Java Thinking

An Optus representative came knocking the other week, and explained that by having an Optus home phone, broadband and mobile phone (which I have), I'd qualify for a 25% discount and free Fetch TV . Now, this is all GOOD. I had to upgrade my mobile plan from $29 to $30 (for which they wanted a $100 plan change fee), but hopefully my next bill will be 25% smaller (down from $80ish to $60ish). And, I'm currently enjoying the Fetch TV experience. This set-top box has a 1T hard disk, and a pretty good interface for navigating the recordings and (free albeit old) IPTV movies. I'm not saying its the best, but it does have me considering turning off the MythTV media center since it takes care of recording terrestrial TV (but I would need a DNLA alternative or similar for watching audio/video/dvds - maybe a NAS? or XBMC?). See https://www.optus.com.au/shop/broadband/bundles/85 An interesting point to note, now that I have FetchTV I can rent and stream movies for approx $6.50 -...

The problem with Australian Digital TV or at least, using a media center in Australia is: The standard def and high def channels are almost the same, but not quite. The high def channels have subtly different programs such as special documentaries. The EIT is a mess - spelling mistakes, program name changes (series premire, season finale, double episode etc), and not starting/finishing on time. The consequence of (1) is that you can't just go and say 'record all' - you've then got to go edit that rule to say 'only on this channel', otherwise you'll end up with 2 recordings of the same program, one standard def, one high def. You wouldn't actually want to delete one of the channels, because the differences can be interesting. The EIT issue is more serious - instead of being able to say 'record all occurances of "Program 1" only on this channel' you need to change this to not be so exact on the program name and use "%Program 1%...