

For operation: check electricity bill paid, slot plug into wall socket, click On switch. Tuning requires each channel button to be twisted until desired channel is found. Fans of satellite or cable may find themselves channel-hopping less than usual. General knob operation follows the traditional side-to-side method except for channel changing. This requires a decisive forward thrust accompanied by what sounds like a high calibre rifle shot. An early example of today’s child lock, it alerts anyone within a 50m radius that you’ve changed sides while they are out of the room. It also proves that user-friendly products have been around a lot longer than we think. Why simplify complex features such as remote controls and onscreen menus? Just don’t have them.

Picture performance bears as much resemblance to the modern TV as its looks. In other words, not much. While the basic technology remains the same – considerable age and the absence of the refinements brought in over the last three decades leave it predictably wanting. That said, while the overall picture would challenge few, if any, from this era – it still scores some positive points. People and straight lines are sharply outlined with little visible dot crawl. Fine detail was ok... not that fine... but it was detail nonetheless and stronger than on some modern budget models.

While the picture was stable – a general fuzziness spread over the screen in small patches. Despite this, the whole picture remained stable and flicker-free. Depth of field is somewhat limited in that you can’t see anything in detail that’s not in the foreground. Another interesting characteristic was the ‘sandstorm effect’ in which a barely visible wave of motion swept from left to right across the screen. Changing over from Beau Geste, this became respectively, the ‘windswept’, ‘mustard-gas’ and ‘sea-spray’ effect as I changed channels. With a nod to old-fashioned service values – no premium was charged for this unique selling point.

The main problem was with the colour – hardly surprising with all that wear on those ancient tubes. Overall, it resembled a real scene viewed through a gossamer green veil or a novel shade of yellowy-green – or chartreuse to the brandy-lovers among you. If you prefer to see red – it’s your choice. Simply twist the colour button the other direction. For lovers of blue movies, this TV is not for you! Despite this, Channel 5 was picked up as well as the other terrestrial channels. Although, one press of the Reset button magicked back some of those elusive azure hues – its short of an ideal balance.

Audio performance is closer to today’s norm. It may be unfair to discuss such luxurious elements as bass, midrange and treble, but it covers the range as well as many modern mono sets. Turned up to its rasping full wick and there’s a predictably painful distortion but otherwise little to offend the ear. Programme makers are well-aware that people can abide dodgy pictures longer than poor sound. That’s what keeps one of the 2712A’s ancient legs in the market despite the other three firmly entrenched in the antique world.

It may be unfair to test a TV with a dodgy colour tube but we’d need a time machine to get around that problem. I’d also have developed a considerably flatter physique if I’d tried to carry this one over the threshold following its launch. And in a time when so many products seem to reliably expire with their guarantees, it’s commendable to find a product which refuses to submit to the ravages of time. We’ll gloss over the technical performance in favour of its magnificent staying power.

Nicola, the third generation of owner, sees no reason to put her green-hued companion out to pasture. ‘I just have to accept some people think I’m odd.’

What Video & TV 2000

Film Reviews

 

All The President's Men

This film doesn’t need to be stuck on a DVD to be enjoyed – its substance would shine through on the lowliest VHS tape. The classic tale of Nixon’s fall from presidential grace takes place within the twin worlds of political intrigue and investigative journalism.

Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford play Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the callow newspaper men who follow a trail of corruption and cover-ups of labyrinthine complexity, which pits one newspaper against the world’s most powerful government.

The paranoid, dimly-lit ambience is lent poignancy by the fact that it is all true. This is just as well as its age limits the picture and sound quality.

While it’s a decent enough transfer, there’s no upgrading the mono soundtrack, so the other 4.1 channels will be frustrated through all those tense whispered phone calls and clandestine late night rendezvous.

Nonetheless, the heart of this story is in the dark dialogue so the stark realism might prove compromised with a 90’s soundtrack and effects.

It’s a fascinating historic insight and features a fine display of acting by the fresh-faced leads and their grizzled employers. There’s something Kafkaesque about the Washington Post’s lone fight against a sinister and shadowy ruling party whose power and reach knows no bounds. Except, of course, the good guys win.

It educates us on two fronts: how to get a story on the front page and how not to run a country. Together, it’s irresistible.

Hellbound: Hellraiser II

Horror aficionados will know Hellraiser and its sequel Hellbound: Hellraiser II came from the pen of horror master Clive Barker. It may also explain the cut-and-paste feel to much of the characterisation and plot. The ten violent seconds of the Part 1 summary did little to answer questions like: ‘Mummy, why are people skinned, trussed up with cheese wire and peppered with six-inch nails when they go to Hell?’ ‘Because they are, dear.’

No burning pools of sulphur here, no withering intestines, rusty tridents and eternity spent watching Telly Addicts.

The first Hellraiser was based on the Clive Barker book – he also wrote the screenplay. This time, Peter Atkins was commissioned for some more of the same, with no shirking on the body parts and easy on the cerebral stuff.

While inferior to the original, it still generates a genuinely fearful and barren landscape, though one which rarely had me on the edge of my seat.

The main roles are played competently enough by Ashley ‘somebody slaughtered my family like goats’ Laurence, Clare Higgins is a nastier step-mother than most, and the pin-head wanabee Kenneth Cranham is evil Dr Channard.

It’s also a little schizophrenic as a DVD. Picture performance is fairly good, without showing the format at its sparkling best. There are no major problems and the dim ambience of hell’s corridors relies more on shades of grey than fiery yellows. Still, there’s enough detail to turn your stomach, so don’t worry about that.

Audio is tremendously disappointing, with only English Dolby Surround on offer despite the usual Dolby Digital logo stamped on the back. Flesh-slashing chains, skin being sucked off like a body suit, nails hammered into skulls – all these heart-warming sounds are denied the full treatment – shame really, as it’s needed a lot more than on many films which do offer the full 5.1 digital channels.

Extras were rather more thoughtful – the backdrop to the menu screen sets the tone with a freshly ripped heart feebly beating away. Worth a look if you liked the first one – a little disorientating otherwise.

Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels

There’s a voyeuristic pleasure in watching gangster movies. We know we would never behave that badly ourselves or appear that sophisticated let alone do both at the same time. And compared to your stateside hoodlum, the great British mobster is always going to seem like an under-achiever, so a little black humour usually helps balance the psychopathic scales.

That’s what you get here – a film that does London in the same way Trainspotting did Edinburgh, with an eclectic cast including Sting, footballer-thug Vinnie Jones, the former world bare-knuckle boxing champion, and a crowd of half-familiar young actors playing an assortment of geezers, toffs, wideboys and black dudes.

The standard of acting is patchy in the case of some of the professional crims, but overall the largish cast puts in a credible performance, once you’ve accepted nobody is going to say anything in regular English which can’t be said in rhyming slang.

There are far too many twists and turns in this picaresque tale to explain here, and while the humour is black rather than ha-ha, it’s both engaging and entertaining as well as unpredictable.
While such films rarely draw on the full capabilities of the format, both video and audio are impressive. The subdued and shadowy backdrop is well rendered, as are the tense, wrinkled faces of the various geezers.

The Dolby Digital soundtrack is excellent – partly due to the film’s quirky music and partly because of all those noises peculiar to Mafioso: gunshots, clinking glasses, fingers breaking, car doors slamming on heads etc.

It’s available in both wide and full-screen versions and comes with interviews with cast and crew – which are brief and less than inspirational. Stick your daisies on your plates and get down to Blockbusters.

The Quick And the Dead

‘Think you’re quick enough?’ is the tag for this shoot ‘em up Western. And if your IQ is in double figures you’ll be quick enough. And this despite the pulling power of Sharon Stone, Gene Hackman and one Leonardo DiCaprio.

Our Sharon’s allegedly high IQ is clearly applied to her contracts rather than scripts while the corpse of Gene Hackman’s character in Unforgiven seems to have crawled out of its pool of blood onto an adjacent film set.

What he finds is truly frightening. A plot so predictable there must be a catch (there isn’t) and a child-like DiCaprio who’s not only his son, but thinks he’s a gunslinger and in with a chance of getting off with Sharon Stone.

With that baby face he won’t make king of his own backyard let alone the world. This grippingly unrealistic tale follows a gunslingers’ tournament hosted by the corrupt town honcho Hackman and a regular circus of cool-hand Lukes, Dicks and Harrys.

Shazza herself is no mean shot (an’ she sure is purty) and is out to avenge the death of her spouse at the hands of…oh you’ll never guess.

Anyway, the plot then twists and turns as much as a Roman road and a lot of gunfights later the story unravels into exactly what we thought would happen two hours earlier. Then again, I’ve read good reviews about this – there really is no accounting for taste. Picture performance showed no unexpected flaws and its Dolby Digital audio was well suited to the whistling bullets, clinking glasses and tumbleweed-rolling ambience.

Das Boot

Great films are often as enjoyable to watch played through a battered top-loader as they are on a high-tech source like DVD. Conversely, some truly appalling dollops of filmic tripe use the format to impressive effect for that two minutes necessary to amaze your friends.

Every now and then a disc comes along that accentuates both the positives, and Das Boot is one of them. This director’s cut from Wolfgang Petersen (Air Force One, In The Line Of Fire) adds a full hour of footage and a new soundtrack from the 1985 version, taking it to a mammoth three hours 15 minutes, divided up into 66 chapters.

It follows the crew of U-96, one of Nazi Germany’s deadly U-Boats, across the North Atlantic in search of British ships to prey on.

The length of the film is justified by the juxtaposition of long periods of inactivity and tension with unpredictable bouts of action, where the fate of the crew and their enemy hangs in the most delicate of balances.

As an anti-war film, it works for non-German viewers in highlighting the normality and suffering of ‘their boys’ and for exposing the German subs as the death tubs they undoubtedly were, with allied depth charges whizzing past their terrified ears.

Although much of the action takes place 180 metres below sea level – with no lurid sunsets to really stretch it – the picture quality was excellent. But it is the soundtrack that is most memorable.

From the eerie near-silence of the depths in which the crews’ breath is masked only by the ominous creaking of the boat’s hulls threatening to implode, to the muffled thud of underwater explosions and screaming of fighter planes tearing overhead, this is what Dolby Digital was made for. Film purists will no doubt favour the original German language soundtrack but the English one is generally dubbed to a high standard. Further extras include a a director’s commentary, featurette and trailer – all worth watching to remind yourself that this was filmed in a studio and not at the bottom of the ocean.

If you want to see a superbly made film accurately portraying the horrors of war this is for you. If you’re looking to overcome your fear of deep water and claustrophobia – go to a shrink.

The Client

John Grisham specialises in made-for-movie books. With this nicely-paced thriller, The Client, the transition from page to screen is once again smoothly made.

Directed by Joel Schumacher, of Batman and Lost Boys fame, the movie deals with familiar Grisham themes: mobsters, lawyers and moral dilemmas.

With the reassuringly professional Susan Sarandon and Tommy Lee Jones in the credits it must be worth a second glance. Our Tommy plays the local district attorney out to nail a gangster for murder. The witness is a frightened (and threatened) kid played by Brad Renfro. Jones reprises his trademark role of ‘good guy lawman not quite on your side’ a la Fugitive.

While somewhat more mature than my own friends passing out of law school, Sarandon retains her status as a thinking man’s crumpet. She plays the callow but feisty attorney who protects the boy from the myriad dangers that beset him. And all for the solitary single dollar offered by her rough-edged but big-hearted child client. No departure from reality there then.

The two grizzled (but well-preserved) thesps are backed up capably by young Renfro who, thankfully, has enough of the trailer trash in him to extinguish any Caulkinesque traits. Anyway, the resolution arrives after a few bursts of action, several significant looks, various points of order and the occasional childish tantrum.

By the end, everyone understands each other a little better and there’s a few group hugs – entirely reminiscent of our own office environment. One for a rainy Sunday afternoon.

Funny Bones

Funny Bones begins with an American comedian’s act bombing in Vegas. This causes him to flee to the English seaside town of his childhood for new material to relaunch his flagging career. And with a strong comic cast including Jerry Lewis, Richard Griffiths, Oliver Platt and Oliver Reed in a film set between the twin towers of cheesy entertainment, Blackpool and Las Vegas, you might expect to be in for a barrel of laughs.

But as the dialogue splutters along, with lines that are never quite as savagely funny or thought-provoking as the film thinks, you are left empathising less with the performers and more as a short-changed comedy club customer. The exception to this is rising star Lee Evans who steals the show in the idiot-savant persona of Jack Parker.

Director Peter Chelsom mines the rich seam of eccentricity and postcard humour of the English seaside. The landscape is peopled by an assortment of strange characters including taciturn uncles, clever dogs and fat ladies in swimwear.

Unfortunately, it dips its toe into the comedic waters when you’d rather it took the full plunge. As the darker sides and frustrations of the characters’ pasts emerge it becomes more a film about comedians than a sidesplitting comedy. The collective parts of this film make a good yarn but somehow the whole lacks sufficient punch to make it truly memorable.

Evans has enough quirky moments to set himself up as a latter-day Norman Wisdom with a twist but you can’t help feeling he could have had a few more routines squeezed out of him. The film’s mixture of humour and pathos results in a rather diluted end-product inducing amnesia where laughter and tears were intended.

The Usual Suspects

If you missed this first-time round at the cinema, you’ve got some much needed catching up to do with director Brian Singer’s dazzling debut thriller, penned by Christopher McQuarrie.

The breath-taking pace is quickly established in an opening scene, which takes us to the burning wreck of a body-strewn cargo ship near Los Angeles. The next 100 minutes follow the frustrated efforts of FBI agent Kujan (Chazz Palminteri) to gain some idea of the cause and perpetrators of this destruction with only two survivors to help him with his enquiries. One of these is mummified in hospital, the other being Kevin Spacey’s Oscar winning Verbal Kint. Through him the story winds back to the meeting of the eponymous suspects played impressively by Stephen Baldwin, Gabriel Bryne, Kevin Pollak and Benicio Toro, the last of whom offers some comic relief with one of the more entertaining voices in movies.

The plot stays one manic step ahead of the audience throughout. Flashbacks cleverly rewrite the past in the words of whoever’s being quizzed. This means that you have to wait for the end credits before you have any certain idea of what really happened. Singer eschews Tarantino-like realism in the violence perpetrated upon much of the cast, preferring instead to use his cinematic prowess to create the mood of tension and a sense of foreboding.

The intrigue is heightened by the shadowy and semi-mythical figure of Keyser Soze, a criminal bogeyman from Hungary integral to the many false trails designed to keep you on the edge of your seat. Expected to be confused and entertained.

As Good As It Gets

Seven Oscar nominations with Best Actor and Actress nominations won by Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt suggest this is one to look out for. Ultimately, these accolades show how thin a crop of films made the Academy that year – what with a sinking bathtub picking up most of the prizes.

It is good and if you’re a fan of growling Jack, it’s one of the best examples of sustained scattershot vitriol you’re likely to find in his manifestation as writer and obsessive Melvin Udall. His scrooge-like epiphany is down to his interplay with feisty long-suffering waitress Carol (Helen Hunt) and his gay neighbour (Greg Kinnear), whose dog he befriends when its owner is hospitalised. Cuba Gooding Junior injects his customary enthusiasm into his role as an art dealer who mediates between Melvin and Simon.

At times, Nicholson’s cussing is more vicious than witty but his social surliness at least guarantees the slush factor is kept under control – this is a romantic comedy remember.

If you’re a fan of the above it’s well worth a look while the neutrals may be left wondering how the wrinkled old boy with the maniacal smile can still be getting romantic leads. The excellent picture quality exposes those physical attributes mercilessly.

My Best Friend’s Wedding

Helmed by Muriel’s Wedding director PJ Hogan, this romantic comedy apparently went down a storm in the States, hitting that Four Weddings feel-good chord. Julia Roberts plays Julianne, who realises she’s in love with her best mate around the time he’s announcing his marriage to Cameron Diaz.

Out with the old, in with the new, you might think. But man-in-the-middle Dermot Mulroney hesitates, despite the lily-white perfection of his betrothed, who contrasts starkly with the selfish machinations of his wide-mouthed pal.

Rupert Everett, who plays the handsome English charmer with relish, completes the cast list. But there’s a twist. Oh my gosh, he’s a homosexual, and what’s worse, seems to be quite happy about it. But such outrageous casting is balanced by Mulroney’s presence as a square-jawed regular guy, so the men’s men have someone to identify with too.

When he appears, it’s Everett who steals the show, but he’s a strangely peripheral figure for most the film.

Ultimately, it’s enjoyable enough, but you can’t help feeling there was a great script out there and someone decided it would be much better watered down to this. They were wrong.

George Of The Jungle

This enjoyable Walt Disney romp is a cross between The Jungle Book and Crocodile Dundee but is unlikely to repeat their box office success. It’s also a take on Tarzan, with beast-master George – played by Hollywood himbo Brendan Fraser – brought up by apes and lured to San Francisco by the requisite beautiful woman. From here, swinger George is reeled back in by the call of the wild where the rather loose and vague plot finally unravels.

There’s something very off-the-cuff about this film, as if it was done for a laugh in Disney’s Christmas break between more pretentious and expensive projects. The result is a far more likeable and heart-warming than many Disney offerings, even if totally unchallenging.
The gimmicks which bring about a smile to your face include George’s inability to swing properly, bongo-playing apes, his English-speaking ape mentor (voiced by John Cleese) and perhaps best, the elephant who thinks it’s a dog.

There’s something rather old-fashioned about the effects created by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop – more muppet than Jumanji extras but they seem appropriate for the overall fare. Extras are kept to a bare minimum, though the Dolby Digital soundstrack benefits from the jungle scenes, both concrete and verdurous. One for the kids, but you may find the odd wry smile creeping over your face.

The Big Lebowski

The award-winning Coen Brothers are known to divide the film-going fraternity with their quirky slant on movie-making and The Big Lebowski may polarise these two camps yet further.

It follows the meandering progress of Jeff Lebowski, aka the Dude, who’s seeking compensation for his soiled carpet – the result of a misdirected squeeze on his rich namesake. Though he’d rather be bowling and getting stoned, the Dude reluctantly gets dragged into a far messier affair with kidnapping, large sums of money, and exotic thugs at large. He’s supported by stereotypical ‘Nam vet (John Goodman), whose wholehearted and ill-judged commitment complicates matters further.

Also present are sterling performers such as Julianne Moore, Steve Buscemi and John Turturro, all of whom offer a slice of Coenesque characterisation.

A Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack is offered in both English and French and has some opportunity to shine among the crashing bowling balls and screeching cars, while picture performance is as crisp and full-blooded as we’ve come to expect from this format. Nevertheless, this is clearly one for film rather than effects fans.

Coen brother enthusiasts will enjoy the haphazard plot for going off at more wacky tangents than ever before, and creating a fuller spectrum of wild characters. While these idiosyncrasies will woo the diehards, the rest may wonder why they can’t attend to the basics. This film may be flecked by their genius like paint spotted on a blank canvas, but without the craft it’s hard to call it a masterpiece.

Anaconda

Is this the great snake movie the world’s been waiting on for so long? Well, no, we’ll be waiting a little longer for that. But, while unjust to say it was in any sense good, it wasn’t the unadulterated pap I’d expected.

The man versus man-eating beast relationship is one that appeals to the psychology of modern folk, bored with complete control over their environment. But where Jaws succeeded, most others have failed – including Jaws 2. And let’s face it, unless behemoths and sabre-toothed tigers spring incarnate from their fossils, it’s unlikely they’ll find anything scarier than the big rubber fish.

Like the current spate of monster movies, Anaconda has a big advantage over its ancestors, No, it’s not the plot silly, it’s the special effects. Before computers (BC) it would have been frightening how this particular beast would have looked on screen. It would probably involve an earthworm, some spraypaint, and a small dose of LSD.

Here, you’re left worrying whether these huge serpents really do move with such terrifying speed, and surely they can’t eat a man whole? Well, it seems they can, and excellent graphics and DVD quality do wonders for the wriggling reptile and the lush, verdant Amazonian backdrop.

The stars are of higher profile than the overall fare, though Oscar nominations may be on the back burner. An eclectic bunch includes a grizzled and shifty snake-hunter played by Jon Voigt and ex-NWA rapper Ice Cube with less attitude than usual. Jennifer Lopez plays the beautiful and brilliant scientist role while Eric Stolz is the leader of the expedition – an undemanding part played mainly from his sick bed.

The Dolby Digital soundtrack deals admirably with the screeching jungle sounds and all those serpentine rustlings, drips and hisses that leap out at you. Not since Eden has a snake exuded such menace, though more for what goes into his mouth than what comes out of it.

Contact

Compared to the classic man-meets-Martian epics, Contact disappoints. Good acting, a credible premise and the promise of fantastic revelations. But ultimately it’s unfulfilling. Satisfying the audience’s expectations of what lives at the end of the great unknown is a tricky task. Most fail because the unveiled creatures, in true Scooby Doo fashion, tend to be damp squibs compared to the fireworks we’d expected.

In this sense, Contact cops out by keeping you in your armchair for two hours 24 minutes and then denying you a fitting climax. The alien encounter itself is fleeting and relatively unilluminating, more of an epiphany for the heroine than a revelation for mankind and the audience.

The plot follows astronomer Ellie Arroway’s quest for alien interaction, something the life-long stargazer hopes to achieve with a pair of headphones and a large Sky dish. The lead is played by the always talented and usually tormented Jodie Foster who doesn’t let us down in either respect.

The film’s tribulations concern the premature death of her parents, which adds poignancy to the flashback of her devoted Pa giving her that magical first telescope.  Remember yours? Such pathos obviously vindicates her obsessive hobby-cum-career. But I was in full sympathy with her grant-with-holding supremo (played by Tom Skerrit) who reasonably suggests she could be doing something more useful. Some people ascribe spiritual properties to gemstones, but I wouldn’t recommend massive government funding to help them develop their theories.

Contact’s second leitmotif is the unlikely marriage of science and faith. Ellie’s antithesis is embodied by the slick writer/prophet Palmer Ross (played by Matthew McConaughey) who espouses his own faith rather than that professed by any established religion.

The predictably snarling James Wood as a White House hardman completes a goodish cast along with a strikingly implausible John Hurt. Hurt plays an amoral mad bald millionaire scientist who is an occasional ally to the starry-eyed Ellie.

After 350 words of condemnation, it may seem incongruous to say it’s a fairly enjoyable romp and a decent Dolby Digital soundtrack complements the space shots – especially the one in which Ellie is literally shot into space in a device modelled on an alien bath-tub.

Being a special edition, this flipside disk is packed with feature-length commentaries and special effects constructions – thus sating the most anal of viewers. But by this time, I was on my balcony retransmitting digital TV signals to Alpha Centauri.

Cutting Edge

Having dipped his toes in the shallow waters of iMovie, editing novice Gareth Mason dives into murkier depths and wonders if he can stay afloat…

Apple Macs have a reputation for user-friendly interfaces which let creatives get on with the clever stuff without worrying their illogical heads over more tedious PC affairs. Having recently bought a £1,200 iMac with a deficient CD burner and an internet connection which needed umpteen visits from a Mac expert to get it working – my Mac-mania is now compromised. But one feature which didn’t cause me any grief was iMovie – instrumental in my decision to upgrade from the minuscule capacity of my eight-year-old Power Mac to the graphite Billy Whizz sleekness of its more muscular graphite descendent.

Fortunately, iMovie’s hype did not follow the company’s ‘three simple steps’ sales pitch for, say, building an internet home page. With this, Step 1 seems to involve going off for a year and learning HTML before moving to the next ‘simple’ step. With iMovie, you really can just get on with it. This means cutting and pasting my less-than-pro quality footage into a crudely effective home movie with enough effects, transitions and titles to brush it up and half-impress your (non-technical) friends.

Mastering iMovie takes little time because its features are limited and, to its credit, it is intuitive in that good ol’ Mac way. As such, it doesn’t take long before you want to use features such as control of clip audio levels and more complex ones without which your movies will forever be marooned in amateurville. The relevance of making this monumental step up to Final Cut Pro (FCP) is based on choice. Or lack of it. In Macland, the borders are distinct so there are no convenient stepping stones to bridge this gulf. So how did I cope in the deep end?

Requirements

To get Final Cut Pro 2 running, the following system requirements are advised: a Mac with 300MHz or faster processor coupled with a MAC 9.1 operating system (not Mac OS X), QuickTime 5.0, 192Mb of RAM (256Mb for real-time processing), 20Mb of disk space for installation and one or more SCSI drives. Don’t worry about QuickTime as 5.0 is supplied and easily installed with the package. My iMac is of the ‘fastest’ G3 variety. It’s equipped with a 600MHz processor, 256Mb of RAM (double the spec but currently cheap as chips) and plenty of space left over from my voluminous 40GB of hard disk memory.

I settled for this model rather than the 500MHz model below it on the basis that I might later regret not doubling up the hard disk capacity. Regardless of the need to massively upgrade your RAM from the clearly inadequate 64MB common to the 500MHz model – anyone with experience of video editing will tell you how quickly 20GB of hard disk can disappear as your footage mounts up. With five minutes of digital video taking up around 1GB of space I’d filled up 15GB in no time. This said, my system carries out all the operations in both iMovie and FCP with ease, which when you’ve investigated the myriad possibilities of FCP, seems to make it worth stepping up to the top G3. This is a relief as FCP is sold as optimised for the current generation G4 engine and as an enthusiastic amateur I’d already reached my budget limit.

Installation

Opening the box, you’ll find CDs for installation, Peak DV audio editing software, Cleaner 5EX for streaming video for the internet and a tutorial CD. The manual is scarily bulky at 1,435 pages and accompanied by a more svelte tutorial book, which is replicated onscreen. Faced with this mass of material, I decided to work my way through the 108 pages of tutorials after spending some quality time with the main manual getting a feel for the system’s capabilities. While skim-reading the manual allows only the shallowest dip into a very deep pool of knowledge, I was pleasantly surprised at how much I was able to pick up.

Clearly the right people have been put to work as it answered many of those questions you were afraid to ask. Not only that, it explained simply and clearly more general concepts such as the difference between on- and off-line editing, the significance of timecodes and definitions of say, techy audio terms like ‘dynamic range’, ‘signal-to-noise’ and ‘overdriven audio’. This successfully treads the fine line between informing clearly and comprehensively, and patronising the reader. As a reference tool to the budding editor, it will prove invaluable, particularly as it includes a wealth of hard, and rarely superfluous, data. In short, it explains the ‘whys’ as well as the ‘hows’.

The tutorials were a natural extension of this knowledge, without which, I’d have been lost. Working my way through these over a couple of days was invaluable. To progress further, I’ll probably need to do it again, but with the basics covered, the next time will be considerably faster. Whether the system is intuitive is a moot point – there’s simply so much, you need someone (or a 1,400-page book) to hold your hand. Installation was a breeze taking barely ten minutes despite my installing QuickTime 5 as well as FCP. Registration, memory allocation and initial set-up were all made without hitch.

In fact, at no point did the software offer any problems. Around now, I was offered several choices for resolution and quality of captured footage. While DV’s transfer rate is fixed at 3.6Mbyte per second – the options refer to FCP’s ability to also capture analogue footage with the right card installed.

Down to work

Once done, we launched into the tutorials, broadly divided into Acquiring media, Basic editing, Compositing and Effects, Audio Editing and Distributing Media. Already this distinguishes itself from rivals such as Adobe which produces two programs, Premier (for editing) and After Effects, from the one-stop solution offered here.

The main interface uses two monitor screens. The left hand one is the Viewer and dragging clips from this to the Canvas brings up options such as Insert, Overwrite and Superimpose. Clips can also be simply dropped on the timeline for basic assemble editing, below this is the inevitable Timeline, and a Browser in which you can access filters, transitions and effects. Talking of which, transitions and effects can be performed in real-time with the appropriate processing card.

It’s only when you start delving into some of these browser folders that you realise how much is available. In the browser, and elsewhere, these folders are found within tabs while yet more is revealed under the standard drag and drop menus. To be fair, there’s a lot of crossover between this overwhelming mass of functions, just as there are modes of operation ie between keyboard shortcuts (the likely choice once you’re familiar with the program) and the onscreen controls. The only memory problems were with my own and when I was occasionally stumped by an instruction in the tutorials – I was often rescued by the description shown when placing the cursor above the control.

In the Compositing and Effects section, adding shadows, opacity and motion paths ratcheted up the technology in inverse proportion to my ability to keep up. Not difficult, just too much information for someone whose grounding is in iMovie. Titling and transitions didn’t seem much more complex than what I was used to though, perhaps, these functions are more likely to attract a gimmicky depth of choice in more basic programs. This may be the opportunity to do my fine-tuning in Photoshop now that I have a computer capable of working efficiently in it. But I think that’s probably enough learning for now.

Financially, Apple Mac’s can’t compete byte for byte with their PC rivals. The reasons for favouring it are more to do with your profession (publishing, graphic design etc) and other less tangible reasons such as culture, habit, and design and operational philosophy. So, your purchase of FCP is inextricably bound up with your reasons for having a Mac. The combined price of both would be, in my case, the best part of £2,000. Any PC fan will be delighted to point out that the more competitive PC market will offer you much better deals in terms of both hardware and a huge variety of software packages catering for all levels and budgets. But FCP is aimed squarely at the converted. And it offers great value when compared with much of the opposition bringing professional quality software significantly closer to the masses. An impressive, if daunting, package and one likely to keep me gamely occupied for some time.

What Camcorder magazine 2002

Capturing The World

Gareth Mason finds a good way to make money from his holiday snaps...

Once we only had memories to bring home from our hols. But now, thanks to video technology our annual investment can stretch well beyond the ‘real-time’ fortnight away. Friends, relatives and mere acquaintances can see the wonders of the world through your eyes without the associated dose of dysentery. Who knows, if it’s good enough you could recoup some of that hard-spent cash by charging them for the experience. OK, maybe you’re just going to sit in a dark room alone watching endless reruns of the same footage. Either way, you’ll be glad for a little planning when shooting places you may never visit again.

Obviously, the quality of your footage is limited by the kit you use but before you blame the tools consider how well you know and use all the features on your camcorder. Stepping up the price ladder is the easy option for better videos – if you can afford it – but practice and experiment will ultimately make for more satisfying and better videos.

Even some of the gimmicky options such as Automatic Exposure (AE) modes and digital effects can add that startling effect that makes the shot. It’ll be worth it even if used only once. So, familiarise yourself with your kit and mentally see if you can marry various functions with the places you visit and shots you’re likely to be taking. Before you go, make sure you have everything you’ll need to suit the ambient conditions. Will you be travelling light? Make sure you have a bag suitable for the climate as well as your video needs.

Talking of climate, when moving from a cold to warm location give the camcorder time to reach a stable temperature before shooting. Keep it warm when cold and generally avoid extreme temperatures – below 40 degrees and 95 degrees Faranheit. Moisture from humidity, rain and particularly salt-water can all messily crash and ruin the perfect footage party as can sand, dust, suntan lotion and insect repellents. Thankfully, camcorder miniaturisation means you can pack in more handy accessories than before, as well as making filming easier and less obtrusive.

While you should have more than enough stock of tape and batteries – remember, these run down more quickly in the cold – don’t clutter it up with things you’re unlikely to need or which can be replaced naturally. A smaller tripod or even some stable natural object will make a lot of room without a cumbersome large one. Perhaps, now you can carry that rain shield for that spectacular waterfall shot or marine housing for the underwater paradise you can’t trust to memory.

A final warning on preparation. Camcorders can easily be spirited away by the light fingered. Take precautions, particularly if you’re roughing it, which also means having insurance or perhaps an alarm for all you Inspector Gadgets. Separating your finished tapes from your camcorder is not a bad idea – it’s easier to put a price on an insured camcorder than New Year’s Eve in Rio or your partner dancing to Saturday Night Fever at a disco in the Gobi Desert. Bring proof-of-purchase documents to avoid customs hassles and don’t buy abroad without a little research: with import duties and VAT it may not be such a bargain notwithstanding potential problems with guarantees and incompatibility.

The world is your studio so try and adapt it to your needs. If you can’t recharge batteries easily then save power whenever possible, using a power save feature, for example. Also make the best of ambient conditions such as natural light. Engaging night mode or manually opening the iris to let in more light might both work, but in different ways. A once in a lifetime shot is worth trying in several ways to get right as well as being a useful learning aid when you compare them. It’s also worth trying to capture the unusual – getting away from the standard postcard shot. Not many people know the pyramids at Giza are found on the edge of a sprawling Cairo suburb. You’re not working for the tourist board so get the shot nobody sees. The contrast between old and new is more honest and has more artistic merit.

A little location research is invaluable. If you have the chance to look around first, you can save yourself time and tape. If you know there’s a better shot of a snow-capped mountains just around the corner, a more beautiful church, a livelier time of day, you can save separating the wheat from the chaff later and have more time and tape to concentrate on the best parts. Local customs and events will bring flavour and personality to your videos which will stand out over more anonymous street scenes which don’t have a ‘hook’ to distinguish it, let alone reference to where it is. Always ask yourself: ‘Would my friends be jealous?’ If not, turn off the camcorder and keep looking.

Time of day is also important. Sunrise and sunset are often the most spectacular. This also avoids the problems of shooting in a bright midday sun. It’s also worth taking shots of one place at different times, not just for the contrast in light and colours but for the way it tells a story. By creating a beginning, middle and end to an event, say a weekly market, a complete picture can be presented to the viewer. It’s easy to forget how unusual new people and places are when you have become used to them. Try and look at things from the perspective of someone who’s spent their entire life on the Outer Hebrides. If six camels and a dog represents rush hour in the High Atlas then that’s your shot. What may seem mundane today will appear colourful and exotic back in Blighty.

With camcorder technology, sound quality has always played poorer cousin to that glamourous upstart, video. But the gap is closing and whether you have high quality digital audio from a DV cam or an external microphone you can add a lot of value with a complementary soundtrack. You may not be able to touch, taste or smell the jungle scene but if you can hear as well as see it your ability to bring the scene to life is doubled. You may be best making a separate recording and dubbing it on later.

It’s a good idea to look out for cutaways and establishing shots to signpost different sections of your video. These need only be brief; there’s only so long you can expect your friends to be interested in looking at video of a static road sign, beach or side of a mountain. The reason you’re not holding a camera is because you literally want to record a living scene. This means capturing moving living things ie people and animals. Small people, such as children, are the perfect players for such scenes and are usually more oblivious to being videoed than the older variety as well as being more animated. Be careful with American and French types – excess noise and bright colours may spoil the shot.

When filming locals it may be best to ask permission, some cultures believe you’re capturing their soul while others believe you should pay to have the honour of catching their dog in the corner of your shot. Zoom lenses tend to come into their own at such times.

Finally, there’s another reason why you should keep the camcorder in your bag when you’re planning your award-winning travelogue. Your footage should remind you what a great time and place this was. So, you better have some good times to be reminded of. After all, you’re on holiday.

VideoCamera magazine 1998

Bush TV

Does the Bush Sunrise herald a new dawn or a false one? We peered beneath its virginal white sheen in search of answers to the big questions in life…

There are times in a competitive marketplace when products in a certain price range offering a similar array of features have little to choose between them. That’s why God didn’t rest on the seventh day – he created Bush products. There’s nothing very average about this very reasonable-sounding £170 of TV. Its seasonal white finish immediately singles it out. Unfortunately, it also highlights your second impression, which conjures up the dreaded ‘C’ word – cheap.

If the Sunrise has a target market, it’s at the lower end of a social scale drawn from Harry Enfield characters. Okay, it’s not that bad looking – just remember to put it back in the cellar when you've finished your viewing. At the foot of this rather striking exterior is a fold-down flap that, despite running full across the TV’s front, houses Lilliputian basic controls, all of which have the likely lifespan of Salman Rushdie at a Nation of Islam office party. To the back, there’s a socket for RF in and out and one for the aerial – but nowt else.

Channel search allows your three options: auto, semi-automatic and manual pre-setting. This is around two options too many. The only difference between semi and manual is that the latter requires you to hold down the search button while the stations are being located, while semi saves you the effort. Auto pre-setting takes a few minutes, but the picture is so unclear that we tried it again and checked the aerial. This didn’t improve matters, nor did trying to tune stations in manually.

Another interesting little quirk is the pregnant pause when hopping channels, accompanied by a green screen streaked with a series of horizontal lines. Fine tuning, which is accessed from the function button on the TV or handset, does improve matters, but not as much as you’d hope. The function button also brings up the settings for colour, brightness and contrast, which can only be stored in the memory and later recalled using the Normalisation function.

Other features include Off timer, which works in 30-minute intervals up to two hours, and On-timer, which switches on at any time before returning to standby after two hours if no keys are touched. Current time is also displayed, and as with the above settings, it is recalled using the Time button. For the terminally lazy, a setting function allows you to set which channel you wish to come on first and at what pre-set volume. Teletext functions are extensive. Options include page hold, double letter height, sub-page access, newsflash, updated pages and Fastext access using the colour-coded buttons.

It is impossible to test the CTV1480TS objectively using a signal generator as there are no suitable video inputs. Our subjective viewing suggests that this is easily one of the worst pictures we’ve seen for a while. Perhaps the best thing that can be said is that it lives up to its seasonal white colour by producing a picture in which it appears as if all channels are being broadcast live from a snowstorm somewhere in the Arctic circle. Grain, dot crawl, lack of fine detail – you name it, the CTV1480TS has got the lot. Sound performance, on the other hand, is quite acceptable, except at top volume, and you don’t really need to go that loud.

If you need a 14in TV, enjoy skiing programmes (even when they are not being broadcast), and have exactly £170 to spend, this set is the one for you. In any other circumstances, though, you'd be better advised to look elsewhere.

What Video & TV 1995

App Reviews

Duck Hunt

A right fowl up

The carnivores amongst us may appreciate a plucked duck crisping up nicely under the influence of some fruity marinade, but unless you’re a member of the shootin’ and huntin’ fraternity it can be difficult to work up an appetite to blow them out of the sky. Unless, of course, we’re talking angry zombie ducks – the kind of avian scum that have ruined many a gentle summer evening around the village pond.

So with the little flying bastards in our cross-hairs we set out on a journey to recreate this modern version of the game from our childhood. In this scenario, the furious fowl are trying to escape from Dark Forest and you tap the screens to kill them. If they escape you lose a life, while a high kill rate gets it back. Bullets can be either manually reloaded or will reload automatically after a three second delay.

We were glad to say that the graphics and gameplay pass muster comfortably and using our thumbs instead of an NES gun didn’t spoil our destructive fun. As this is not an official adaptation, we don’t know how long it’s going to be there, so we’d advise you to download now.

At last, another opportunity to give those zombie ducks their comeuppance. Take it now before it’s withdrawn

Jamie Oliver’s 20-minute meals

Lovely, jubbly, grubbly

For all the cheeky chappy patter and granny-kissing charm, Jamie Oliver has managed to avoid nauseating the nation as much as he might. Perhaps it’s because he genuinely seems to care and his televisual adventures frequently put him at odds with fat morons of all ages who seem incapable of grasping his geezer guidance to not poison their own children with pies constructed purely of lard and two-headed chickens.

So we find ourselves quite generously disposed to his latest culinary adventure in the form of the Jamie Oliver 20-Minute Meals app.

It’s fairly intuitive to follow the recipes, which you can scroll through with the flick of the finger you’re not dipping in the marinade. It might not sound as snappy but ‘Jamie Oliver’s 30-40 minute meals provided you remembered to put the rice on’ might have been a more accurate title, but the quality, if not the timing, was vaguely on course.

The price is as cheeky as the man that inspired it but the results were good, however long they really took to make

Gun Bros

The odd-sounding name refers to its titular armed brothers rather than a delayed, if reasonable, response to take out the 80’s pop idols Bros. Once that’s understood, you’ll find it a straightforward action game which requires its two players to use dual virtual joysticks to do no more than shoot as many of their opponents as possible without a princess to rescue in sight. So frantic large-scale butchery rather than philosophical contemplation is the theme of this game for which you are supplied with an infinity of bullets matched only by the number of enemies willing to offer themselves as victims. The backdrop offers variety in the form of the ten planets on which the action takes place.  It froze several times, and the graphics threw up some bugs.

In true mercenary style, you gain more coins the more bad guys you vaporise, and coins only mean one thing in such a world: bigger better weapons. This is where the catch lies. Life being cheap here, the financial return is somewhat meagre. And there’s the rub. Real human money is required to upgrade your cache of arms so whether this becomes a premium game depends on your ability to control your virtual blood lust.  

The Moron Test

Now here’s a game to play in the privacy of your own home – at least until you’ve gained some mastery of it. Similarly, the sense of schadenfreude engendered by your nearest and dearest being classified as a moron will make it one you’ll be happy to pass around the pub or office.

It claims, rather unconvincingly, to draw upon ‘scientifically proven’ tests, but one way or another you’ll have your work cut out to rapidly attain genius status. But within the context of this app’s world, it offers more opportunity to upgrade your official brainpower from village idiot to coruscating intellect than the real world. The tasks mainly involve visual gags, plays on words, and some arithmetic, and will undoubtedly stretch parts of your IQ that might otherwise remain untested by your daily routine.

To be crowned a genius, you have to negotiate four rounds – a process that is somewhat speedier than anything you are likely to have achieved in your early scholastic career. While the 60p it costs may not put you off – the space it occupies might at a fairly greedy 9.2MB. Once, therefore, you’ve earned your intellectual stripes, you may use them to jettison the app and make room for something else more useful. Unless, of course, you really are a moron.

I Journal

Processing words into joy

This is an app with lofty ambitions. It’s based on the principles of the book ‘The Happiness Advantage’ which advocates – to précis and paraphrase – that writing stuff down makes life better. For those over 30, it’s a diary (with templates to help you get going), or to those under, a blog. 

By first creating a free account with Catch.com, you allow syncing and the ability to view and edit your work on the web as well as Android devices. From here you can merge pictures and sound with your text. Gaining your happiness advantage over the other struggling saps out there can be done by drawing attention to certain aspects of your life: such as Gratitude, Exercise, Meditation and Kindness allowing yourself to move from task-based activities to those that are ‘meaning-based’. For those less inclined to hide their lights under bushels, you can share you new found happiness with friends and rivals using email, Facebook, or Twitter.

The journal that drags the diary from beneath the floorboards and onto your social network!  

Blast Monkeys

Monkeys, bananas, cannons. Enough said

Animal lovers and fans of artillery will delight in the opportunity to combine the two in the pursuit of the simian Holy Grail – a ripe bunch of bananas. And there are more of you out there than you might think – two million downloads and counting suggests that the public’s appetite for this sort of entertainment goes way beyond firing angry birds at obnoxious pigs.

The name given to the titular monkey by his digital handlers is Moki and we are told his only real concern in life is getting full on no more or less than three reasonably ripe bananas. Whether, for instance, he reads Nietzsche or not, remains unknown, but certainly he appears to be happy enough existentially despite the limited diet and unusual feeding method. 

The willing monkey guineapig is fired banana-wards from a cannon with a bunch earned for each completed level. The surrealism is advanced by passing bubbles, which allow your monkey’s head to float about for no particular reason. Levels increase sharply in difficulty after the first few stages as new obstacles appear around you.

Advertising on the game is relatively unobtrusive and contributes to it costing you nothing. Thirty new levels have been added and loading times cut although it takes a bit longer the first time you use it.

Who needs angry birds when you have ordnance-friendly monkeys to feed?

Fruit Slice

Fruit for knife nuts

You can have a lot of fun with a fruit. This premise has held true since time immemorial and is consolidated here with this free fruit-bashing extravaganza that is clearly based on the popular Fruit Ninja.

The main difference here is that samurai have replaced the ninjas, whom aficionados of eastern fighting folk will tell you are an altogether more honorable class of warrior. Like the Gestapo, they looked good in their fancy uniforms, and possibly practiced their sword skills by reducing random exotic foodstuffs to pulp. Or not. It’s hardly our job to trace the game’s historical roots, nor its characters’ motivation.

What we do know is that your fruit slices are made with a flourish of your finger across the screen if you are to avoid the angry bombs. Not sure why they are angry but then again a ‘good-natured’ bomb might consider itself in the wrong job. Anyway, more fruit slices, more points, but no prizes; if you want it explained pithily.

The game modes add a little variety. With Pipeline, fruits must be chopped up in a particular order, while One shot requires you to take out whole bunches with, that’s right, just one shot.
If you’re a natural chopper, you’ll love this slice ‘em up, be they bound for cyber chutneys, fruit salads or breakfast cereals.

Refraction

Laser quest

Refraction is not a simple game for simpletons so if you’re not part of its target market, look away now. Yes, I’m talking to you! Okay, you can stay for a bit, but don’t interrupt.

For not only does Refraction require you to exercise a little lateral thinking, but it’s not a facsimile of some game that’s created legions of digital addicts across the phone-bearing world.

Prisms and mirrors are its tools and the Euclidian science of geometry its inspiration so it’s a far squawk from the dubious anthropomorphic delights of angst-ridden avians and peevish pigs. (And no, prism is not where you’re sent when you’ve been bad.)

With these thoughtful tools, you hit balls by manipulating lasers, and these are the kind of lasers that aren’t easily fooled. Even the basic levels are relatively complex and the controls are not that easy to get the hang of either. Multiple solutions are offered for each of its 120 brain teasing levels with decent graphics and controls to keep you honest.

If you’re just not getting enough change from a pound, you can always plump for the free lite version, which still offers you 20 relatively heavy levels and a fair demand on your capacity for logical thinking.

Beware, genuine logical thought required. No pixellated animals were harmed in its making or playing

NHS Direct

Not an app for the truly sick  

This app provides an uncannily accurate reflection of the bricks and mortar service bequeathed to the blitzed British population as part of the post-war settlement.

It’s a marvelous idea but it doesn’t always offer the best service and sometimes you have to wait… and wait. For starters, it took a while to become available, but now that it’s here, it’s disappointing that its most readily given advice is to ring NHS Direct.  So those without this app will be that much higher up the queue to get through on the phone.

Anyway, forgetting the body for the moment, the process won’t tax your mind too much. Under Nature of Problem you select your illness of choice, which is followed by several pages of information about the NHS Direct, the condition of the patient, and how to go about dialing for the emergency services. All possibly useful when you have time on your hands, but perhaps less so when your swollen appendix has inflated with pus and is ready to blow.

As it turned out, our mystery illness was re-directed to the NHS call-back service so we’ll assume that gangrenous swelling on your old man isn’t a priority for treatment. Free medical care ain’t what it used to be.

Much like its inspiration, it’s a great idea that lacks the support to make it work properly.

TechRadar Magazine 2007