Info and forum posts by 'hedgie'

RE: POLL: Best Bruce

Got to be Bruce Dickinson, although it looks like I`m on my own!

Can I start the poll for the worst Bruce? Steve Bruce is the ONLY nominee....

RE: Leeds United have a mole?!?!?!?!?

One of Leeds United`s midfielders used to play for us at Crystal Palace, is best friends with our right-back and was recently dropped from the Leeds first team. Surely more than a co-incidence?

Alternatively, there are lots of Millwall connections between the clubs, most notably a goalkeeper who didn`t play for them today and about half our first team.

For the information to have got back to Wise, presumably either we`ve given this up voluntarily to Leeds, there is also a leak in our camp or we`ve been bugged!!!

RE: Barry Normans Interactive Film Quiz £6.97

The free cinema pass and rentals sound a good deal that will pay for the disc itself, until you realise that you have to subscribe to Vue at Home. Which is basically just another LoveFilm rental site. If you`ve ever subscribed to LoveFilm or ScreenSelect you won`t qualify, and if you do qualify you can get the same deal without buying the disc, just by just going to www.myvue.com and signing up for the Vue at Home service!

RE: The Blades are Going Up!!!

Quote:
As a Manchester United fan I welcome more easy 3 point games, especially now Sunderland have gone.

Because Sunderland was an easy 3 point game, wasn`t it!

Congrats to Colin and his Palace rejects (and everyone else associated with the Blades) from Palace fans - at least you`re not going to return the favour of your play-off defeat in 1997! Had a horrible feeling that would come back to haunt us. Hope to see you in the Premiership next season, although we`ve still got another meeting this season to come first.

RE: Any places I can safely order a R1 boxset and noit get stung by customs?

I got season 6 and 7 from movietyme. Both were posted within the UK so no possibility of customs charges. Unless they`ve changed their procedures in the last couple of months they are safe, although I`m surprised to see on their website that they mention you could be charged. Maybe some less popular stock is sent directly from the US?

www.axelmusic.com are another retailer that are meant to be safe as they ship from within the EU.

RE: Screenselect delaying returns ????

Not having any problems myself - have been with them since they took over DVDS365. Can only think that you either have titles that are in high demand in your list, or that they are deliberately controlling your service as they think you are using it too much. Their T&C`s do say that replacements will be sent by the next working day.

It`s definitely advisable to have a balanced list with some titles that are likely to be in low demand. I also noted a distinct improvement when I moved from my old DVDS365 package to the Screen Select package (at no extra cost!) and also again after I took a payment holiday for two weeks. Try making a change to your package, even if it means downgrading to two discs for a month.

RE: Blockbuster.co.uk - where are the new releases?

There was a code going around some forums for a two month free trial recently - I know because I took advantage, having never used Blockbuster before. The service I have been receiving has been very good - two new releases last week and two more the week before. I think it`s reasonably clear where their priorities lie.

Sadly, by doing this they are shooting themselves in the foot. I don`t expect the best titles on a free trial - I expect companies to treat their paying customers better. I was seriously considering moving my ScreenSelect service to Blockbuster at the end of the trial, but now I`m not so sure.

Incidentally, if it is mostly new releases you are after, I have to say from personal experience that you cannot beat the service from Amazon, especially if you time it so that your discs are returned on a release date. Sure, it is only a fixed number of rentals per month, but my strategy is normally to pay £12.49 a month for a 2 disc screen select service and £9.99 for Amazon. I normally save between £5 and £10 on purchases at Amazon with the 10% off, so on average I am not paying much different to the £15 I`d be paying with a 3 disc service at Screen Select.

This item was edited on Sunday, 26th March 2006, 09:54

RE: Explosion At Oil Depot

Quote:
From the eye-witness reports people heard it in other counties!

I`m in Croydon and was up and fully awake at the time, and I heard it very clearly. Thought a something big like a cupboard had fallen off the wall in the flat downstairs. There was a half second rumbling noise and everything rattled in my kitchen!

RE: Kubrick Box Set - now under thirty quid!

Quote:
Actually it says number of disks..........................8!!

And it says nine discs in the review - I think it is an error as the same set on Play says nine discs.

Gone for this - with a further 10% off because of my Amazon rental! Thanks.

RE: Does any rental company provide information on available stock ?

Amazon give the following status descriptions for each title in your list

* Now: the DVD is available for dispatch
* Short Wait: the title is not currently available for dispatch, but we expect it will become available soon, usually within 2-14 days
* Long Wait: the title is not currently available for dispatch, and we expect to wait slightly longer for it to become available, usually 15-30 days
* Very Long Wait: the title is not currently available for dispatch and it may not be available for dispatch for over 30 days
* Release Date: you may occasionally see a date rather than one of the terms above, if the title has not yet been released. We`ll display the release date in the Rental List before release, after which one of the availabilities explained above will be displayed

RE: Shark Tale £6.99

They won`t be delivering this one in five days - clearly says on the site "This title will be dispatched on or shortly after 15/8/2005". I`ve got no problems with 101cd, they are a local company to me and I`ve been using them for years, but I have a suspicion that this will be part of a national price reduction at the time and that somewhere else will probably be selling this for £5.99 at the time.

RE: DVD online rentals??

I`ve just started with Amazon and been reasonably impressed so far. Had four discs, all from my top 6, including new releases Hotel Rwanda and The Life Aquatic.

With the other companies introducing limited services and the 10% discount off DVD`s, Amazon are now much more competitive. I usually expect these companies to provide rentals at about £1 per disc, but I`d rather spend another 50p or so and get my priority titles.

Plus I`ve already saved £3.40 on the Comic Strip, £2 on another order of 4 DVD`s and I`ve got pending savings of £3.50 on 24 series 4 and £3 on Simpsons S6. As all these discs were cheapest at Amazon anyway, I`ve already saved enough to pay for the first month`s subscription.

You can stagger the discs and one unadvertised feature is that you can buy additional rentals at £1.99 a time, although I doubt I`ll be doing that!

Only real problem so far is that my account for some reason told me that I had no further rentals after renting just three, but they did sort this out quickly after I made them aware of it.

RE: What r the IMDB 250 films?

114 - I`m sure it`s gone down since the last time I did this, yet strangely there`s quite a few films there that I`ve seen recently. I own about 20 of the other titles in the list that I haven`t been able to watch yet. Must try harder, I suppose!

RE: Just bought a Rover 200... A big mistake???

If it gets to a stage where parts are so scarce that you can`t afford to replace them when needed, the car would instead probably be worth a fair bit for the parts that still work!

RE: Asda entertainment online - Teething problems

I received my Coldplay CD from Asda today - took a bit of time but the price was good (at the time, anyway!). From looking at the Asda T&C`s, I think that the site is being run by The Hut and is not really part of Asda.

RE: Wouldn`t you agree 2 days before items are even dispatched is bordering on the ridiculous?

Quote:
Well i placed an order with 101cd.com wednesday 11th may and having just checked the progress of my order it is

Quote:
In Process - On Order with our Suppliers


So that`s nine days and counting!!!
It was Layer Cake for £6.99, which is a good deal, but at the rate they`re going it`ll be cheaper everywhere else by the time i get it.

To be fair to 101cd their site clearly says that Layer Cake has the following availability
Quote:

Stock on Order. This title will be dispatched on or shortly after 30/5/2005

I ordered it at the same time as you and the message was displayed then.

I`m a bit more concerned about my order for Cypher with 101cd, though, which I placed on 10 April with a 3-5 day availability and still has not shipped! Not in any urgent need for it, though.

RE: Anyone else getting p***ed of with those f***ing Crazy Frog adverts?

Quote:
But Jamster said: "The vast majority of people love it and it will continue being on while people want it. It is popular."

Don`t think anyone has come up with a more ridiculous comment since I was asked at the start of the football season who would win the Championship, and I said Nottingham Forest!

Maybe the vast majority of 10-14 year old girls love it, but anyone over the age of 16 who loves this rubbish being forced down their throats twelve times an hour needs their head testing!

RE: Anyone else getting p***ed of with those f***ing Crazy Frog adverts?

Quote:
It`s not a question of seeing their friends everyday, kids need mobile phones mainly for parental reassurance, because at least we can ring them and find out where they are.

Or they tell you that they are where you want them to be, even though they are doing something completely different! If it was just for parental reassurance, they would buy kids the cheapest PAYG phone possible, which probably couldn`t cope with these dreadful ringtones.

I think that these adverts show there should be a change in the TV advertising laws. There should be a maximum percentage of ad time coverage that any company is allowed to take, both on one individual channel, and over all the channels as a whole. It`s also time to put a stop to having 2 or 3 adverts for the same company in the same ad break. The frequency of these adverts is brainwashing those who are susceptible and is driving the majority of us completely nuts!

RE: Who`s staying up tomorrow then?

Slightly nervous Palace fan here - off to Charlton in a couple of hours! We always mess up relegation battles from the Premiership, so it`s not going to be us. I`ve accepted that we`re probably down already, but we`ll be in for a great party if we win the lottery today! Although this local derby thing is hugely over exaggerated - Palace really don`t have a big rivalry with them - our rivals are Brighton. Charlton only brought 1,200 to Selhurst earlier this season whilst Brighton brought over 9,000 on their last visit!

Southampton always survive - I think it will be them.

RE: LOVEFILM TERRIBLE TURNAROUND

Not with LoveFilm, or any rental at the moment. I would suggest that anyone who is on one of the `branded` services contact the parent company (not just LoveFilm via the online links!) whose brand name is being used, making it very clear that the service from LoveFilm is giving a very poor impression of their own company. If enough customers do it, then pressure will be exerted on LoveFilm by these companies. There is nothing like the potential loss of a big contract to scare a company into improving their service!

RE: CSI New York on Channel 5

I watched last weeks episode - A Man A Mile - this evening, although this was originally the second episode in the US according to the list above. I noticed a comment about Fox Hunting having been banned in "England" in the show, and thought that this was only just true by a few days. It certainly would have been inaccurate when it was broadcast in the US. The comment may just have been enough to delay the episode by a few weeks for broadcast here, given that it is a subject that has been well documented in the news here recently.

RE: Forgotten TV comedy

Another one for TMWRNJ here - the Curious Orange was class - especially when he started to go mouldy. I still use the phrase `weak lemon drink` and no-one has a clue why. And the phrase `Well, you can prove anything with facts...` Just wish I`d seen them all.

Time Gentlemen Please was funny too, particularly the first series. Back off Brussels!

Another I enjoyed was Fun at the Funeral Parlour - a BBC3 sitcom set in a Welsh Funeral Directors. Had some input from the Fast Show team and was very dark.

There`s also plenty of TV comedy that I can just about recall, but really wasn`t very memorable, so maybe should stay forgotten, too.

The Strangerers - a sci fi based comedy on Sky TV that starred Jack Docherty. Seem to remember it started ok but went downhill and was a bit pants really.
Baddiel`s Syndrome - again, Sky TV with David Baddiel. Bit of a disaster, really.
The Lenny Henry Show - Delbert Wilkins and the Brixton Broadcasting Corporation. Used to enjoy it, but was it really funny?
Chef - Lenny Henry again
Relative Strangers - Matthew Kelly in dreadful sitcom (had to look up the name of this one on IMDB!)
Up the Elephant and Round the Castle - Jim Davidson in (probably) racist sitcom - can`t really remember anything but the name

RE: Its the end of the post as we know it

This will be a complete disaster. The area that I live in is not really very delivery friendly - mixture of houses, purpose built and converted flats, where the numbering system can be really confusing. I`m sure lots of others are in similar areas.

Whenever I get a delivery from someone not used to the area, things go wrong. New postmen, couriers, Tesco`s - all struggle to find where we are exactly. Only the regular postmen seem to have little problems with my address.

Now we`re going to have to deal with all those couriers also trying to find us. Who do we go to when something hasn`t arrived? Royal Mail will say `it might not have been us`, along with all the other companies. Packages for collection could end up at depots 30 miles away.

The Royal Mail work will be cherry picked by the courier companies leaving them to deal with all the expensive and unattractive work. If four different companies need to come to my address every day to deliver the same pile of mail that one used to, surely there is wastage there, too. Someone will have to pay for all of this - it will be the customers.

RE: should we boycott nestle

How many of these students boycotting Nestle now will, by the time they have kids, be using infant formula with them? I`d guess quite a high number. One of my friends tried breast feeding, but her baby couldn`t get enough milk and was constantly upset and very hungry. As soon as she switched him to infant formula the baby was happy. Will the students be so ethical if this happens to them?

This is one of those issues where the older you get you realise that life is not black and white - there are many shades of grey in between. This issue is too complex to suggest we should or shouldn`t boycott Nestle.

They are doing what many massive companies do - taking liberties with our health for their profits. But Nestle will never be put out of business by this action - the best the campaigners could hope for is for the product to be withdrawn. But then what would happen to the babies who do not have a mother able to breast feed them? Should they have to starve to death?

No, I won`t be boycotting Nestle. If I did, in order to avoid being a hypocrite I`d have to boycott so many other companies, that I`d probably struggle to eat and clothe myself and certainly medicate myself. I know that I deal with unethical companies, and anyone who claims they don`t is almost certainly lying, whether they know it or not. Unfortunately I see that we have very little choice in this.

The real enemies here are the governments that allow these products to be marketed in the way they are and allow their populations to be remain uneducated about the dangers. We need all governments to create and enforce strict ethical rules for big business - businesses will always push to the limit to obtain every advantage they can get, sadly.

RE: USA SHIPPING

I received a disc from them today that was sent on 8 December, and 4 discs yesterday that were shipped on 7 December. Each had been in packaging for at least 4 days before that.

On that evidence I doubt that any order shipped after Friday will be there by Christmas, and any item shipped after next Tuesday will probably arrive in the New Year.

Also any item not already in packaging will almost certainly arrive after Christmas and probably in the New Year.

RE: What`s the worst song of all time?? **do not relegate this thread to the music forum please**

The worst song of all time is almost certainly a song that no-one has heard at all. Probably something someone made up whilst singing in the bath one day! Or it`s Babycakes.

RE: Can you bypass the `menu locked` on a DVD

I can understand the need for forced copyright notices, even if having seen one of them you`ve seen them all. What annoys me most are forced trailers and forced company logos. I`ve just got the Eddie Izzard box set and each of the discs manage to have a copyright notice plus 3 seperate production company logos, which take up about 2 minutes before you get to the first menu. All this is forced so that you can`t skip through or even fast forward through. What is the point of this?

And MGM discs when you get to the end of the film and you are forced to sit through 4 minutes of copyright notices for every country in R2, before you return to the main menu really annoy me too.

How long before someone puts forced adverts for other products on these discs?

RE: Boxing Day Trains

I think that very few trains run on Boxing Day - most lines are usually closed. Good Luck!

RE: sainsburys mico r 311 dvd recorder £85

Had loads in Purley Way, Croydon when I went there on Thursday night. Would have been interested 2 months ago, but since then I`ve got the Panny E55 and I really don`t need two recorders, particularly given the different formats!

RE: Motorway

It`s strange that some people are quick to condemn `lane hogging` yet are also happy with people breaking the 70 mph speed limit. If you`re so keen on drivers sticking to the rules, then you should condemn those who break the speed limit too.

There is, in my opinion, no single reason for lane hogging. Some drivers are just plain ignorant, but others do it for a reason. For example, if you try to keep to proper lane discipline at busy times, you often get stuck at 50mph in the left hand lane, whilst other drivers shoot past at 80mph+ in the second lane with no consideration for those who want to overtake the 50mph car, despite the fact that a third lane is available and completely empty. Try indicating to pull out, and the drivers in the second lane will almost certainly ignore you, increasing the potential for accidents.

Normally I`m very good at lane discipline, however I`ll admit to occasional lapses to avoid being stuck in the left hand lane, although I`ll only ever do it if I`m going at 70mph and if there is still a lane available on the right to overtake me.