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Of course they've been teasing customers with this prospect for *years* now, with the first ads for such a device appearing ages ago accompanied by a promise that it was "coming soon". Clearly Sky's dictionary has a different definition for the word "soon".

But let's be charitable and believe them when they say that by December, you'll be able to plonk down $600 and finally get the kind of functionality that's been available elsewhere for years.

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It's a little hard to tell from the information published so far whether that $600 actually buys you the PVR or whether it's simply a "connection and installation fee" as suggested by the NZ Herald.

Naturally I went to the Sky TV website for more information -- and naturally I was disappointed to find that there's absolutely no mention of this wonderful device. Does Sky even remember that it has a website??

I have no doubt that Sky customers will flock to these like lemmings to a cliff -- which is kind of strange since the endless repeats seen on NZ's only national pay-TV service kind of eliminate the need for such a device anyway.

It's interesting to note that Sky claims they've not provided a "skip ads" function solely because it might upset the free-to-air broadcasters who also use the broadcaster to mirror their VHF/UHF transmissions.

Yeah, right!

We all know that Sky customers are really being shafted by paying a stiff monthly fee *AND* being hit with advertising as well. Naturally Sky doesn't want its viewers being able to totally bypass the advertising that represents a valuable source of additional revenue. It's a shame they're just not a little more honest about this.

Maybe Sky will provide a unit for review once they're in the country -- but somehow I think not :-)

Will you be lining up to hand over $600 of your hard-earned money to pick up a Sky PVR with the ad-skip disabled?

Opening a can of trouble
Ever wanted to "fix up" some of those really bad web-pages that cascade across your browser screen?

Wired has published an interesting article about a bit of software that let's you do just that.

The software lets you monkey-around with other people's websites and the way they appear on your computer -- tweaking, customising and enhancing them as you see fit.

I know that unless we were talking about a site that I simply had to access for some reason I know that I wouldn't bother -- but I'm sure that this will become a bit of a cult thing, with geeks competing to produce the "best" version of popular websites and sharing their efforts.

Of course this will result in a few idiot website operators moaning, bitching and groaning because these guys are infringing their copyrights, trademarks or whatever. My advice to the owners of these websites is "get over it". The whole idea sounds like fun.

Go have your say in The Aardvark Forums

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