And lo on Fri, 15 Aug 2008 19:04:16 +0100, Jim Henderson  
<nos### [at] nospamcom> did spake, saying:

> On Fri, 15 Aug 2008 09:08:45 +0100, Phil Cook wrote:
>
>> And lo on Fri, 15 Aug 2008 00:29:52 +0100, Jim Henderson
>> <nos### [at] nospamcom> did spake, saying:
>>
>>> Was "make it *better* than the competition" in there anywhere?
>>
>> I guess that's covered by the "don't let someone sell both coke *and*
>> pepsi". You don't need to make a better product if you don't present the
>> consumer with a choice.
>
> Heh, well, I know for many of the fast food chains, they don't have a
> choice, because they're actually owned by Pepsico or Coca-Cola.  I used
> to work for a company that did outsourced benefits management (for both
> companies, oddly enough), and seeing the brands that came in with those
> agreements was surprising.

Kind of the current joys with the privatised water companies here where  
you can choose to have your water supplied by Company A, Company A or  
Company A. But hey at least the fast-food companies are agreeing to this  
;-)

>> As an example my mother often complains she can't pick up a certain
>> brand of sauce at her main shop supermarket and has to go elsewhere; I'm
>> running an internal bet as to how long it'll be before she either starts
>> doing the main shop in this other store or ends up buying a different
>> brand.
>
> That'd be an interesting thing to look at....

Indeed something that should have been carried out by the Competition  
Commision in their last study if their brief wasn't so restricted. Oh yes  
there's plenty of competition between supermarkets provided you do one  
third of your shopping in Sainsbury's, one-third in Tesco, and the  
remainding third at Asda. Doesn't everyone shop this way?

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

Post a reply to this message

On Mon, 18 Aug 2008 12:27:45 +0100, Phil Cook wrote:

>> Heh, well, I know for many of the fast food chains, they don't have a
>> choice, because they're actually owned by Pepsico or Coca-Cola.  I used
>> to work for a company that did outsourced benefits management (for both
>> companies, oddly enough), and seeing the brands that came in with those
>> agreements was surprising.
> 
> Kind of the current joys with the privatised water companies here where
> you can choose to have your water supplied by Company A, Company A or
> Company A. But hey at least the fast-food companies are agreeing to this
> ;-)

Yeah, it's a nice "choice" isn't it?

>> That'd be an interesting thing to look at....
> 
> Indeed something that should have been carried out by the Competition
> Commision in their last study if their brief wasn't so restricted. Oh
> yes there's plenty of competition between supermarkets provided you do
> one third of your shopping in Sainsbury's, one-third in Tesco, and the
> remainding third at Asda. Doesn't everyone shop this way?

Well, I know we do most of our grocery shopping at CostCo, with specialty 
items from specialty shops, and fresh produce from the local supermarket 
(buying produce in bulk doesn't make sense, it just tends to go off).

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Mon, 18 Aug 2008 12:22:50 +0100, Phil Cook wrote:

>> I wish they'd do that - and a better job of everyone synchronizing
>> their clocks, too.
> 
> The default here is BBC time.

Would that that happened here....

>> Shows that say they start at, say, 9:00 on some channels start as much
>> as 5 minutes later
> 
> Groan just had one programme on the EPG actually scheduled to start 10
> minutes early then normal. Just for this one week mind then it goes back
> to normal.

That's nice....

>> ....My DVR used to have a bug (since
>> fixed, but it was there for a LONG time) where if you adjusted the
>> start/ end times, it would occasionally lock up between 2 and 4 AM. 
>> Actual documented bug in the software.  Took almost 2 years for them to
>> fix it.
> 
> Apparently one bug on mine meant that using the PiP facilty didn't free
> the time shift memory used by it when switched back to one channel. Oh
> and if I use the padding on recording it disables the series link so you
> either have to remember to
> set it manually each time or set up your own repeating slot and
> disengage it from the EPG (which is what happened above)

Ouch...

Jim

Post a reply to this message

And lo on Mon, 18 Aug 2008 18:14:41 +0100, Jim Henderson  
<nos### [at] nospamcom> did spake, saying:

> On Mon, 18 Aug 2008 12:22:50 +0100, Phil Cook wrote:
>
>> set up your own repeating slot and
>> disengage it from the EPG (which is what happened above)
>
> Ouch...

It gets better as the recording takes its name from the EPG and can't be  
edited, so disengaging it defaults to giving the recording the name of the  
channel. Imagine a few of those in a list.

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

Post a reply to this message

On Tue, 19 Aug 2008 08:54:52 +0100, Phil Cook wrote:

> And lo on Mon, 18 Aug 2008 18:14:41 +0100, Jim Henderson
> <nos### [at] nospamcom> did spake, saying:
> 
>> On Mon, 18 Aug 2008 12:22:50 +0100, Phil Cook wrote:
>>
>>> set up your own repeating slot and
>>> disengage it from the EPG (which is what happened above)
>>
>> Ouch...
> 
> It gets better as the recording takes its name from the EPG and can't be
> edited, so disengaging it defaults to giving the recording the name of
> the channel. Imagine a few of those in a list.

That would make it difficult to distinguish between them, I imagine...

Jim

Post a reply to this message