[Stuart Wright]

AV Podcast : Hardware : November 22nd 2006
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25.8Mb, 26 minutes and 33 seconds

00:44 AV News
06:41 Samsung K5 review plus comparison with other MP3 players
20:38 Jason's gadget of the week

AV Podcast : Software & Games : November 22nd 2006
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Get the M4B
50.0Mb, 51 minutes and 56 seconds

00:57 DVD News
03:59 Superman Returns region 1 DVD review
10:51 King Kong 3 disc extended edition region 1 review by Simon
14:01 King Kong HD review By Seth
16:30 Bond Round Table discussion
29:10 Casion Royale review. Chris went to the movies
33:49 Gaming news
44:45 Gears of War review
47:06 HD DVD event invitation
47:50 Competitions

[jwramsay]

Seth, R u sure that the Samsung MP3 player is made from magnesium? IIRC, reacts with water to produce hydrogen, or is my chemics a little "rusty" ?

[Seth Gecko]

Originally Posted by PDP-434HDE

Seth, R u sure that the Samsung MP3 player is made from magnesium? IIRC, reacts with water to produce hydrogen, or is my chemics a little "rusty" ?

You are right in terms that magnesium ribbon from the old days of chemistry at school burns brightly and is very reactive, but it is definitely magnesium as I researched the spec from the Samsung website.

I actually own 3 pairs of Magnesium glasses by Oakley. The magnesium is injected with a ceramic mantle in that instance, thus making a very lightweight, durable material

[Seth Gecko]

Oh - it's potassium that reacts with water and explodes IIRC.

[rupbert]

Not a criticism but was the short length of the hardware section intentional?

I thought as we didn't have a podcast last week it would have been quite long; was there just generally not that much content to talk about?

rupbert

[Seth Gecko]

Originally Posted by rupbert

Not a criticism but was the short length of the hardware section intentional?

I know the answer - but I'll defer it to Phil

[rupbert]

Originally Posted by Seth Gecko

I know the answer - but I'll defer it to Phil

Didn't expect that answer!

[Phil Hinton]

With the content we had we were over an hour with both Hardware and Software together, splitting it into two meant we had a 30min Hardware and 50 min Software, just the way the material split on this occasion.
The break was also for illness which meant no working by me on anything until the last minute, so material in terms of Hardware suffered slightly, should be back to normal next week.

[rupbert]

Originally Posted by Phil Hinton

With the content we had we were over an hour with both Hardware and Software together, splitting it into two meant we had a 30min Hardware and 50 min Software, just the way the material split on this occasion.
The break was also for illness which meant no working by me on anything until the last minute, so material in terms of Hardware suffered slightly, should be back to normal next week.

Thanks for the reply Phil.

Hope you are feeling better

[Orinj]

Thanks for the concise but informative podcasts this week.

mp3 Players: I have to disagree with your verdict on the mp3 players. The Samsung YP-K5 is a decent player with some clever features but it is bigger and heavier than a lot of other players and how often are you really going to use the speaker? I also get the impression that you're not fans of the iPod (in any of its incarnations). Although iTunes isn't for everyone I've just got a 2nd generation iPod nano and it's a breeze to use and small enough to use anywhere. One of the things you didn't mention is that it performs gapless playback which very few other mp3 players can do. The Sansa e260 is also a very worthy contender which you missed but thanks for the round up.

King Kong: It's nice to see some controversial reviews from the team - some love it, some don't but from an AV perspective it's excellent.

Keep up the good work.

[Seth Gecko]

Originally Posted by Orinj

One of the things you didn't mention is that it performs gapless playback which very few other mp3 players can do.

The iPod video (30gb) I own is certainly bigger and heavier than the Samsung and doesn't perform with a gapless mode, that's for sure. It is bigger than the Nano, but I'm not keen on the Nano's at all (I think it looks similar to something that I won't mention on the forum!)

I appreciate you like your iPod, and you can't say I'm really biased if I own one, but if the Samsung had a much larger storage, I'd have one over the iPod. At the moment, I'm using something else for MP3's - but more of that in the next podcast

I liked my iRiver H320 as it had some very cool extras - radio, voice recorder and the ability to transfer your pictures directly from digital cameras, which is great if you run out of space and don't want to buy another memory card.

Glad you appreciate the controversy in the reviews - it isn't controversy for the sake of it, but it does show how the team can like one movie collectively but another can divide us into polar opposites.

[nac]

I like the pod cast, so much in fact that I added them to the list on my PSP and have been telling friends about it.

If I had one remark to make it would be that maybe they could be scripted more. In the chatty bits there seem to be occasions where 100 words are used where 10 would do with the odd bit of repetition thrown in. Would help to keep the overall length down, cut down on the amount of "errr" and "umm" and speed up the editing.

Other than that can't fault it, keep it up.

[chaddy]

a bit off topic but what products can you use for the m4b files.
was hoping to use my pda with it but it diddn't work.
And whats the difference between mp3 and m4b ?

sorry if its the wrong place for posting.

[Seth Gecko]

M4B files are for iPods that can show images (so IIRC that's 4G and 5G models).

Anything else - use the MP3

[Seth Gecko]

Originally Posted by nac

If I had one remark to make it would be that maybe they could be scripted more.

The first 15 or so podcasts were scripted - however they sounded more like formal ITN news broadcasts, and only gave a few voices.

We tried doing scripts with other people, including myself, but I can't read a script for toffee apparently and I wrote the things!

So, we went for a more chatty based podcast and with things like roundtables, you can't really script them otherwise it sounds false and doesn't give it that spontaneity.

There is a lot of editing, such as Chris' epic Superman review being edited down from 17 minutes, or the gaming articles where we talked for about 30 minutes. Of course, we stumble over our words sometimes (our brains being ahead of our mouths), but we try to keep it entertaining and informative.

Not to mention when Phil records myself, or the other reviewers, we tend to be very tired after 10-14 hour days at work. Remember, we're enthusiasts just like the listeners, we're not being paid £40k a year to do this (Although if anyone wants to pay us that.......... )