Wow, I normally agree with most of what you write, but irritating and confusing? Yikes! I love my TiVo, and find it highly enjoyable to use. The kids can use it to put Hi5 on after kindy, it cant be too confusing if my 5 year old can use it! (the TiVo kids zone function is great!)
cheers,
Joseph

You can change the vertical buttons to horizontal with a quick Terminal command. With iTunes NOT running, open Terminal and type/paste the following...
defaults write com.apple.iTunes full-window -1
and to revert back to vertical,
defaults write com.apple.iTunes full-window -0

Cheers,
Joseph.

This morning I have signed up for the XT Network competition here.

After entering my details, and leaving the "Yes, I would like to receive further information from Telecom that may be of interest to me. *" box UNCHECKED, when the submit button is pressed the follow appears ...

"One or more fields are missing. Mandatory fields are marked with a *
Please check the box so we can stay in touch."

So I am REQUIRED to select the "Yes, I want to receive info" box, and cannot proceed without checking the box.
Is this polite/allowed/legal?

Does the The Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007 apply here?

Surely "Ensuring electronic messages are sent only to customers who have consented to receiving it" means you must be able to NOT consent to receiving messages too?

Come on Telecom, I do not want to "receive further information from Telecom that may be of interest to me" and have subsequently provided my junk mail address.

Cheers,
Joseph.

My classmates went to Mexico...

Too soon?

Cheers,
Joseph.

If our freeview decoder is built into the TV, how can you record in HD onto an external harddrive or dvd recorder?
We had thought we needed to get an external box which does all the HD/freeview stuff, and then pipes it into the harddrive/dvd recorder so we can tape freeview in HD, and then onwards into the freeview compat TV.
If the decoder is inside the TV, how does the dvd/harddrive recorder get the decoded HD freeview signal?

Hi Andrew,
In my case, no, it can't be done. With the Sony KDL40V-4000, the integrated digital tuner is fantastic, but the TV cannot output the digital channels to be recorded. Thus I can't record TVNZ 6 and 7, nor can I record HD programming (even if my recorder would support it) from the TV's built in tuner.
So...

1. watch hd tv live and in hd
2. record shows in hd so when we watch them later they will also be in hd

1. Yes
2. No.

So I am looking in the future to a PVR with it's own independent dual digital tuners that can record full HD programming, and then play back via HDMI the full HD goodness.
But at this stage anything I record is in SD using the Analog tuner of my HDD recorder.

Fantastic! My faith in [most] Americans has been restored, this is a brilliant result!

Ahh, the ABC footage looks vastly better than the CNN stuff, it all fits perfectly! 102 to 34.... wooooo!

It's actually ABC -- and it's looking nice on a widescreen TV for me.

Wha? Are you watching TVONE on Freeview HD? It's CNN on my telly :) and currently shows Mccain 8, Obama (falls off the screen!).Frustrating!

If anyone from TVNZ happens to read these comments...
1. Your contact us form on website is broken. After entering all required information and typing my message, the next page fails, and message disappears.
2. Please can you scale down the CNN feed by about 5% on the current election special broadcast?
The bottom edge is cut off (on Freeview HD) and one cannot see all the statistics on the screen.
i.e can see the [projected] number of EC votes won by McCain, but not the number won by Obama.

Hi Russell,

I happen to have a laser engraver at my disposal, an Epilog Fibermark http://www.epiloglaser.com/fibermark_laser.htm.
Drop me an email if you'd like to have a look and/or go nuts engraving.

Cheers,
Joseph