Archive for category Television

Sky Pay-DTT Service, Virgin Media

May 4

Posted by Ken in Television

A little bit of good news and some bad news for television viewers in the UK today. We’ll start off with the bad…

Sky’s Pay DTT Service

Freeview is the UK’s free-tv Digital Terrestrial TV platform. It’s a brand name for the consortium consisting of the BBC, Sky, ITV, Channel 4 and transmission company National Grid Wireless. Freeview was launched after the collapse of ITV Digital (in related news, Monkey and Al are back on our screens).

Freeview is probably the biggest digital television sector in the UK and it’s great for the people who don’t want to pay a subscription but still want to be able to watch television after the digital switchover which begins next year.

Freeview was joined by a pay-DTT service called Top Up TV in 2004. Top Up TV used to broadcast about 8 or 9 different channels for a few hours a day through a timesharing system, as they only had 4 streams. They’ve been subject to a lot of speculation to how successful it is, and many people don’t like it as it causes confusion and some people believe it hinders the growth of Freeview. Paid subscription services have no place on the limited capacity on DTT.

Rupert Murdoch’s BSkyB currently contributes three channels to the line up: Sky Three, Sky News and Sky Sports News. Today Sky announced plans to remove their three channels from the lineup and to replace them with it’s own subscription service.

This is obviously another big blow to Freeview and people who simply want free television. We’ll have a second, incompatible pay-TV service sharing the bandwidth and more pay channels littering the channel lineup. It really seems to be a way for Sky to reduce competition coming from Freeview rather than Sky providing a real alternative. They already provide a pay-TV service on satellite.

Ntl and Telewest become Virgin Media

The two cable companies Ntl and Telewest have now become Virgin Media. The "merger" combines the tri-play services from the two cable companies: broadband, tv and phone with Virgin’s mobile arm. The ISP Virgin.net has also been absorbed under the brand name of Virgin Media.

To promote Virgin Media, Virgin boss Richard Branson has decided to live in a glass box for one day. 

The great thing about Virgin Media is that we finally have a rival to Sky. Virgin has some really attractive packages. The 3 for £30 offer gives you 2Mbps broadband, a pretty decent TV service including Sky channels and unlimited free national calls at weekends. Line rental is included in the price (line rental is usually £11 on BT so this package is effectively £19).

If you just want broadband through your BT line, you can get unlimited 8mbps broadband for just £15 a month. You also get evening and weekend calls to UK landlines for free. As a comparison, BT Broadband costs £27 a month. Switching to Virgin saves £144 a year. 

Virgin also plan to launch a hybrid interactive television channel. 

BT

It’s worth mentioning that BT are also expanding to compete with these new offers. BT Broadband was rebranded as BT Total Broadband with 8Mbps as standard, usage caps have been raised or removed, a VoD-service called BT Vision is being launched and a wi-fi enabled mobile service BT Fusion.

If BT tie up with FON, this could be really interesting. 

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3rd Stargate Series: “Stargate Universe”

May 4

Posted by Ken in Television

Gateworld reports that the third series of Stargate has the working title "Stargate Universe" and that it will deal with the ninth chevron.

Gateworld: 

The new series has been conceived to be "a completely separate, third entity," Cooper said in an interview — "much more so than Atlantis was. Atlantis was much more of a spin-off seires of SG-1 and was sort of born out of SG-1."

Like many of the producers ideas, Cooper said, the idea for Stargate Universe was originally conceived as a stand-alone movie. "When we originally were sitting around talking about this we were trying to come up with ideas for a Stargate feature — not an SG-1 feature or an Atlantis feature, but a feature that would fit into the Stargate franchise that we feel we have created," Cooper said. "We were thinking, ‘How do we create a third arm to the franchise that is very connective and that fans will feel is born out of the material that has come before, but at the same time is very much something that stands alone?’

What We Know

  • Targeted for early 2008
  • Ninth Chevron plays big role in series
  • Will be separate from SG-1 and Atlantis, rather than spin-offs.
  • Will be gate-based rather than ship-based
  • Will be set in the present; will not be a prequel or a sequel
  • Will relate to existing mythology but will have separate storylines
  • Will have a team on adventures (presumably a team from Earth)

The Name

My first reaction when I saw the name "Stargate Universe" was really of shock. It’s a terrible name, almost something you’d expect from a children’s television programme. It doesn’t really seem to capture any of the magic but it is only a working title so may change. 

The Ninth Chevron 

We know that the show will involve the 9th chevron. It has been hotly debated amongst fans of what this chevron does. 

We know that most gate addresses use 7 chevrons. The 8th chevron is used to add an extra distance calculation like a area dialing code; it was required to travel to Atlantis and the Asgard galaxy. The name "Universe" implies that the show will perhaps be set in a much larger area than SG-1 which is set in the Milky Way, and Atlantis which is set in the Pegasus galaxy. The 9th chevron perhaps will add yet another distance calculation - like an international dialing code.

Some have suggested the 9th chevron could account for time or parallel universes. The first is unlikely, as the show is set in the present, and the producers of Stargate have made it quite clear that they don’t want to dabble with time travel, causality.

The second is a possibility. We know that the idea for Stargate Universe originally was for a movie. It’s quite easy to imagine a movie which is set in a parallel universe. However, there is already a quantum mirror to travel between universes. Effects such as the entropic cascade failure have already been established. And the title of the series is Universe, singular, not Universes.

My bet would be on the 9th chevron being an additional distance calculation. 

Mythology 

We also know that the show ties into existing mythology. So the chances are, the Ancients will come into it somehow. The whole Ancients storyline has been done in Atlantis and the Ori have been done to death and finished in SG-1. It’s hard to imagine a series which will be able to relate to the Ancients again, without having it tie in to existing story lines in SG1/Atlantis. 

Stargate also has a lot of mythology about the Goa’uld, but as far as we’re concerned they’ve been finished off. But it’s possible there could still be Goa’uld around, who have perhaps worked out how to use the ninth chevron, and escape to another galaxy. Then again, coming back to the Goa’uld could make a very, very tedious TV show. 

Movie Tie-In?

The original plan was for one of the SG-1 movies to "dovetail" into the third series. We know of two SG-1 movies at the moment:

The Ark of Truth, where SG-1 travels to the Ori home galaxy in an attempt to stop their onslaught.

Continuum, where the timeline has been altered, meaning the Stargate programme never existed.

It is unlikely a movie could be spun from Continuum. In some ways, it would provide a reset button and allow us to go back to the mythology of the original movie. This is unlikely, and certainly discovering the ninth chevron when the Stargate programme doesn’t even exist. Then again, if the ninth chevron travels between universes…

More likely, a third series could be launched from The Ark of Truth. There would be opportunities for tie-ins with the Ancients storyline, and presumably the Ori will be destroyed, leaving a whole galaxy to be explored.

Just Speculation

Of course, we know very little about the third series, and it’s all speculation.

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4oD/Sky By Broadband/BBC iPlayer Problems

May 4

Posted by Ken in Television

I just wanted to make a post about the on-demand television services which have recently become popular in the UK. Channel 4’s 4oD service has been heavily publicised over the past few weeks, Sky By Broadband is being promoted to Sky Viewers, and the BBC and ITV are soon set to launch their own on-demand services.

These services use P2P (peer to peer technology), similar to BitTorrent. Be careful when you use these services if you are on a capped broadband service, because as well as downloading the files from other people, you’ll also be uploading to others. If your internet becomes very slow, and pages suddenly time out, this is why! Upload capacity tends to be very low on ADSL so if you’re trading files or several people are trying to access the internet at once, upload capacity may be shared so thinly that there isn’t even enough bandwidth to handshake, etc.

The problem I’ve been having is a slow startup. The computer loads fine, but the Start Menu/Taskbar displays a hourglass for absolutely ages after startup. It turns out that 4oD had installed a KService application from Kontiki which was presumably trying to connect to other people to trade my files. So the loadup time went from about 5 seconds to 2 minutes or so.  

I solved this by running disabling the KService application from automatically starting in the Services icon of the Control Panel. To the best of my knowledge, Channel 4, Sky and BBC all use the Kontiki application.

Hope this helps someone :) 

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Martha Jones Axed from Doctor Who?

May 4

Posted by Ken in Television

According to The Sun, Freema Agyeman (Martha Jones) has been axed from Doctor Who for weak performances in later episodes.

DOCTOR Who actress Freema Agyeman has been axed from the next series, The Sun can reveal.

…

And they are planning a storyline where the Doctor, played by David Tennant, will lose her and travel through the universe searching for her.

The decision to dump Freema comes as a bolt from the blue after her performance for the first couple of episodes was praised.

Make of this what you will; remembering The Sun was also the source of the rumour that David Tennant was leaving Doctor Who.

Now, there have already been some hints Martha isn’t a proper assistant… you’ve seen how they’ve mentioned shes just tagging along for the ride, and in todays episode he asked some other woman to join him. But anyway, it’s all speculation.

Good news though: Captain Jack is back in the 11th episode! 

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BBC trial live mobile TV; when do you need a TV license?

Apr 7

Posted by Ken in Television

Television
Creative Commons License photo: videocrab

The Telegraph reports today that the BBC has just launched a trial of live mobile TV via WiFi.

The BBC shows are being simulcast on phones at the same time as they are broadcast on traditional scheduled television.

The service, dubbed Live TV, is still in the second stage of testing, but is available to some users already. It will enable viewers to watch channels such as BBC One, BBC Four, CBeebies and BBC News over a Wi-Fi connection using a compatible mobile phone. Radio shows can also be streamed live to handsets, the BBC confirmed.

…

To watch live TV on your mobile, visit www.bbc.co.uk/mobile/live/tv in your phone’s browser. Live radio can be found at www.bbc.co.uk/mobile/live/radio

The BBC have reminded people they need a full colour TV license to watch TV on their mobile. But I think we need a lot more clarity in what the law says about the situations when a TV license is needed. You need a TV license to watch live TV (whether you use a TV or laptop to receive it) as it is being broadcasted. However, the TV licensing website says:

Your TV Licence for your main home won’t cover you in your second home except in the following limited circumstances:
a) you only use TV receiving equipment that is powered by its internal batteries;

I am not a lawyer… but mobile phones do happen to be powered by internal batteries. So if you only use a mobile phone to receive television at a second address, do you really need a TV license? Or is the actual wireless router (which is connected to the mains) the device which acts as the “receiver”?

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Sky launching 3D television in the UK

Mar 13

Posted by Ken in Television

Gunug Rinjani Summit
Creative Commons License photo: NeilsPhotography

According to a Digital Spy report, we could be seeing 3D television in our homes by the end of the year.

Digital television (satellite) broadcaster BSkyB plans to provide the 3D service through its existing Sky HD playout and set top box system. The broadcaster trialed this out first last December and has filmed several sporting events in HD.

Of course, 3D television relies on delivering a slightly different image to each eye. There are several different technologies to do this:

  • Red-Blue Glasses. The oldest and most infamous form of 3D. Normally, all TV pictures are made up of a combination of red, green and blue. In this system, the red channel is used to deliver a picture to your left eye and the blue channel to your right eye. You need to place a red filter over your left eye to eliminate the blue channel and vice versa. It’s great because it works with any screen, but it looks strange and it’s uncomfortable.
  • Polarised Light. The TV set emits light which is orthogonally polarised, depending on which eye it is intended for. For example, vertically polarised light for the left eye and horizontally polarised light for the right eye. By using polarisation filters, each eye only sees the image intended for it. This gives a much nicer image than using red-blue glasses but obviously requires technology in the TV to create polarised light.
  • Sharp’s 3D Display. I was lucky enough to see a demonstration of this a few years ago and to play Quake in 3D. It’s pretty cool. I won’t go into the full details of how it works: but only one person can use the display at once and they have to be sat in the exact right position for the system to work at all.

Sky have, rather sensible, opted for the polarised light system for 3D television.

Perhaps this is the killer application that HD needs.

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The Great Digital TV Switchover: Freeview or Freesat?

Feb 11

Posted by Ken in Television

Television
Creative Commons License photo: videocrab

The UK is currently in the process of switching over from analogue broadcast to fully digital television. Essentially that means the analogue broadcasts will be turned off channel by channel and the frequencies those channels currently occupy will be replaced by digital TV channels. The reason the government are doing this is two-fold: primarily so it can auction off the frequencies that Freeview is currently broadcasting on and because moving Freeview to current analogue frequencies will allow much better reception for Freeview channels.

When do I switch?

According to Digital UK, switchover is happening region-by-region. The timetable as it currently stands:

  • Border has already started and finishes in 2009
  • West Country starts in April 2009 and finishes in September 2009
  • Granada switches in 2009
  • Wales starts in August 2009 and finishes in 2010
  • STV North switches in 2010
  • STV Central switches between 2010 and 2011
  • West switches between 2010 and 2011
  • Channel Islands switch in 2010
  • Central, Yorkshire and Anglia switch in 2011
  • Meridian switches between 2011 and 2012
  • London switches in 2012
  • Tyne Tees and Ulster switch in 2012

What are the free options?

The Office Monkey
Creative Commons License photo: shaz wildcat

There are of course a huge range of  services you could choose to replace analogue TV. Most of these involve subscription; I won’t talk about these options in this post. I’m working based on the assumption that if you wanted to subscribe to a TV service, you already would be doing so.

Essentially, you’ve got three options. The first is Freeview which is the most similar to analogue TV. You recieve television through an aerial. This can cause difficulties if you’re using an indoor aerial because digital TV tends to require better reception for it to work. Enter your postcode on the Freeview website.  There is a fairly good selection of channels too and the shopping channels gradually seem to be disappearing from the service. A Freeview box costs under £20 and you can install it quickly and fairly easily. It’s also worth considering getting a Freeview+ PVR (personal video recorder) for £100 which will allow you to record programmes.

Typical Freeview cost: £20

The other two options are to recieve television through your satellite dish. Rather confusingly, there are two services called Freesat: there is Freesat from BBC/ITV (”Freesat”) and Freesat from Sky. These are much pricier options but they might be your only choice if you don’t get Freeview in your area.

Hanging out with the coloured cottons 2
Creative Commons License photo: treehouse1977

You can get a Freesat box from £50 or a high definition box from £100. If you want to record, you’ll have to fork out at least £300. On top of that, if you don’t have a satellite dish, it’s another £80 for installation. The costs are significantly higher than Freeview but it does mean you can get the most out of that new high definition TV.

Typical Freesat Cost: £130

Then there’s Freesat from Sky. Sky will charge you £150 for a box and installation. You’ll probably get spammed by Sky to take out insurance on your box (and my Sky box just after 1 year when the warranty expired). You’ll also constantly get annoyed flicking through channels displaying “please subscribe” nags. This is certainly an uncompetitive option and there is no chance of subscription-free high definition or PVR.

In fact, if you’re considering Freesat from Sky, you might as well consider the full thing. Sky’s Pay Once Watch Forever offer gives you 4 months of free Sky TV for £73. If you cancel after 4 months, it’ll revert to Freesat from Sky. Obviously, they’re counting on you staying as a subscriber.

Typical Freesat from Sky Cost: £150 + spam from Sky (or £73 if you’re willing to sign up to the full Sky and then cancel)

Summary

Expanded Perception
Creative Commons License photo: jurvetson

By far the best and cheapest option is Freeview. For most people, this will probably be first choice. I strongly recommend Freeview+ as having a PVR changes your life :)

However, Freesat from BBC/ITV is worth considering if:

  • You already have a satellite mounted outside your house
  • You want high definition television
  • You can’t receive Freeview where you live

Freesat from Sky is probably not at all worth considering. I’ve had to put up with nuisance calls, letters and emails from Sky.My first Sky box broke after about a year and my current Sky+ box (which I’ve almost very nearly had for a year) looks like it might be on it’s last legs…

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Stargate Atlantis Cancelled

Aug 26

Posted by Ken in Television

Woah. Just as Stargate Atlantis season 5 begins to air on Sky One in the UK, we have news that Stargate Atlantis will not be renewed for a sixth season.

Gateworld reports that Atlantis will screen it’s final and 100th episode “Enemy At the Gate” in January in the USA. It will then conclude with a two-hour movie with the possibility of more movies if the first is successful.

SG-1 Onion Face Project
Creative Commons License photo: Steve Webel

At 100 episodes, Atlantis will have screened two more episodes than Star Trek: Enterprise but falls well short of SG-1’s 214 episode run.

It’s not all bad news for Stargate fans. Producer Joseph Mallozzi has said there could be three or four Stargate movies a year based on the SG-1 and Atlantis franchises. And the third Stargate series I’ve mentioned in the past has been given the green light. It’ll premiere in summer 2009 with a two-hour movie.

According to a SCIFI Channel press release:

After unlocking the mystery of the Stargate’s ninth chevron, a team of explorers travels to an unmanned starship called the Destiny, launched by The Ancients at the height of their civilization as a grand experiment set in motion, but never completed.

What starts as a simple reconnaissance turns into a never ending mission, as the Stargate Universe crew discovers the ship is unable to return to Earth, and they must now fend for themselves aboard the Destiny.

The crew will travel to the far reaches of the universe, connecting with each of the previously launched Stargates, thus fulfilling the Destiny’s original mission. Challenges will arise though as the ship comes into range of Stargates placed centuries ahead of the Destiny and the crew is unable to control the ship’s navigational schedule. If someone is left behind, there is no way to go back for them, adding to the drama of encountering new races, enemies and adventures.

To be honest, I have been getting a bit bored with Atlantis lately so this doesn’t come to me as too much of a disappointment. With Universe, the producers say they will re-invent the format “in a whole new way”. Perhaps this will breathe some new life into the franchise.

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Worldwide News Coverage: Why we know less than ever about the world

Jun 2

Posted by Ken in Television

A brief but persuasive talk by Alisa Miller about news coverage in the USA: about why we want to know more about the world than ever but our news sources are giving a very distorted picture with a lack of global coverage and a disproportionate amount of coverage for “pointless” celebrity news. The message is put across really well with some really good infographics.

It would be interesting to see whether British networks covered the news differently. It’s true that the BBC focuses primarily on British issues: they are the most relevant to British people. But we have plenty of coverage of worldwide issues including the American presidential election and the middle east. Perhaps it’s a reason to be thankful for the BBC and the license fee.

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BBC iPlayer for Nintendo Wii

Apr 9

Posted by Ken in Television

The BBC has announced a version of the BBC iPlayer video-on-demand catchup service for the Nintendo Wii.

The iPlayer on the Wii is currently being tested and the BBC expects to release more test versions in late 2008. An early version of the service is available from 9 April. It is only available in the UK to licence-fee payers.

The iPlayer will be accessible via the internet channel on the Wii console. The BBC said a message would be sent to Wii owners to alert them to its availability.

Unfortunately I’ve not actually got the Internet Channel (it costs 500 Wii points so I’ve never got around to purchasing points and then the browser; I didn’t really see much utility in a web browser on the Wii until iPlayer anyway). Though I’m slightly surprised that the iPlayer didn’t make a seperate application in the “Wii Software” section of the Shopping Channel. But presumably the iPlayer for Wii is just a version of the iPlayer website which works better for the Wii (the Internet Channel already has support for Flash).

Update: Comments on The Guardian blog suggests the BBC has simply adapted iPlayer to work with Wii’s Flash 7 and a BBC iPlayer channel is in the works.

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