However the worlds buying public aren't as gulible as us Brits when it comes to English football. They will generally pay a fair price and nothing more. After all, any money is better than no money especially when the bread basket is on home soil anyway. Also, surely it isn't Murdoch selling the TV rights to other countries, it's the FA / Premier League which own and sell the rights?

With the implications of todays ruling, this is not going to happen. If pubs are now allowed to show football from other satellites then Sky will have to drop sports subscriptions to compete. The lowest suscription to sky you can get is for 2 mixes at £15 per month. Sky sports takes this up to £34 therefore £19 per month (£228 per year) for Sports Channels showing a selection of football. I have been looking into foreign satellites (as I'm ###### off with Sky's charges) and you can get the ART channels under subscrition for £83.99 for the year Art Sub Card. This gives you every game that sky shows including pay per views and 4 3pm kick off games. Remembering that pubs pay a lot more than retail prices for Sky subscriptions therefore if pubs can get it at this price, which do you think they are going to go for?

Especially times like last night where the defender watches the player not the ball and they end up sheilding a good three feet away from the ball. I honestly hate whatever rule it is that allows this.

And the muppet mentioned Paul Dickov twice during plays AFTER was replaced by Kuqi.

It's not so much the technology that's the problem, it's mainly the licensing of the nasty copy protection system that seems to be holding things up.

It all depends on what individual components you want to put into a machine. Take for example the Dell Dimension 1100. It is currently selling for £279 and there is no way I could put together a full system for that price. Breaking down all the parts (from ebuyer going for the cheapest in stock item):- Case - £20.12 PSU (unspecified - Guess at 300W) - £10.57 Motherboard (Unspecified Socket 478 onboard graphics) - £35.00 CPU (Celeron 325) - £49.99 (retail with Heatsink) Memory (256MB PC3200) - £12.50 HDD (80GB) - £34.02 DVD/CDRW - £20.57 Keyboard - £2.92 Mouse - £2.34 Monitor (17" CRT)- £58.74 Windows XP (OEM) - £58.74 Total = £305.51 So, Dell can build it cheaper and I certainly wouldn't choose most of these cheap options. Also, the Dell would include a warranty whereas you'd have to RMA the individual parts in a built machine depending on whether you can troubleshoot which part is faulty. On the flip side, I always build my own machine as you get exactally what you want, no cheap parts. You can re-use items (HDD, Memory, Monitors, Keyboard, Mouse, Graphics Card, DVD Writer etc) therefore you can upgrade at a fraction of the cost, assuming technology hasn't changed too much. I'm still pretty sure that over time, all of my upgrades have costed more that if I'd bought a pre-built machine.

Adding to that, the £14.99 packages are capped packages of which there are 2. Pay As You Go - You only get 1gb included (download and upload) and you pay for each gb over that. Broadband Plus - This allows about 5gb of usage per month however newsgroups and peer to peer applications are either blocked or heavily restricted speed wise (can't remember which now) For what is meant to be "unlimited" you have to go for Premier which is £21.99 per month. This is not actually unlimited but is more than most people need. From a few months ago, people only started getting snot-a-grams when they continually downloaded over 150gb per month. Traffic is shaped on this product though so newsgroups and p2p will only get 20k downloads whereas web browsing will work at full speed for example.

Force9 are part of PlusNet. I would suggest looking at the PlusNet forums on ADSL Guide for more information from users. I was with PlusNet myself for two years before they started introducing caps and traffic shaping without telling anyone whilst still claiming they weren't. I know they were trying to sort out their poor customer communications before I left but don't know whether this happened. I've got to say though that I never had a single problem with speed or connection in the time I was with them. I only left in the end as BT's rubbish line limits wouldn't even let me upgrade to 1mb. I'm now happily on 2mb with an LLU provider. Jim, switching should be simple with any ADSL provider. Simply request your MAC (Migration Authorisation Code) from your current provider and then enter this during the online sign up with the new provider. Just make sure you do want to move when you request your MAC as some providers will cancel your account after the 30 day notice period whereas others will keep you on if you haven't used it.

ah crap no! Yeah right

The comments are now online Sky Sports Nice one Hughesy.

Funny, I still think that "red" shirt is far too similar to the Burnley shirt in SG194's post above.

Ah yes, see what you mean now. It certainly doesn't look anything like gold to me.

I guess it must be, I mean what is the middle away shirt all about? It looks like a dull mucky grey. Who would ever want that? I'm hoping that whatever is picked, they translate to material better than they look on screen.

I'm at a loss to figure out why everyone loves Away shirt 3 on here. My instant first reaction was that it just looked far too claret for my liking. Is there something I'm missing here or is my monitor playing tricks on me?

I hope so. Now that would be worth the storage space. Although having thought about it, the amount of times it went wrong and nearly killed someone, I'm not sure I'd want to play.

I'm not saying it's pointless. I am saying that they should use it IF they need to. I just don't want to see them filling space with tat for the sake of filling space. All in all, I just don't believe that HD-DVD or Blu-ray will be the revolution in gaming that Sony seem to be playing on for people to go for the PS3. The only early advantage for the PS3 is that it will play High-Def films.

Interesting that they think they will go from under 4.3GB which was San Andreas to using a full 50GB on Blu-Ray. Not entirely sure what they are going to fill it with other than then entire back catalogue of every radio station around. Don't get me wrong though, if developers do need the space then fair enough as long as they fill it with quality. I just don't want them going back to filling the space for the sake of filling it. Of course they may fill up a Blu-ray in the early days just to slow down piracy due to writers being too expensive and dual layer media not being available. Surely that wouldn't be the only reason they would fill their disks?

Well DD5.1 is already a standard on the XBOX and as I've already said, developers aren't using all the storage that's at their disposal right now. And high-res textures fir consoles won't make that much difference. Look at PC games for a comparison. They already run up to 1600x1400 way above the High Def resolutions and the current crop still don't use that much space when fully instaaled to the hard drive. for example, games on my HD at the moment:- F.E.A.R - 4.8GB Half Life 2 - 4.27GB Quake 4 - 2.42GB I honestly believe that the hype behind Blue-Ray on the PS3 and possibly HD-DVD coming to XBOX360 are just that, hype. The only real need for that much stoage will be for Hi-Def movies, which actually might be wnat ends up taking all the space in games. Just like the early days of PC CD-ROM games, I can see developers filling the disk full of Hi-Def cut scenes with little content. Just looking at the current XBOX360 games, they don't appear to be breaking the limits of a standard dual layer DVD just yet either. Call of Duty 2 - 7GB GUN - 6.8GB Dead or Alive 4 - 5GB King Kong 6.3GB

That's rubbish as well. I've only seen 2 or 3 games that can't fit on a single sided single layered disk which means most of them are "squeezed" under 4.3gb. If the developers really needed that extra space, they could have developed up to 9.6GB by using a double layer disk. Therefore, not many developers are using all the capacity that is available to them now let alone needing the space of a blue-ray or hd-dvd disk.

I've seen reports suggesting it will be a staggered release with Japan late summer this year, the US around Novemeber then us poor 2nd rate Europeans around March next year. Hope it's not true as I want the 360 to come down in price sooner.

When they finally finish the hardware spec!

Nah, they won't make many changes, probably just change the internal chips etc when cheaper manufacturing methods come about. Pretty similar to the original Xbox which is now on version 6 or 7, can't remember which. The only thing that I was waiting for was the addition of the HD-DVD drive but that now looks like it's going to be an add-on for movies only. This has been mentioned twice recently. First time was from the head of distribution in Japan who said there's no way they would fundamentally change a console which would either mean annoying early adopters or having to recall the units for an upgrade. The second was from the some head of the xbox division during Bill Gates' key not speach at CES the other day. That is where they said it was only going to be an add-on and not for games. Bummer really. If anyone wants to see the keynote speech, it can be found HERE. It's very interesting and highlights where microsoft is heading in the next year to the end of the decade.

I like them both. I've got both of them, play both of them, get bored of both of them. It goes round in a cycle and both games have their merits and problems. I get sick and tired of the PES is great, FIFA lovers are deluded attitude that seems to be the only opinion that matters these days. Everyone just enjoy the game you like.

Although you'll then have to buy a PCI-E motherboard, new processor, new SLI graphics car, probably new memory, possibly a new power supply if the current one is not up to it, Windows XP 64-bit version etc etc etc. All that at probably double the cost of the new PS3 (whenever that comes out).

PES5 isn't out in the US. Your friend will have to buy Winning Eleven 9 International. Close enough. (Or aquire/buy the PAL version if they have a chipped xbox)