larryni.me.uk

I was in town earlier and popped in to Vodafone to check out the Blackberry Storm. First impressions: what a beautiful phone!

It’s a great size and weight, the display is brilliant and crystal clear. The touch screen is excellent – move your finger over a button or a key of the on-screen keyboard and it glows blue. Press a bit harder and it activates – you can even feel it! I found scrolling the screen up/down a bit awkward, but am sure that I could get the hang of it within a couple of hours of using it. The sound quality of the built-in speaker is very decent (it also has a normal headphone jack), and the video quality is excellent. I couldn’t try out the web browser as there was no SIM inserted. Rotate the phone by 90 degress to the left or right and the screen flips into landscape mode. That didn’t always work first time though and often took several attempts. There’s 2 different layouts for the on-screen keyboard. Keep it in portrait and you get a smaller layout with 2 characters per key, switch to landscape and you get s QWERTY layout that lets you comfortable type with your thumbs.

One drawback is that it hasn’t got any wifi capabilities. You could maybe forgive them for that, but then I checked out the contracts they come with. Internet access is included in all the plans, but when I asked about the bandwidth limits I was told that all the plans include a ‘whopping’ 500MB/month. Wow, that’s lousy! I would have expected to get several GB. I asked if there was some kind of Internet add-on that you could purchase separately but that’s a no-go as well. Once you go over the 500MB limit they start charging you for any additional MB at extortionate prices. That’s just ridiculous.

Looks like I won’t be getting a Storm once the current plan for my N95 runs out in a few months. Unfortunately RIM went with Vodafone for the exclusive deal in the UK instead of a more decent carrier like 3 or O2. And I certainly can’t afford to shell out £400 or so quid for a Storm without contract. I’ll have to see if I can find a G1 phone to try out, it certainly looks like a better deal.

Here’s how I got the tv-out (S-video) on my Radeon card to work. I’ve been using this for the past 6 or so months and it works great – no more need for Windows It works with the open-source ATI drivers, and with a slight modification it should also work with the Intel drivers (I haven’t tried that one yet). I found the original instructions here.

I am using xrandr and xvattr to enable the tv display, and vlc to play the video. First install xvattr:

sudo apt-get install xvattr

My Radeon 9200 only supports an S-video resolution of 800×600 and my desktop is set to 1400×1050. To get around this I specify an 800×600 area on the desktop that will then be shown (cloned) on the tv. The command line input is quite long and not the easiest to remember, so I used 2 small scripts which I placed in my ~/bin folder.

First create a new text file and copy the following into it:

#!/bin/bash
# Enable S-Video at 800x600
xrandr --addmode S-video 800x600 && xrandr --output S-video --mode 800x600 --pos 200x200 && xvattr -a XV_CRTC -v 1

Save it as ~/bin/tvon

The tvon script displays an 800×600 area whose top left corner is positioned at 200 px from the top and 200 px from the left of the screen.

Create another text file with the following contents:

#!/bin/bash
# Disable S-Video
xvattr -a XV_CRTC -v 0 && xrandr --output S-video --off

Save the file as ~/bin/tvoff

The tvoff script turns S-video off again.

Make the scripts executable:

chmod a+x ~/bin/tvon
chmod a+x ~/bin/tvoff

Instead of using the scripts from the command line I added 2 launchers to my top panel.

Now we need to set up vlc. I have version 0.9.4 installed and the preferences window has changed. If you are using an earlier version then check the original instructions on the Ubuntu forums for the correct options.

Launch vlc and open Tools > Preferences. In the Interface section deselect the Integrate video in Interface option. This will ensure that we get a window-less video output.

In the bottom left of the Preferences window select to show all settings and click on the video section. Scroll down and change the Window properties as follows:

Video width: 800
Video height: 600
Video X coordinate: 200
Video Y coordinate: 200

Save and close the preferences window.

All that you need now is to connect your tv to your graphics card and you’re ready to go.

Note: I did have problems getting this to work with Compiz, so you might wanna disable it first. It also doesn’t fill the full width of the tv screen, I get a 1/2 inch margin on either side. I hardly notice it though.

Finally! Series 3 of of everybody’s favourite geek culture comedy The IT Crowd is back this Friday on Channel 4 at 10pm.

Here’s the last episode (6) of series 2 as a refresher:

There are some great Japanese garage bands out there and here’s the latest I’ve come across: The Routettes – Christine on guitar/vocals, Helen on bass, and Cindy on drums playing live at Tropicoco, Nakatsu, Oita.

The likeness of Christine and Chris Jack is striking. They’ve gotta be siblings!