Tag: TV

Recharge the batteries

So – this weekend will mostly be in Peterborough celebrating Shakeel’s 35th birthday. It’s a shame it’s a short trip but will be good to get away. Need a break. The little things are getting to me while the big important things are being ignored…this really has to stop. This is coupled with a sudden urge to travel.

Anyway…back in the real world Big Brother 7 has just started. Does Pete have tourette’s or is he just a complete tit. Lisa – shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Shahbaz – stop stroking people. I have delusions that not watching any of the first weekend will mean I don’t get hooked on it. Aye right.

BBC HD

BBC HD Sample 1
Someone has recorded Planet Earth from the new BBC HD trial service and uploaded it to the newsgroups. Quality of the broadcast is excellent – I’ve uploaded a few snaps (resolution not quite right of jpg – media player issue).

Can not wait for Sky HD which promises to be this years must have new technology. 13 days to go.

ABC – TV for Free

ABC has launched it’s full episode TV streaming servicee. For free. Users can watch advert supported episodes from the comfort of their PC. When I first heard about this I thought the adverts would be more intrusive than on TV but they break at the same time and are no different to a normal viewing. Finally a broadcaster wakes up to the modern day requirements of TV watchers and provides a credible alternative to pirating.

Note that this is only available to US viewers although I’ve had joy with Tor. Charon is another alternative as described here.

Yahoo! Go TV

Yahoo bought Meedio last week and has already released the Meedio Pro software ($45) as a free beta. Meedio is similar to Windows Media Centre or FrontRow in that it groups all your media together in a TV friendly format. Yay! for Yahoo! The bad news is that on start-up it checks to make sure you are located in the US using your IP address so will only work for US users. Boo!

However you can get round the US check and run the software although none of the internet functionality will work. I hope you like purple and blue screens.

E4 on Freeview

By the end of May E4 and also E4+1 will be available on Freeview – the full press release is here. Great news although a bit of a waste to have E4+1 as well. By October More 4 will also have launched on Freeview as well. I’m now more glad that I didn’t move to Sky and also convinced a dual-tuner Freeview PVR is required. Question is, will it be the Topfield or the Inverto? Comparisons with these two plus others can be found here.

The Doctor

Watched the first of the new Doctor Who’s last night. Underwhelmed is about the best I could say but then I never expected too much. Christopher Eccleston played the Doctor as a smiling idiot for the first 20 minutes which was starting to get quite irritating – hopefully this was just a one off and doesn’t permeate the series. Billy Piper played Rose pretty well I thought. However the action was a bit ‘British’ and poor compared to American drama’s – the special effects were also cheap. Spooks does it far better.

Still – good to see an alternative to the usual Saturday evening line-up – far too many reality shows now. Cheap tv is here to stay. I’ll give it another try as hopefully later series can concentrate on plot rather than character introductions.

Comic Relief

Pretty much same old same old but I guess that’s to be expected when appealing to everyone. Ab Fab girls – please stop. Davina wasn’t too hot either. Peter Kay was comedy genius though – grab it here if you missed it. Comedy comes second though after watching some of the serious clips…and just how drunk were the Fame Academy students?

E4 on Freeview

Great news – Digital Spy are reporting that E4 will be on Freeview by the end of the year. For months (read years) I’ve resisted Sky. Too many channels, too little on said channels, too little time to watch terrestrial tv never mind 300 channels on Sky. But I want Sky One. I want E4. I want Sky Sports. More recently I want Sky+. This for me was almost reason enough to move to Sky.

But with E4 moving to Freeview I think I’ll make do with a new Freeview box with twin tuners and a hard disk. Probably cost £150-£300 but that will be it – no £31 to the evil that is Murdoch (childish but true). Just need to make my choice (or wait for the new Panasonic which has taken forever to come out). The only snag I can see is no matter which recorder you buy you end up with bugs and faults. That’s new technology for you. Now – where’s the video tape?

XBMC

xbmcI’ve mentioned Xbox Media Center (XBMC) before but the new updates are top smart. First up is a new web radio interface. Makes browsing through hundreds of Internet radio stations a breeze. Second is a link into Apple’s movie trailer site which means you can stream and watch trailers on the TV with ease. Finally there’s a link to game trailers at Microsoft.

Linking into the pc is easy and means I can browse the all my music (and album art finally works well) and select play lists at will. Can then easily switch to movies stored on the media server pc, the Xbox itself or slap in a dvd. If you are into home entertainment in any way, a chipped Xbox and XBMC really are worth investigating.