Sony’s PS3-sized hole keeps on getting deeper

~ Inquisitor

So at the current count, the European PS3 is going to be more expensive than the US or Japan, the British PS3 is going to be more expensive than most of Europe or Ireland, the PS3-only games are going to suck until Metal Gear Solid comes out and you’re not going to be able to play all your old PS2 titles, although you’re going to be able to play ‘some’, because they’ve done a “cost reduction” (without actually reducing the cost).

Even more infuriating is that while one of the very few good decisions Sony have made with the PS3 is to make PS3 games region free, this doesn’t apply to the PS2 part of the system. As a result, you can’t play our PS2 games on an American PS3, but you will be able to play more of the American games. Lovely.

If you really must have a PS3, you can buy a British PS2 (now £50 from ASDA) and an American 60GB PS3 for less than the £425 you’ll be screwed by if you buy a single PS3 here, even when you include VAT and Customs charges. It’ll probably arrive before the launch too. Such a shame that Sony keep on threatening retailers who try and sell even a control pad over here (and apparently perfectly legally, too) – why would you want to encourage them, anyway?

Anyway, a price comparison worth pointing out: the US Xbox360 Premium pack is $400 (£204.74). Adding VAT to that, you get £240.57. Considering shipping costs from the US that you’d have to cover, the British price of £269 actually starts to look reasonable, especially when you consider that bundles are starting to show up at around that price with actual games in it – and, what’s more, there’s actually more than one 360 game you’d want to own. When Microsoft are playing fairer than the competition, Sony really need to consider exactly why they’re in the wrong and how to get themselves out of it before the PS3 sinks them.

Sugababes vs. Girls Aloud – a match made in hell

~ Inquisitor ~ 2 Comments

It may be for charity, but it’s just wrong. I’m no Aerosmith or Run-DMC fan, but the original “Walk This Way” retooling worked, in its own way, because of the massive differential between the two bands’ styles. Sugababes and Girls Aloud are basically the same, so it doesn’t work at all; it’s lacking in both musical talent and enthusiasm, and the lack of enthusiasm is the real killer. This simply should not be allowed to exist.

I’m reserving opinion on the Kaiser Chiefs album for now; it’s getting terrible reviews from those who’ve heard the leak, “Ruby” is annoying and below-par, and worse than that it got a glowing X&Y type review from Q magazine, but that doesn’t make a difference until I’ve actually heard the thing. Song titles like “Love Is Not A Competition (But I’m Winning)” do not make me hopeful.

The Brit Awards 2007: how do we fix it?

~ Inquisitor ~ 2 Comments

Why should I even bother going after the Brit awards? After all, they’ve always been out of step, out of taste and completely irrelevant throughout all the years they have existed, even back when they were the BPI awards.

Well, mainly because a lot of the awards are voted for by the general public, and those that aren’t show a depressing lack of talent. For instance, the Best British Male this year is James Morrison, one of the many Blunt clones that are starting to pollute the charts, and amongst those nominated was Lemar who, let me remind you, came third in his “reality” show for a reason. The two decent nominees, Jarvis Cocker and Thom Yorke, both of whom released excellent solo albums last year, of course had no chance of winning.

Best International Breakthrough Artist, voted for by “MTV viewers”, gave us the pathetic, forgettable Orson over the musically interesting Gnarls Barkley. Best British Single had a truly terrible selection of nominees, all to a man (and they were only men) soft-rock garbage – depressingly including the resurrected Take That, who won, and probably deserved to over that lot. Best International Album was the Killers’ seriously inferior “Sam’s Town”, over Bob Dylan; the Killers also took Best International Artist over Bob, which on the basis of “Modern Times” is somewhat of a travesty.

What I don’t get about the Brits is that the BPI could, if it wanted to, award music that didn’t suck. It would be as easy as getting the right jury in. For instance, the best award by far is the one given out by Radio 2 listeners, Muse as best British live act (which they undoubtedly are right now); previous pleasant surprises by public vote have included the famous 1999 Belle and Sebastian “Best British Newcomer” win, rigged by their fanbase and ironically given out after their third album. So the Brits really needs better targeted public voting, and a better nominations stage – if Radio 2 and/or 6music listeners could nominate an “alternative Brit” award, for example, things would be a lot more interesting on stage.

And why isn’t there an award for hard rock and metal, anyway? Even the Grammys, boring as they are, give out awards for Best Metal Performance, which is often won by people like Tool. That would be a lot more fun than giving Oasis an award for outstanding contribution to British music (which obviously means, from the context, “ripping off other people’s riffs and being able to sustain it for two albums”.) Having an award with Iron Maiden competing is guaranteed to up the tempo a bit, although if it’s awarded the same way as the current system bloody Razorlight would probably win. They used to have Best Dance Act, awarded well to people like Massive Attack and the Prodigy; it became Best Urban Act, awarded to people like Joss Stone and Lemar, before dying this year.

The BPI are, of course, conservative and scared of controversy; the awards weren’t transmitted live between the 1989 Sam Fox disaster (although almost all of the problems with that were technical rather than personal) and now, and probably won’t be again for a while after they stupidly invited Russell Brand in. But controversy is all people ever remembers about the Brits – Sam Fox, the KLF and Extreme Noise Terror ‘dead sheep’ moment, Jarvis Cocker’s stage invasion, Chumbawumba and Prescott. They really shouldn’t be scared of it – a good award ceremony always has a few surprises in store, which is why moments like the Belle and Sebastian win are so memorable.

That appears to be, unfortunately, the way the British music industry works, so we probably won’t see it fixed for a while, if ever. Interestingly, the best British album award was given to the Overrated Bloody Arctic Monkeys, who won the Mercury prize a few months ago. The Mercurys are so much more credible than the Brits, aren’t they?

Hot Fuzz: an advance preview

~ Inquisitor

It’s really good. Go see it.

Full review coming up after the in progress Notes on a Scandal one, along with a little rant about the Brit awards. In the meantime, however, I have a few things to do and a very dodgy Net connection (and if Virgin don’t get their act together soon it’s time to remind them that I can get Be Unlimited and call their bluff.)

Apparently screening at SXSW

~ Inquisitor

Amongst interesting stuff, a film I’m not sure anyone wants to see…

JAMES BLUNT: RETURN TO KOSOVO
Directed by Steven Cantor.
Platinum-selling musician (and former soldier) James Blunt, returns to the battlefield at which he served, for an emotional journey of reflection. (World Premiere)

Not the most appealing way to spend a few hours, really.

Nigel Humphries is an idiot

~ Inquisitor ~ 3 Comments

“In fact, it makes us feel a bit guilty that we haven’t campaigned hard enough on the legitimate front against the things that we oppose, to do with criminalising and bullying motorists, and because of our failure to campaign hard enough, somebody’s had to resort to this.”

[Nigel Humphries, Association of British Drivers. Quoted in BBC News Online, “Letter bomb injures DVLA worker“]

No-one’s “had to resort” to anything. Motorists aren’t a persecuted minority, they’re the majority; thankfully the true minority are pillocks like you who think that just because you’re in a car immediately absolves your responsibilities towards anything else, and scumbags like this letter bomber (whatever the aim may be.) The ABD, for example, campaigns against ANPR cameras – the entire aim of which is to make motorists safer by spotting uninsured and stolen cars and taking them off the road, since anyone who’s ever had their car stolen or been hit by a stolen or uninsured car will testify to the hell it is getting compensated.

Over 3000 people a year die in motoring related incidents, with the largest percentage being other car users. Honestly, it’s really depressingly like the US Christian Right’s claiming persecution by “liberal establishment” when they’ve got one of their own as President and Fox/CNN/et al; motorists already get far too little examination by the mainstream.

Google for their website and you’ll find global warming denial, doing the usual stupid quote mining. As an added bonus, they quote Kary Mullis, a creationist, astrology freak and HIV denier. Brilliant minds at work there. Honestly, why are they even getting airtime?

Coming up on The Hard Sell…

~ Inquisitor

Yes, another unenforced absence courtesy NTLewest/Virgin Media and university work has finally ended, and I’m finally in the right mood to write again. I’ve seen Notes on a Scandal and a review will be up tomorrow evening. In the mean time, why not have a look at this hilarious Amazon review? (via b3ta links.)

Unfortunately, Amazon seem to have finally taken down all the Jordan/Andre reviews, which were hilarious – spoilsports.

Oscar nominations are out.

~ Inquisitor
  • Dreamgirls not being nominated for Best Picture is very surprising, I must say, along with The Departed and Little Miss Sunshine getting in there. I predict Letters from Iwo Jima.
  • Penelope Cruz gets a nomination for Volver. Unfortunately for her, this is Helen Mirren’s year in that category; if Meryl Streep gets it it will be a serious 1977-scale Oscar miscarriage.
  • As expected, Martin Scorcese is on track to lose his fifth Oscar in the Best Director category (although with the number of noms The Departed has gained, who knows?) The winner will probably be Eastwood, Inarittu or Greengrass, though.
  • Still on the subject of The Departed, Mark Wahlberg’s Supporting Actor nomination is somewhat of a surprise considering how little screen time he actually had (most of it spent swearing entertainingly and, admittedly, memorably.) If you wanted to nominate a BSA from the film, Martin Sheen or even Jack Nicholson would have been a better bet. Eddie Murphy will probably take the category anyway.
  • Best Foreign Language Film: Pan’s Labyrinth. Say it.
  • Children of Men gets nominated for best cinematography and editing, both of which it deserves completely; and best screenplay, which is wide open (Borat is nominated here, which is a surprise.)
  • An Inconvenient Truth is nominated for Best Documentary, which is intriguing.
  • Honorary Oscar for Ennio Morricone. At last!

So an intriguing mixed bunch this year, no one film dominating. Interesting night ahead, I think.

The PS3 price chart

~ Inquisitor

NTLewest has managed to solidly screw up my connection for a number of days (it still isn’t working quite as quickly as would be expected for a 4Mbit connection), so sorry all. In the meantime, I’m going to bash the PS3 again, because Sony have just released the official prices for Europe and have explained their screwing of Europeans as being due to VAT and ‘retailers’ (never mind that most British retailers are desperate to offer discounts on everything else in order to compete with Tesco et al). So here’s a little comparison table for the 60GB version…

  • USA: $599.00, €462.47, £303.69
  • Continental Europe: €599.00, $775.82, £393.34 (29.5% increase on US price)
  • Ireland: €629.00, $814.68, £413.04 (36% increase on US price, 5% increase on European price)
  • UK: £425.00, $838.27, €647.21 (40% increase on US price, 8% increase on European price, 3% increase on Irish price)

Right. It’s all to do with VAT. No matter that the highest VAT rate in Europe is held by Denmark and Sweden at 25% (the lowest are Luxembourg and Cyprus at 15%), which doesn’t explain the hike. No matter that Sony have used the VAT excuse for their Irish price gouging despite the fact that the Irish rate is 21%. And no matter that the British are the most expensive of the lot, despite a 17.5% rate.

If Sony weren’t threatening importers, it would be cheaper to bring one over from the US even if you got stung by Customs. They’re all coming from the same factories in China through the same container ships going through the same places, and the PS3 has a full multi-voltage power supply. Plus, since you’re going to play it on a HDTV anyway, there isn’t even a PAL/NTSC issue.

No, Sony is ripping us off on price. It doesn’t help that they don’t have any good games yet either, really. Avoid until the games come and the price goes down, at least; at this rate, the PS3 deserves to be as unpopular in Europe as the Xbox360 is in Japan.

The pros and cons of iPhone

~ Inquisitor ~ 9 Comments

Well, I guess every single blogger in the world has already done an iPhone story, but I might as well.

The fact is, it’s beautiful. It’s easily the best looking device Apple have made since the titanium Powerbook G4. The design has that sort of “Why on earth has no-one else thought of that?” feeling that only Apple seem to manage to do well nowadays. It makes the most use of the available space efficiently and prettily, it manages to fit full functionality into that small space, the touch interface appears to be very well thought out and it has a really good screen resolution. The fact that it can go from a normal phone call into a Blackberry-esque email system simply by clicking the right button is fantastic; it’s the big advantage of a touchscreen and they appear to have come up with a version that works.

Plus, it’s got WiFi and Bluetooth 2.0, so you don’t have to pay provider’s nasty internet rates nearly as often as you do with other such phones. This all needs to be factored in when considering its nasty US price ($500 for 4GB/$600 for 8GB, or going through the currency channel £250/£300 over here – although it’ll likely be less because of the British mobile contract system.)

Some of the caveats bloggers are tossing about aren’t really, for instance with regard to the battery life. The “5 hour” life Apple quotes is talk time, which is very different from standby time; the iPhone has so many proximity sensing features it’s almost certain to have a very good standby time, although it isn’t quoted on the technical specs page (although a 16-hour music only time is, which is about as good as my Creative Zen Touch). If left alone, as a mobile most often is, it’ll probably last a whole lot longer.

If we go to Nokia’s website and look up one of its comparable smartphones, for instance the N80, note the listed talk and standby times: the N80 has a talk time of “up to three hours”, two hours less than the iPhone even when GSM-only, while it manages a lot more on standby. The only people who will have their iPhone turn off after five hours are people doing lots of Web hopping and making constant phone calls, and these people will be just as unhappy with an N80. Or how about the Motorola Q (once you get past the obnoxious Flash anim, 4 hours quoted talk time)? Or maybe the Blackberry Pearl (3.5 hours)? The iPhone isn’t at all out of place in this market, really. The only comparable smartphone I could find with a better quoted talk time was the Sony Ericsson W950i, which manages 7h30 on GSM only (but drops to 2h30 on UMTS, which may explain the lack of 3G in the iPhone).

Certainly the iPhone isn’t perfect – the software lockdown is unnerving, although there’s enough unique software on there that finding equivalents for the stuff that isn’t really shouldn’t be a problem, and both the lack of UMTS and “US-only until Christmas” are really annoying – but you really don’t need to bash it for something which is true of every other phone on the market. Cisco willing, the mobile phone market is going to get very interesting from now on as Motorola et al desperately attempt to copy the iPhone’s looks and feature set, and good luck to them. They’re all going to need it.