Tetris on Freeview

Those of you bored of the various flavours of Murdoch and the BBC's variously rubbish digital offerings will be pleased to hear that you can now pay £1 a day to play Tetris on the television. Instead of finding it on the Internet and playing it for free. Or digging out the Game Boy version (everybody owns it - it probably came with your birth certificate).

Thanks to YooMedia and MIETV, Freeview channel F2P Games (channel 53) will now let you play Tetris, using a premium rate telephone number to bill you for your 24 hours' access. Fortunately you can sample the game first. Er, to see if it's a good port, obviously. If you don't know what Tetris is, you're definitely reading the wrong website.

"The development of Tetris on the MHEG5 Freeview platform is a huge step," says MIETV's Aubrey Welch. "Many industry observers thought it would be impossible to achieve." Tetris Company MD Maryann Huhs concurs. "The game really elevates Freeview to a comparative level of interactivity as BSKYB, and certainly matches anything possible on cable."

It certainly does, Maryann. Why, only last night I was nestling in front of the TV wondering "why do they put that 'interactive' button there when all it does is rob you of interactivity and picture for the 20 seconds it takes to wrestle the TV back to your chosen channel?" Tetris would be a definite improvement. Perhaps they could make it pop up while you sit there waiting for the useless, featureless menu you didn't want anyway.

Anyway, er, there you have it. Tetris on TV. £1 a day. Now go and buy some proper games, scallywag.