BBC iPlayer http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/ The BBC puts all their original content from TV and radio from the last 7 days on the Iplayer. A copy can be downloaded to your PC and kept for 30 days. There is also a web based version that uses flash, like youtube that can be streamed online and can be viewed full screen. It doesn’t only work in your browser, but also works on the IPhone/Ipod Touch, Wii and Media Center/XBOX 360. There are some really good shows on the iplayer, like Mock the week and Nevermind the Buzzcocks. This is an amazing service, easy to use, quick and lots of great content.
	ITV Catchup http://www.itv.com/catchup/ ITV were extremely slow about getting around to putting their content online unlike the other channels. The most important thing to note about ITV’s service is that it requires the installation of Microsoft’s Flash like plug-in called SilverLight. The biggest problem with this service is that there is nothing good on ITV, so there is nothing to watch.
	Channel 4 http://www.channel4.com/watch_online/ Channel 4′s is very impressive offering, as it includes many of the American shows it has the rights to in the UK. My personal favorite is My Name is Earl. The range of content is impressive. Viewing the content requires Windows Media player 11 and a large download of DRM codex. This means that you must be viewed on a Genuine version of Windows XP or higher, meaning I can watch anything on my Macbook.
	Channel 5 http://demand.five.tv/Home.aspx Channel 5 seems pretty good as well, it uses Flash and includes American content like my beloved House and Home and away. The only problem that it requires you to create a user.

These are just all the web based video that is just coming out the UK, there are lots of other services from America, many of which can not be accessed from the UK. There is one site, revision3, is a completely internet based Television network. It is mostly geek shows but there is really entertaining stuff on there like Diggnation, The totally rad show and Tekvilla.

With all those options, you now have no reason not to be glued to your Computer’s screen.

Gears of War For PC

Don’t miss understand me from the title of this post, I own Gears of War for the XBOX 360 and it was amazing. Gears of War on the Xbox 360 is one of te best games that I have ever played. That is why I was so disappointed when trying to play it the other day on a friend’s laptop.  I have already completed the game on the Xbox 360 and was in no real need to complete the game again, as I have better things to do with my time. A good friend of mine had got himself an extremely beefy new laptop and decided to buy the game to play on it. It had some problem installing it so I came over and got it working. As I had got it working, I was allowed the first “go” on it. A login my gamertag, Spacedmonkeyj, which took like a living age, much longer than normal. It took about 10 minutes to login, which already a bad sign. After it finally signed in, the menu was painfully slow and then tried to start the game. It took another 10 minutes to get into the game. When the game loaded, it was a very impressive slideshow but little else. Each frame was displayed second by second with little movement being showed. So I manage to exit the game and return to Windows desktop. Where I turned everything running in the background that might have taken processor speed including firewall. Then restarted the game, this time it only took 5 minutes to load. The game was choppy and horrible, the screen refreshed so slowly the bad guys could easy appear on the screen without me seeing them and kill me. The game was so unattractive and I couldn’t get it to do a reload correctly. It took over 45 minutes of playing, blind luck and shooting a few seconds before the bad appears on the screen to finish a level that should only take a matter of minutes to complete. Then the game appears to crash the desktop is displayed in 800×600. After a few second the game reappears and takes a few more minutes to load the video. So mad at this point, I wait until the next level loads and exited the game.

It was horrible, truly amazing, surpirising, stupidly slow and horrible. I should explain. Gears of War was orignally designed for the XBOX 360 as basically the flagship title for the console, indeed my XBOX shipped with it in the box. So Microsoft decided to port the extremely popular game to their new platform Games for Windows. GFW is a really nice idea to make it easier to develop games for Windows and have one login/username for all multiplayer games. It also adds much of feeling of playing on XBOX 360, adding the Live Guide function and the much loved achivements points through games that support Games for Windows live. Using it on my friend’s laptop, a Acer Aspire 6920G which is a Intel Dual Core 2GHz 64bit proccessor with 4GB of Ram and a NVIDIA GeForce 9500M GS graphics card. This is a nice computer, bought new and it couldn’t manage to work this game. It is shocking to me that a brand new 2008 gaming laptop like this simple couldn’t cut it with the flagship game compared to the 3 year old XBOX 360. It was the most disappointed I have been with a game in my life. If games like this keep being made, you may well put the final nail in the coffin of PC gaming. I have to say, do not buy!