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Welcome to the digital age


GhostOfClayton

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blog-0385057001419927196.jpgMrs OfClayton and myself would like to take this opportunity to announce to you all a happy event. Yes, there has been a joyous new arrival at OfClayton Towers. I'll tell you the story. . .

 

In the UK, we're undergoing the big 'digital switchover'. One by one, the old analogue channels are stopping broadcasting, leaving us with only the digital channels. The telly at ofClayton Towers is very, very old, and unsurprisingly has no digital tuner in it. I have been waiting many years for it to break down, and it stubbornly refused. This left me with two options. (a) Spend anout �25 on a little box that you plug into the back of the existing antique telly and continue with business as usual, or ( B) spend all the money I've managed to squirrel away for the last God knows how long, on a big, new telly. Needless to say, I didn't mention option (a) to Mrs OfClayton, assuring her that without a 42" LED TV, the winter nights would be long and quiet as we listened to the clock tick away the hours at OfClayton Towers!

 

So, last week, we took delivery of a Panasonic 106cm LED Smart TV. What a miracle of modern technology. It has an ethernet port to connect it to the World Wide Web. With this, it can play BBC iPlayer, stream movies, play YouTube, pause and rewind live TV, and there's even an app I can install on my iPod that will allow me to control it using that. And all this before they start broadcasting High Definition TV signals - I have HD to look forward to from next week. I could wax lyrical for pages and pages about it, but I won't! To cut a long story short I love as I would my own child! Probably more!

 

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So, the OfClayton family fortune has all but been wiped out, and now I find out that all I had to do was lob a Molotov cocktail at a local emporium, thus distracting the constabulary whist I helped myself from Dixons. So that would've been one big telly for the price of half a litre of unleaded and a match! C'est la vie!

 

For the literal-minded who may read this, that was a joke. I'm not a light-fingered ne'er-do-well in real life. Though I did once pick up a catalogue in Marks & Spencers, only to get it home to find I should have paid a quid for it. The shame!

 

Who's Anagram?

Anyway, that bit was all very self indulgent, and of little interest to anyone outside of . . . well . . . me, really! I can see that we've had only very few comments on the blogs of late, so in order to spice things up a bit, I'm going to talk about something very dear to many of your hearts, and which is bound to be controversial: 'Torchwood: Miracle Day'.

 

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Caption Competition

 

So, Captain Jack is back, and he's cut his finger a little bit! It's feeling a little sore! This may sound like trivia to the uninitiated, but those who have already grown to know and love Torchwood will know how serious this turn of events actually is. More newsworthy than the current storyline of no-one dying, no matter how horribly mutilated their bodies are (and believe me, some of them are sickeningly badly mutilated!), is the move of Torchwood from good old Auntie Beeb to good old Uncle Sam. Yes, the series is now funded by, and to some extent written by, the Americans - in the guise of the Starz network. So, it's good-bye to the Valleys, and hello to LA. But, is this a good thing or a bad thing? I've seen US reviewers bemoaning the loss of glamourous Cardiff locations for the mundane LA locations, and UK reviewers pretty much taking the opposite stance. Personnally, I think it's been a little slow in getting to the point. The action and story line is drip fed to the viewer, as if a punchy three episode plot has been stretched out to fill 10 hours of air time. It's only a few episodes in, so it's unfair of me to judge . . . but I will anyway. I still like it very much (and can't wait to watch it in HD!)

 

But what do you think . . . come on . . let's have some healthy debate / vicious arguments. Get commenting.

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I never saw the old Torchwood series, so I wouldn't understand this series, even if it has been "Americanized."

 

For the record, I have trouble getting into Dr. Who and its spin offs. I watched the David Tennant years because I liked him as an actor, but when he left it was all downhill. Even Amy Pond's legs can't redeem the series for me.

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I am also the proud owner of an all singing all dancing LED tv too, and my god they are good aren't they??? The best cash I've spent in quite some time.

 

The show Planet Earth in HD on an LED tv is just the best thing ever!

 

Congratulations on your purchase Ghost :thumbsup:

 

As for Torchwood, I'm with Ursus on this one, I've never been a fan of Dr Who so I never felt the need to watch Torchwood either.

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I like that this new Torchwood has a story ark rather then unconnected plots and that plot is fairly good even constantly raising moral issues. This season is self contained until now, there is no need for previous knowledge and it has no connection with Dr. Who.

The Americanization is more Caricaturization and is the greatest weakness for the show coupled with some unconvincing acting at times.

Have fun with your TV. These new ones have mind blowing image quality, almost making me wish I had a TV.

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Those who haven't bothered with Torchwood because it's a Dr Who spin-off should probably give it a try (if they're both sci-fi fans and quite broadminded). It is much more adult/dark/gritty/edgy than Dr Who.

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