RA19

For those that didn't see the game, Malaga won it with a 79th minute goal. Lichaj, who was very good at right-back, was caught out by a crossfield pass over his head. the cross was meat & drink for Friedel low-down, but big Brad flapped it out for a six-yard tap-in! Can't remember Villa creating a clear-cut chance to be honest. Osbourne did fire one awkward volley high & wide and also fired well wide from outside the box. Disappointing display lacking in creativity - everything seemed to have to go thru Petrov in midfield, who had little support it seemed from Sidwell & Reo-Coker.

Well, poor start against a team mostly of youth & reserves playing first game of pre-season. Work to do MON!!

NO!

General I'd like to propose that Martin Laursen lead the Villa players out on to the pitch for the final home game against Newcastle. If he is to retire, as seems likely, it would be a fitting send-off for a leader to take his troops onto the field one last time.

Best player at Villa for donkey's years! Is still getting better too. If he goes I'll understand, but be disappointed as it sends out all the wrong signals to players looking at, maybe, coming to Villa. If he stays it will be because he wants to stay & I hope then some people will get off the guy's back! There's a lot on here who've made him feel unwelcome - spouting traitor bollox as though they've never done anything wrong in their own lives.

General I really do appreciate you taking my comments on board. I subscribed to AVTV on an annual contract last August - please trust me I would not have continued with it until now if none of the AVTV segments could be used on a Mac. The match highlights I always understood were DRM protected because the Premier League don't want to encourage their 'intellectual property rights' (jeez, this used to be a game for the fans, the common man!!) being freely available (although if it's via a subscription service I don't really get that either). But the academy, reserves, player interviews etc. have ALWAYS worked for me - but not now. I hope they manage to get it fixed soon.

General Further to my recent comments about AVTV and Mac computers I received the following email from AVTV: "Thank you for your email. Our content has always been protected by Digital Rights Managements (DRM) and therefore has not worked on the MAC OS. This will be available from the beginning of next season." [AVTV] This statement is incorrect as I pointed out in my reply below. However I have now cancelled my subscription. Sad! "Thankyou for your reply. In fact the AVTV service (with the exception of the Match Highlights of Premier League games) has worked perfectly on my Mac OS laptop since taking out my subscription last August. Interviews, Press Conferences, Academy & Reserves highlights have all worked perfectly - so something has now changed, other wise I would have cancelled long ago. To say your service has never worked on a Mac OS system is incorrect. However, thankyou for arranging the refund. I have written to General Krulak at the club expressing my disappointment at the continued lack of support for Mac's (the only growth sector in the PC industry)." [RA19]

Hi General What's the time schedule for making the improvements to AVTV? I've had a subscription since last July & managed to watch all the interviews, academy stuff, press conferences etc. even though my Mac system is not supported. I accepted that I couldn't watch the Match Highlights package. Now it appears that the DRM content curse has struck even those areas I've enjoyed watching everyday as I am now denied access to these elements of the service. The situation seems to get worse rather than better. The company who provides the service email replies to me are the same old stock answers blah, blah. Who do I need to contact to get a refund on the 4 months balance remaining on my subscription please? It seems Mac users are the lepers of the Villa website! If I was a General I'd KATN and fire their no-good asses out of there. Hell yeah!!! Phew, that feels better.

& show the game so Mac owners can watch too please!!

Beat Chelsea, beat Everton and lose to CSKA (if we have to lose a game!!) - but lose 1-0 at home and win 3-1 in the away leg!

More like $120,000 now general, but if you're still offering that '2 for 1' rate I'll get my savings together!! :winkold:

Managed to watch first half last night on AVTV without sound. Like the others second half was unavailable for 7 or 8 minutes - missed the Litex goal altogether - but then it came back again with sound so was ok. Broadband speeds generally are too slow in the UK - I could only watch it without continuous buffering on the worst quality setting, which gave you a picture the size of a postage stamp. Borrowed my brother's laptop to watch it as it won't work on my Mac at all. Still a good idea, so thanks for the initiative even if there were gremlins in the execution!

PLC's (public limited companies) are duty bound to disclose their dealings as they are owned by shareholders. Villa is a privately owned company (owned by Randy Lerner) & therefore don't have to disclose individual transfer deals - if the transfer is with another privately owned company then there is no legal requirement for either party to disclose the fee.

Hi General just a follow-up to my post of a few days ago on AVTV and Apple Macs. Here's the reply I got this morning from AVTV. sadly, doesn't answer my question on why highlights can be seen in Interviews but not Match Highlights and why Stoke audio commentary didn't work on Windows either. Finishes by saying there are no plans to support different platforms - Mac users don't bother then I guess! Thank you for comments. Following the rapid growth of a range of video and stream sharing websites over recent months, a significant volume of content which is provided on an exclusive basis to subscribers was being made freely available on the Internet. We have to have a solution that will satisfactorily safeguard the content. This has required us to DRM the content and due to changes made recently we are no longer able to support Apple / Mac products. Specifically Windows Media Player is longer supported on this platform and likewise IE6.0. This has been extended to all our sites and services including MatchLive, if you can access the service from a Windows machine supporting the above products, please do so. If however this is not possible we can offer a refund for unused portion of your subscription. Please notify us by return if you wish to take this option. This company has always since our inception provided all of our services through and in conjunction with Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player. We have invested heavily in this technology along with our customers, all of our content is in this format, therefore we continued with this platform when introducing a DRM solution for our clients. At this time there are no plans to move to a different platform. Best Regards, AVTV - Web Support

General - a quick question on AVTV and, specifically, when is it planned to improve the service for Mac users please? I recently took out the £34.99 annual subscription to AVTV, having watched all the pre-season game highlights, interviews etc. It now appears that video match highlights can be viewed if they are included in the Interviews section on AVTV, but not if they're listed in the Match Highlights section. Go figure! Surely it would be simply remedied by listing them all in the Interviews section? Also, I was not able to listen to the live Stoke commentary last weekend either on a Mac or a Windows PC - frustrating at the time, but may have been a blessing of course! I've emailed AVTV today about these problems & will be interested to see how quickly I get a response. I'm sure a word from you may get someone's attention with a bit more urgency however! Thanks General - keep up the great work you do on behalf of Villa fans everywhere.

General I agree with Adam2003's comments entirely! I look at the website many times daily anyway, so we don't need these cheap 'headline-grabbing' story titles. Hope you're enjoying the 'off-season' - here's hoping we get a few first 'draft picks' at the Villa!

Ooh General, does that mean we're going to spend some of those transfer funds??!!! Pip, pip, hooray!!!! :winkold:

+1 on the scarf - would love to get one now. Any links or places to call?

And if we believe the rumours (I rarely do) the school bullies are trying to nick our iPhone. Quick run & tell mum!

First - well done to the lads for a great win yesterday. Second - a customer service note for the General (btw, hope your back is better soon - I'm having disc surgery on mine this Thursday!) Over the past week or so both my son (who's 21) and myself have e-mailed the Villa shop with different requests about products. His was - will the claret shorts be available for fans to buy? and mine was about the new black 3rd shirt. Neither enquiry received a response! I now notice that Sports Direct.com have the black shirt for sale at £35.49 +p&p. I'd rather not line the pockets of the Newcastle Utd chairman, but Villa need to get their retail act together. No reply = bad manners and lost business. General, your communication skills are first class so I hope you can help, politely, KATN (for the uninitiated Kick Ass Take Names!!). ;0) Thanks. Rob