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Death,

Taxes, and ...

"The Chaser" is going to try something on during APEC.

I don't know what was funnier. Bin Laden emerging from the 'Canadian' motorcade, or the stern reactions of the security head honchos after the event. Surely they should have known.

And it's not as if the Chaser boys didn't go out of their way to leave some hints for the security enforcers ...

IF ONLY the police had stopped to read the fine print on the "APEC 2007 Official Vehicle" sticker.

"This vehicle belongs to a member of The Chaser's War on Everything.

"This dude likes trees and poetry and certain types of carnivorous plants excite him."

To his credit, and he doesn't get much at the "Pigs," only Dolly Downer saw the incident as it was intended.

The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Alexander Downer, appeared amused. "Whatever you think of the humour of The Chaser … they were clearly not going to harm anybody in a physical way," he said. "They presumably were, as is the nature of their show, aiming to humiliate a lot of well-known people."

Expect to see the Chaser team get a nasty slap on the wrist when they front court in October.

Anyone with an interest in AFL footy knows knows channels Seven and Ten have a problem with their new five year agreement to broadcast all eight weekend games into Sydney and Brisbane. Quite simply, the free to air channels in the rugby dominated eastern states won't be able to absorb that many AFL games.

It seems the broadcasters thought Foxtel would stump up some (well, a lot, actually) cash to televise four of the games, but Fox wouldn't accept the asking price. So the "free to airs" are now committed to telecast the code at peak viewing times into eastern cities that have little interest in the seven games that aren't featuring the local team.

(Note: As an AFL tragic, I'm an exception to the above generalisation.)

Solutions are being sort by the broadcasters to relieve themselves of their obligation, including showing the matches on little watched community TV stations. But there's an easy to implement, "available right now" solution to their problem, and it's only government regulation that's standing in the way.

It's called digital multi-channelling.

Every free to air broadcaster has enough bandwidth to simultaneously broadcast at least two digital channels simultaneously. The ABC and SBS are already doing this. It only takes an inexpensive set top box to allow a standard analogue TV to show the additional channels.

As I understand it, the commercial broadcasters fought against multi-channelling, and the government, ever mindful not to upset media barrons, agreed to disallow the service. It's ironic that the system they fought against could offer a solution to their AFL rights dilemma.

Digital TV has a low take up rate, unsurprisingly when one considers that there's no real advantage in acquiring the technology. High definition is hardly a "must have," and the lame programming on the ABC's and SBS's second channels hardly makes the effort worthwhile.

Perhaps the AFL and Seven / Ten should get together and try to get the restrictions on multi-channelling lifted.

If they were successful, I'd be racing to buy a digital set top box the next day.

What was Steve Irwin doing to get his chest so close to the barbs on a stingray's tail? We'll have to wait for the inevitable enquiry and subsequent examination of the film to find out, but it's likely he was doing what he did best. Getting close and personal with dangerous creatures.

Whatever the circumstances of this tragic incident, Australia has lost an overseas icon and a tireless advocate for environmental issues.

It would surprise many of Irwin's overseas fans that he was a household name in the US long before he was generally noticed here. I first heard of Irwin on a radio program when it was explained how he was a runaway success on US TV.

Steve who?

Those same fans would also be surprised to find that a section of the Australian community has always been uncomfortable with his 'over the top' Australian-ness, ie, his 'ockerism.' Irwin himself acknowledged this.

When I see what's happened all over the world, they're looking at me at as this very popular wildlife warrior Australian bloke and yet back here in my own country, some people find me a little bit embarrassing. You know there's this ... they kind of whoah! cringe, you know, because I'm coming out with "crikey!" and "have a look at this little beauty!"

You know is it a cultural cringe? Is it, you know, they actually see a little bit of themselves when they see me and that they find that a little embarrassing?

Although I've heard his on and off screen persona's were similar, I suspect the local media did not initially take to him because of it. It was only when his overseas fame became so large it couldn't be ignored, that the local Australian media started to give him exposure.

I have to admit I'm one of those who found his boyish ocker enthusiasm a little disconcerting. It worries me that the ocker images of Irwin and others, like Paul Hogan, are ones so associated by many foreigners to be quintessentially Australian. Let me assure any foreign readers who stumble over this corner of the net that Australians are a lot more complex than portrayed by our more famous media exports.

That been said, nothing should be taken away from Irwin's genuine enthusiasm for the environment, conservation and promoting Australia.

He was a great Australian; one who died far too young, at a time when the environment needs all the advocates it can muster.

There's another group of sporting fans who fear access to their preferred sport on free-to-air TV. In today's Sun Herald (no link yet), Rugby Union fans are concerned that Seven's AFL broadcasting commitments will diminish the coverage of their sport on that network. This follows the concern of AFL followers, including yours truly, who feared the prospect of the Nine Network winning the AFL rights would see the code would play second fiddle to Rugby League in NSW and Qld.

The stupid thing about all this is that a technical solution exists to allow free-to-air networks simultaneously broadcast competing sports, and it's here right now. It's called digital TV multi-channelling and can be accessed simply by connecting an inexpensive set top box signal converter to a bog standard TV.

The only thing stopping multi-channelling is government regulation, and those regulations were introduced at the behest of the industry who saw digital TV as an entry point for competition, and to protect their investment in pay TV.

Thankfully, the government didn't mandate the 'Rolls Royce' High Definition Digital TV (HDTV) standard as some of the networks wanted. This would have taken up the full 7Mhz spectrum and allowed nothing else. Instead, the authorities mandated that Standard Definition TV (SDTV) and a cut down version of HDTV be transmitted simultaneously, with a future provision to allow sporting telecasts be multi-channelled to provide different camera angles at the same event.

In the mean time, the ABC and SBS were given the go ahead to multi-channel, albeit with tight content restrictions.

If the government relaxed the multi-channelling restrictions the commercial free-to-air networks could show, for example, the Rugby Union and the AFL at the same time, and let the viewer decide what to watch.

Who knows? This may even prompt the public to actually show in interest an the digital medium. There's been precious little to spark interest in the technology up till now, as shown by the small uptake rate.

Prices of console games are set to fall after a high court ruling stating that it is legal to modify playstation machines to play games brought from outside the region they are set to.

Now my console playing days are over, fingers crossed, but I cannot fail to see this as a fantastic decision, mainly because I envisage the knock-on effect it may have on the DVD industry. To mine, the idea of regions and region coding is absolutely ridiculous - it's nothing more than a money-spinning enteprise, way out of date and insulting to the 'global community' these businesses want to be a part of. On top of this, many single region DVD players will not play DVDs which are encoded to play in ALL regions, a common practice in Asia and Central Europe. Ludicrous.

To be honest, I'm mainly ticked off because the DVD market I'm in is limited to what certain people think I should be ab;e to or want to see, not by the total choice that is out there. Hmpf.