It's that time again. The Tour de France is back on and yet again we cannot see it directly. There do seem to be a number of youtube videos but we cannot get it on TV as we're still in the analogue-only region and still waiting for the great digital switchover. Next year we should be able to watch the TdF directly.

It's a sign of the times that our usual mechanism is to get our next door neighbours to record the TdF off Eurosport on VHS. However, like most people they've migrated away from VHS onto a DVD recorder. However, with our tests we cannot get the DVD into a normal DVD player or computer to play back the recording. It looks like the DVD recorder has a proprietary format. So it looks like You Tube will be the 2008 TdF means. Next year on TV (I hope).