[Dave Rice]

Apparently they all have chips inside, so no.

[Dave Rice]

It’s got a USB 3 hard drive (not USB stick, it doesn’t like them) but apparently Live Pause only works with dedicated recorders not embedded TV.

I’ve had a Humax in the kitchen for quite a while and have now seen all the major GUIs, there’s no doubt that Sky have live TV cracked but not catch up and the Humax is slow. I haven’t seen what Sky’s Netflix integration is like though but they don’t have the breadth of apps so you need an extra box anyway.

The Panasonic Freesat TV (so I assume FreeView will be the same) has allowed me to get rid of all the other mains powered boxes. It needs an external HDD – a portable USB powered one is fine so that’s easy enough to hide somewhere. It has multiple powered USB ports so the Chrome Cast is OK too. I do however now have a Q Acoustics M2 Soundbase which having a subwoofer is pretty chunky, but it’s good enough to deal with streaming Spotify so the old compact HiFi has gone.

The Mrs wants the living room redone from bare walls out and we’ve already found some furniture it will disappear into. She’s now realised that the pictures of wall mounted TVs in the mags don’t reflect the reality of cables – they never show any – but some suitably decorated D shaped ducting has been approved 😊

[Dave Rice]

BL – I’m not getting rid of the Amazon TV box, it’s in the cupboard hibernating. But for the moment having everything under one controller (I’ve tried so called all-in-one remotes) is excellent. I have plugged the MK1 Chrome Cast back in though, just can’t get Panasonic’s casting working. Not something I do a lot but very useful when required.

Panasonic’s TV UI isn’t bad but I do miss the Sky TV guide. Although the Freesat 7 day guide is quite usable Sky really have nailed it, but I found the way Sky deals with catch up to be quite clunky. I do miss Live Pause though, another reason to stream rather than watch live.

We’ve been without a Sky box plugged in for 3 weeks now and haven’t really missed it so Sky will get the phone call tomorrow. Counting down the months until I can get out of the TalkTalk BB contract as Three is working out OK. Can’t get rid of the Cameron Safety Firewall which is ridiculously restrictive but firing up the VPN to my Digital Ocean server sorts that out.

[Dave Rice]

It shows how much the likes of Netflix and HBO are shaking up the media world.

My new FreeSat TV already has a whole raft of on demand apps installed with the ability to add more. Helping someone look for a cheap smart TV  for their kid it seems that’s the case with them all now, even a £cheap 22″ Bush TV at Argos.

Our new TV is OLED and I thought the Rugby World Cup look fantastic, but having missed an episode of Seven Worlds, One Planet I fired up iPlayer and was amazed when it came down in 4K. Stunning doesn’t do it justice and I don’t watch it live now.

I’m quite happy to halve my Sky bill by kicking it out and paying for Netflix instead, with the added bonus that my daughter at Uni can also use the subscription for entertainment and to watch Chinese and German content for her studies.

Streaming is where it’s going to be at, and Jezza is going to give us all free fibre BB to watch it (ROFL). Oh and my TV streaming is over the Three 4G, the non business side of the house is now converted over.

[Dave Rice]

Windows 1909 installed spectacularly quickly. Got all the basic utilities on then installed StoreMI.

As you can see from the pic below it appears to set up a 3rd drive which is the sum total of the two real drives and this is what Windows writes to. StoreMI then decides if a particular block needs to be fast or slow. I also set up the 2GB memory cache, with 16GB available it seemed daft not to.

So far it does what it says on the tin, but as everything was on the NVMe drive (the HDD had to be blank) it’s no faster, but then it’s not slower either 😀

The real test will come when he downloads his Steam library, that will be more than the NVMe could handle on it’s own.

As expected this PC is very quick to boot and snappy in use. I’ve come to expect no less now even with the cheaper CPUs like the 200GE or 2200G. These “quad” CPUs have more than enough grunt to get Windows up and running and with 8GB+ and an NVMe boot drive they just fly.

[Dave Rice]

It’s built, software later.

[Dave Rice]

The mega machine bits arrive today and because it’s intended to one day overclock it (no real need to now, part of the future proofing) I’ve ordered two 120mm fans for the front of the Bitfenix Nova case. They’re just BitFenix Spectre PWM jobs as I thought they might as well all match. Unfortunately no window or light show on this one as it’ll be hidden away under a desk.

The Gigabyte B450 Gaming X has enough headers for one each and I know from their Auros boards that there will be some fancy fan control available. I’ll have a play when stress testing it.

I did think of a basic AIO water cooler for the R7 2700X but as I think I mentioned elsewhere the bundled Wraith Prism kept an R5 2600 well under control so I’ve left it. I’ll know if that was a good decision by the end of the day 😀

[Dave Rice]

As I read it there will be a way of upgrading to 1909 via media. However there will be the usual multiple restarts and time taken. So business as usual.

EDIT – just had a look in Settings – Windows Updates, it’s there. Hit the button at 11:33, desktop back after download / install / reboot at 11:36

[Dave Rice]

I just leave it on the motherboard knows best 😀

[Dave Rice]

You can still get PAYG Sim only deals but yes a lot are bundles.

Tesco do what they call their Triple Credit tariff and is still pay for what you use. The name comes from the fact that they triple your top up with a months worth of credit of double what you paid in that lasts a month.

So if on 1st December you topped up £10 they’d give you £20 extra to use in December. On 1st Jan you would only have whatever’s left of your original tenner. Great if you do >£10’s worth of calls and texts a month and nothing lost if you only do less than a tenner.

[Dave Rice]

Aimed at Corporate users really who deploy updates themselves.

For the rest of us it’s still delivered via Windows Updates but rather than as one lump they’ve been drip feeding it in.

[Dave Rice]

It comes formatted with FAT32 as that is supported by almost all devices. However that doesn’t mean it’s the best format for what you want to do with it. If you’re using it for Windows PC backups then NTFS will be better.

[Dave Rice]

Windows 10 networking is a minefield, steer clear 😲

Buffalo do some good basic NAS at decent prices, I used them before Synology came on the scene. The Buffalo LinkStation 210 2TB 1-bay (1 x 2TB) is £84 at E-Buyer. Data sheet here.

They are set up from a PC app which guides you through setting up the admin account and a basic share. That may be all you need, but the software also lets you do more advanced stuff should you ever want to. It also bundles the NovaStor PC backup app which IIRC does the job as well as anything.

As usual it’s Linux under the bonnet so you know it’s built on solid foundations but you’ll never go near a command line 😊

[Dave Rice]

A lot of backup programs can be set to split the backups into smaller chunks. In EaseUs ToDo it’s customizable.

However the only reason I can see for using FAT32 is if you are going too use the drive in a device that doesn’t understand NTFS. If it’s only going into a Windows PC format it as NTFS.

[Dave Rice]

From what I’ve seen of these FAQs, unless they declare independence the Crown Dependencies are at the mercy of the UK Government’s negotiations because they piggy back on what we do (Protocol 3) rather than anything in their own right. It’s different for Gibraltar as the UK’s membership of the EU extends to include them.

They’re not interested in independence as their major trading partner is the UK but apparently they do have a disproportionate amount of EU citizens which could impact adversely on them if that aspect goes TU. They’re assuming as part of the UK customs union that they would be included in any new UK Free Trade agreements on goods, but acknowledge that’s not a given and any terms may not be in their best interests.

They would not be in a NI situation and have no desire to be as it may cause them more harm than good. In short in their view, come what may, they will be better off staying as they are, aligned to us, as they are too small to go it alone.

[Dave Rice]

No, they are only outraged if it’s going to “Marxist” Corbyn when it’s then all the proof you need.

[Dave Rice]

There’s way too many cores and I wouldn’t normally choose a Ryzen 7, however when that sort of bundle is dangled in front of you!

His Dad is a very keen amateur photographer so if he gets the bug, especially these days if it’s video related, it could turn out to be a good buy. The brief was a certain level of gaming with as much future proofing as practical without breaking the bank and I think it does that.

[Dave Rice]

It will push the most used file blocks onto the SSD and with 256GB to play with (the maximum it supports) it shouldn’t have any issues keeping things current. So whatever game becomes his flavour of the month will quickly get itself on the fast load list. It’s not a caching product, it manipulates drive mapping, so it doesn’t have to keep tables of things going.

The only thing I’m “worried” about is backup. Reading the notes it’s as clear as mud with regards a whole system restore. I’ll probably get him a Microsoft or Google Account and use cloud folder synchronizing to keep his personal files safe. Steam libraries are easily rebuilt, especially as they have 200 Mbps BB from Virgin. Installing the base W10 from scratch on these NVMe machines is a matter of minutes.

[Dave Rice]

Just about to order one of those Kallis Bundles plus an MSI Radeon RX 580 ARMOR 8GB for my mates son’s Christmas pressie (lucky bugger).

It’s going to have a fast NVMe SSD plus a larger spinner for the Steam library so I’m going to try StoreMI for the first time.

[Dave Rice]

For a change the weather isn’t coming up the M5 from Cornwall so we’ve missed the worst of it. Lovely and sunny today but damp everywhere as it doesn’t get warm enough to dry out all the leaves covering everything. Bloody cold in the wind though.

[Author]

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