I’m weak, I admit it. I love technology and tend to buy things as soon as they’re available. This time at least, I had to wait until it was available to Canadians, which is a complaint worth an entire other website, not just another blog post. This post is about the Kindle itself, not all the hassles of the CRTC, Copyright and pointless protections that annoy my every day life.

From the “Oops! My finger slipped!” purchase button press, to the nice UPS deliver man who knows my name showing up at my door, took less than 48 business hours. I have to stop buying things on Thursday and hoping they’ll show up on Friday. Packaging is what you come to expect from niche little products like this. Amazon has taken a page from Apple’s book with it’s packaging materials and made uncrating things an experience in itself. I already had my online accounts setup as I was using the Kindle PC to test it out. Browsing for books was a bit difficult, but I suppose only really because I wasn’t looking for anything in particular. A problem I have when going to actual stores as well. I can’t go in looking for something to read, I get overwhelmed rather quickly. I eventually found something, did the order process bit and it showed up on my kindle within seconds. That’s awesome. Just awesome.

Getting down to actual reading was a treat as well. I changed the font size to a much lower value so I could read more on a page. I found I was pressing “Next Page” every few seconds with some books which gets annoying. My wife and I compared the real book she was reading with the Kindle side by each. There wasn’t much difference to be honest. The colour of the page felt the same and text was the same font. I’ve gone through a couple books already and have no qualms about the actual act of reading off the Kindle.

One of the big benefits I’ve come across is that I’ve already read two books I wouldn’t have read otherwise, simply because it was so convenient to do so. A $2 book with one button press and I’m reading it 3 seconds later? Talk about instant gratification. I find I browse genres I wouldn’t normally in a book store. Can’t really explain why that might be, but it’s increased my interest in reading outside my comfort zone.

Alright, I said I wouldn’t, but I can’t resist. There are three things disabled on Kindle Global for Canadian users. You can’t browse the full internet like you can with the US version. You have access to Amazon.com and Wikipedia however. I assume this is a limitation enforced by Rogers whose 3G network is crap despite marketing material to the contrary. An extension to that is that you can’t subscribe to blog RSS feeds either, a feature that would have been wonderful to have. This also means that emailing content directly to your Kindle is also disabled, which isn’t a big deal since I believe it would cost a dollar to do so. I’ll have to do it manual way and save that dollar I guess.

All said and done, I love it. For reading novels, it’s the way to go for me. Anything with pictures is getting the old fashioned tree killing version. If you have any interest in getting one, just do it. You won’t regret it.

Let me start by saying PVR’s are one of the greatest things to spend your hard earned money on. If anyone says they can what a PVR does with a VCR, smack them with a hard drive.

If theres any reason to buy the Bell ExpressVu 5100 satellite system, its because its the only (fully supported) PVR in Canada right now. Sure, you could import a TiVO or a ReplayTV, but you would have to hack it up to make the guide work, and I’m not sure what would happen if you actually did. The terribly convenient feature list alone is enough to make me want the 5100 over the ReplayTV 4000. And by that, I of course mean that I can take it out of the box and have everything work by plugging it in. This a constant problem I face living in Canada, but I don’t really feel like moving.

I’m assuming the 5100 works much like every other PVR out there. It automatically records each channel as you are watching it, allowing you to rewind your current channel in case you missed something, or pause it for that all important washroom break. Recording a channel in this manner only gives you a one hour buffer, meaning, you can only rewind one hour, assuming you’ve been watching the same channel for an hour. I should note that as soon as you change channels, you lose your one hour buffer and start over again on the new channel. This is good for most shows you would watch on regular TV, but not so good for TMN or PPVs. For those, you’ll need to remember to record in advance by pressing record when the show starts, or setting a timer, which is as easy as going through the guide and pressing a button. Basically, all the recoding options are about as basic as you would hope for. One touch record for any show, current or future.

The guide that comes with the Bell receivers has its issues. Theres no going back in time. As soon as its 8:00pm, you can’t see what was on at 7:30 that you missed. Normally, this isn’t a big deal, but sometimes shows don’t start until 8:15pm, and the guides grid layout is always full time slots. This means that the entry for the show that starts at 8:15pm, fills the entire 8:00pm to 8:30pm time slot, but says in the title that it starts at 8:15pm. The problem with this, is if you change to that channel at 8:05pm and wonder what your watching, you can’t tell because the current time slot is the 8:15pm show. Granted, this doesn’t happen very often. Another issue with the guide that I had was the way you couldn’t go into the future, find something you want to watch, and press a button to change to that channel. It always brings up a menu of options, one of which is NOT “Tune to this channel immediately”. I was used to this behavior on the Rogers system, and miss it on Bell. Also a great feature is being able to browse channels while watching your show. A transparent window pops up at the bottom letting your cycle through the channels one by one without really interrupting the current channel.

Some people have complained about the noise of the 5100’s hard drive. I don’t know why these people always watch TV on mute, but I certainly can’t hear mine over the noise of my surround sound speakers. Its also possible that I’ve learned to ignore hard drive noise, since I’ve at least one drive rattling away in the same room as me for about 10 years now. At least they put a quiet fan on it, that would drive people nuts. (Again, I have about 8 fans blasting away on my main computer. Just means the volume gets turned up higher.)

The 5100’s remote, which is almost the same as the other receivers, is a dual mode remote. It has an IR interface on the front like a normal remote, but also has an RF transmitter built in. This means you can split the out put signal from the unit to several TV’s in your house, and bring the remote with you. The range isn’t bad on a set of fresh batteries, but it seems to go down hill quickly when the batteries start to wear out. I can normally go through 2 apartment walls (with lots of computer equipment in the middle) for a distance of about 30′. I’ve pondered jacking the external antennae on the unit into the line out that goes into my bedroom, but I don’t want to know what happens when someone else uses their remote.

Every so often, Bell will push a new software image to the 5100’s ROM. The latest image has added Caller-ID (if your subscribed) and alphanumeric searches in the guide. The Caller-ID is there because Bell requires the unit be plugged into a phone line at all times. This is their outgoing communications medium since satellite signals are one way tickets. The fact that they can add functionality like that with very little trouble is great, but also a little frightening. I just don’t like people playing with my stuff.

I can honestly say that the Bell ExpressVu 5100 PVR is hands down the best PVR available in Canada at this time. (In case you missed it, its the only one.) It has some small quirks, but I can live with them. Maybe they will even be fixed in future versions.

Feature list:

• S-Video and Optical connections.
• IR and RF remote all in one.
• All your standard hookups for entertainment systems.
• Parental lock-outs.
• The dish has dual LNBF’s so you can purchase another receiver if you wish.
• Alphanumeric search within the guide.
• Some interactive TV stuff that I haven’t bothered with yet.
• One hour “history” of current channel.
• Up to 30 hours (depending on show) of recordings.