Geeky Stuff

Brighthouse launches tiered Internet services

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Brighthouse Networks, who we use for our Internet service at home, just sent out their price list for 2006 which had a surprise in store: they've finally added tiered pricing on their Internet services. In plain Engrish this means that you now have a choice of three different packages for high-speed Internet from them:

download speed upload speed price comment
256KBps 128KBps $29.95 A minimum of 5x faster than dialup and enough for most people.
5.0MBps 384KBps $44.95 What we've had for years, very fast.
8.0KBps 512KBps $59.95 Really fast, I recommend it only if you are running servers at home.

The basic $30 deal is really fast enough for the majority of people, unless you're big into downloading large files (e.g. Linux ISOs), as it's going to be five times faster than dialup, you don't have to worry about the phone lines being busy, you don't have the problems of not getting a good connection, and its not much more than the major dialup services anyway. Oh, and they give you free dialup access for when you need it.

Actually, ever since about two years ago when they upgraded their standard service from 3MBps to 5MBps I've been waiting for them to do this. It is a good sign that they realize that not everyone needs the higher speeds or want to pay that much but would still like something faster than dialup. I think they'll really clean up in their market.

Personally I wish my parents had options like this, I'd gladly pay for their service if they could, but they live so far away from service providers that they'll have to wait for someone to offer a wireless service; still, for everyone else its worth going for.

New video editing software for work

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At work today I had need to convert a DVD to Windows Media and Quicktime formats, and trim the video by about a minute (out of a 9 minute DVD). After looking at the options one seemed like it'd be the best choice - Pinnacle Studio Plus 10, which is easy to use, can output a whole bunch of formats and apparently import existing DVD content (provided the DVD is not encrypted, i.e. something you make yourself). I've used older versions in the past, this new one adds on support for high definition video formats (not an issue for me) and chroma-key effects (not needed, but could be fun), along with some general user interface improvements. I'll let you know how it goes.

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