CeeFourBee

I treated myself to playTV a few weeks ago. It’s an excellent piece of hardware for the PS3. Plug your aerial into it, plug it into your PS3, install some software and voila. Pause, rewind and record Freeview onto your PS3 HDD. I wouldn’t bother getting a PS3 and playTV just for this functionality, but if you already have a PS3 it’s well worth it. The picture quality is vastly improved from the built in Freeview tuner in my Samsung TV. I assume this is because the PS3 upscales the picture, but I can’t find anywhere on the internet that confirms this. Visit the wiki entry for playTV to get the lowdown on its full capabilities.

Shameless has been back for a couple of episodes now, three if you watch it on E4, and I’m feeling let down by it. I think this is the fourth series, which is also something rare for Channel 4. They’ve only ever commissioned two drama/comedy programs into four series, the other program being Teachers. I was a big fan of that too, but it just wasn’t as good towards the end. I don’t think it would be too bad if they managed to keep all the original cast in place, but so many people leave and their replacement characters are never as good.

I’ll keep watching and hoping that it improves, but I just get the feeling that it’s tailing off from what it once was. I hope that Channel 4 choose to make this series the last. Going on Channel 4s recent decisions though, I could see them trying to squeeze out just that little too much.