I do. I don’t know whether I qualify as a film buff. Yeah, I suppose I probably am. Albeit one who doesn’t watch many films any more.

ScotRail comes to mind. God knows the staff do put up with some abuse, but one of the main things I love about self-employment is not having to play the idiotic game of “How many Scotrail staff does it take to manually inspect a ticket while giving you a shovelfull of attitude in the space of one hour” twice a day.

From a punter point of view, all I care about is that I can access a site – I hate browser sniffers much more than I hate layout issues. IE7’s been out long enough for a “sod IE6″ attitude to be perfectly reasonable, I think.

I’d agree. You’re right about HD video recording: i’ve defaulted to 720 because I genuinely can’t see any difference between it and 1080, plus I get more room on my camcorder memory cards. That’s partly the problem with Blu-Ray: my telly simply isn’t big enough for there to be any substantive difference between a plain old DVD (never mind upscaling) and Blu-Ray. It’s hardly moving from VHS to DVD.

@Squander two:
> I suppose we’ll shortly see loads of extras on Blu-Ray releases that aren’t on their DVD equivalents

I’m sure you’re right, but does anybody other than film buffs watch movie extras? I did when I used to review DVDs for work, but since then I don’t think I’ve watched a single one.

I do think with Blu-Ray it comes down to price versus what you get. And what you get is a fractional improvement on DVD, so the price should be fractionally higher. Supermarkets etc have created a situation where DVD is £12ish, £15 for a really big title. Blu-ray at nearly double that is just daft.

> I simply never get that “Need to upgrade this technology” feeling with DVD.

Me too. DVD – particularly with an upscaling player – is good enough. To me Blu-Ray sits in the same camp as Super Audio CD: impressive technically, but I’ve no interest in paying any more for it.

Why, thank you. What am I blabbing about this month? Is it the fitness club/lawyers one? There’s a bit of a gap between writing ‘em and them hitting print so I lose track…

> and which ironically had the most blatantly abusive and aggressive staff I had encountered in years.

I’ve noticed that too. Naturally I’d never condone abusing staff, but the signs do tend to appear in places where you’re treated like absolute shite – jobcentres, airports, transport in general, government offices, ikea… for every drunken arse abusing people for no good reason there’s someone at the end of their tether from dealing with a kafkaesque organisation who thinks that having a few scummy customers mean they should operate on the assumption that every customer is scum.

It brings to mind my recent observation of a workplace which was wallpapered in posters with warnings that “we do not tolerate abuse and aggression against our staff” and which ironically had the most blatantly abusive and aggressive staff I had encountered in years. The way they were acting like petty thugs towards quiet, polite, and innocent customers, who were left standing there stunned at the way they were being treated, was disgusting. It’s the abuser playing the victim, letting the world know that they reserve the right to dish it out, but not to take it, and that they’ll ring the police if you dare to call them on their game.

That’s probably because your idea of big and other people’s doesn’t match.

Other than with games (since you tend to sit right in front of the screen, so you do see a difference since you’re only a foot or two away), I don’t reckon that any HDTV stuff is worth it below 50″ in an average size living room. I’ve tried comparing 720p with 576i pictures and, unless i’m about 18″ or less from the screen on a 42″ TV, the difference is neglible. Also if you’ve got a modern HDMI compliant DVD player, it is probably already upscaling to HDTV resolutions which, although there is no more picture detail, does get rid of a lot of noise. Generally, on a 32″ HDTV most people would not be able to tell the difference between a Blu-ray, HD-DVD or upscaled DVD.

Rather intrigued by the email I got from .net stating that the latest issue is embargoed until 2 January due to a juicy exclusive!

Bloody stupid brand name, too.