Orange is the new black

On Sunday Kath and I spent  lazy morning together then in the afternoon we headed to Matt and Christelles' house for a BBQ. We arrived to find Matt in full BBQ mode. We started with sausages and salad made by Christelle. Next up were lamb kebabs then steak. Christelle made a tarte for desert which was very tasty, served along with homemade ice cream. The ice cream was a little solid but very good, and despite Matts dire warning about ice cream being one of the most dangerous things in terms of food poisoning we were good the next day.

The kids were amusing themselves on the trampoline while we eat. We had a great evening, chatting about kids, life and many things.

Matt recommended Orange is the new black which Kath and I ploughed through. I found it an interesting series with some good characters. Kath and I enjoyed sitting together in each other company watching TV. We see so little of each other that just enjoying each other company is amazing.

Today we went out for a meal with my Parents and Jean to the Bull Head. Kath and I shared a fisherman's platter, while my parents and Jean all had fish and chips. The food was very tasty, I think that we had a great meal. Afterwards everyone came round to our house to see the garden and give coco a stroke. Coco certainly enjoyed the attention. It is always nice to see Jean she is such a lovely person, its hard not to be happy when she is around.

Crap streaming

Recently I bought yself a new TV, one of the features was that its Internet enabled, and like a modern smartphone has a series of apps.

It being a TV there are obvious video related apps, like Youtube and Vimeo and some less understandable applications like Twitter and Facebook.

One application was Love Film, I signed up to the steaming trial. They have 6000 films mostly older ones. The quality is nothing to write home about all standard definition they can look fairly ropey with a lot of pixelation. Still when there is nothing much on TV its fairly easy to find a decent film. Its a subscription service, so has a monthly fee though there is a free 16 day Trial.

Another app was Ace Trax. This is a pay per view service which lets up buy or rent content. They were offering one free rental, so I very slowly registered (using my tv remote), it was painful. Then I choose a film went to my movies and attempted to play. This first attempt froze the app. Second attempt stuck at buffering for 20 minutes before I gave up. I had one more go this time I saw one second of fotage before it froze. At this point I gave it up as a bad job.

I guess for the moment the only way to download films is to pay Virgin media pay per view. They are quite expensive (more than actually going to blockbuster), but at least their app works and the quality is reasonable.

I really think that there is a gap in the market for a good quality app that focuses on the user experience and has a decent range of films to capitalise on the non Apple user. Hopefully someone will take up the challenge because the state of streaming today is woeful.