Interactive TV

Interactive TV

Entries in this category

1 July 2008: Fishy cables - new post at the BBCi Labs blog

Over on BBCi Labs right now, you’ll find my first contribution to that blog.

24 June 2008: BBCi Labs Live

BBCi Labs is a new blog from the team I work in and will be a space for the team to write about what we’re doing, show off some of the things we’ve done and various other stuff.

29 May 2008: Everywhere you go, always take the BBCi Freesat Weather Service with you

I seem to be making a bit of a habit of missing the BBCi Freesat launches. After being away for the initial launch due to being on holiday, I missed the launch of the new Freesat Weather service on Tuesday due to being ill with a chest infection.

9 May 2008: BBCi on Freesat Launched!

So if you’re the one person who has been eagerly awaiting a detailed blog post about it all, well you can now have it.

4 December 2007: Building BBCi on Freesat

I don’t know what anyone else thought, but when I read that bit of the Freesat FAQ about interactive content on Freesat, I thought that the author was being just a little cagey - that they weren’t really telling me much.

27 November 2007: Freesat Website

Well the secret is out. Well right now as I type, it’s not hugely out because the website hasn’t been out for very long. But anyway, the Freesat website is now live, so you can find out all about it, and why you’d want it. Or not want it. Or something.

15 September 2007: Latest BBCi goings on

CBBC extra goes bright green, and cable-land gets a radio service

18 July 2007: Bouncing bugs

The end of last week saw the launch of yet another raft of BBCi changes that I’ve been involved with. In fact it was a huge, chunky, bit-of-a-nightmare of a release, with most of the changes being behind the scenes so you’d never even notice, which isn’t really the most encouraging thing in the world!

20 April 2007: An Award Winning BBCi

Tthis week, BBCi won the International Interactive Emmy award for Best Interactive Television Service. Woo!

24 February 2007: 100% Increase In Video Choice! (a.k.a BBCi News Multiscreen on Freeview gets a bit bigger)

It was great to see the new look BBCi News Multiscreen launch on digital terrestrial television at around 11:10 on Thursday morning - now with 100% more video options! (well four choices instead of 2 is a 100% increase!)

21 February 2007: Number or No Number?

I mentioned the other day that all but four pages within the new BBCi weather service had page numbers and that I was contemplating adding in those extra four. Whether to do so or not turned out to be an interesting decision.

17 February 2007: Changes to the BBCi Weather service

Urgh, thank goodness it’s the weekend. It’s been a particularly long week due to the launch of the revised BBCi weather service on digital terrestrial and satellite which, for us, wasn’t quite as smooth as I would have liked - hence why I was still at work last night at 8pm. Especially annoying given I’d worked late the previous night and had hoped to go home early on Friday to compensate! Still the changes are done and the service is up there for people to see.

10 February 2007: Weather and Sport joins the BBCi News Multiscreen

A while ago, someone emailed me to ask what was going to replace the old quarter screen BBC Parliament service on digital terrestrial television (aka Freeview). At the time I just said that something was coming, and that I couldn’t say more.

11 January 2007: Three closures, one opening and some snow

I feel a bit like the grim reaper having recently been the person who took the life away from two BBCi sections which closed this week.

30 December 2006: A tale of some brown holly

This year we added a bit of brown holly to the front page of BBCi on satellite. Some people may wonder why it’s brown. Some might wonder why only on satellite. So here’s why.

28 October 2006: A Brief History of BBC Parliament on Freeview

Well the news is out - BBC Parliament on DTT/Freeview will be going full screen in November, rather than the horrible quarter screen format that it goes out in now.

26 September 2006: Spot the difference

Today was another big day in BBCi land thanks to the latest launch from one of the projects I work on. Although you probably won’t notice any difference…

17 July 2006: No Video. Just a big blue box instead.

You should always know what your competitors are up to. Which is why I spent some time the other morning flicking around between Sky Text and Teletext on my Freeview box at work.

24 November 2005: BBCi Happenings (Part 2)

It feels like just as I’m winding down slightly at work in preperation for having next week off (hurray!), the launches and the changes have been ramping up! Yesterday it was removing TV and Radio listings, today it was improving them as we relaunched our What’s On Service on DTT (or Freeview if you must).

24 November 2005: BBCi Happenings (Part 1)

On Wednesday we killed off the TV and radio listings on the satellite version of BBCi.

13 November 2005: Finally Rebranded

I totally missed this cos no one actually told me, but finally it’s complete. Yes, the new BBCi bridge launched on NTL’s Bromley network on Tuesday 8 November - a whole six months after it went out on Telewest.

27 July 2005: Going Digital (Text)

There’s now an indepth report on the analogue TV switch off trial that recently occurred in Ferryside, Wales. It’s quite a long document but it was the small section on digital text services that caught by eye - especially the user reactions to them in a world where they’d be unable to get Ceefax.

16 June 2005: Crossing The NTL Bridge

NTL’s customers in the Langley region got our new look BBCi just over a month ago. Well on BBC One and BBC Two anyway. Until yesterday when they finally got the almost full suite with all the other BBC channels now having access to BBCi when the user presses their red button. Except on BBC Parliament - technical problem or somet.

6 June 2005: Teletext on ITV

Today saw the end of one of the great usability problems of digital text. Yes, you can now press the TEXT button on ITV1 and something actually happens.

18 May 2005: A Half Sense Of Closure

Today I got a sense of closure. Almost. A project we all stopped working on nearly two months ago, finally went up. Well almost. Yes, today half of NTL got the rebranded bridge.

20 April 2005: We’re going to do WHAT?!

Is it really a year ago that the BBC’s statement of programme policy proclaimed that we’d launch something called QuickCodes on an unsuspecting world?

5 April 2005: SuperCeefax and BBCi Page Numbers

A friend who obviously has too much time on her hands pointed me to a discussion on Digital Spy’s forums where posters were asked the question, which is better - BBCi or Teletext?

29 March 2005: Screenshot Puzzle

Staying on a BBCi theme, some random lunchtime surfing found me on Sky Digi Online, a site covering news about Sky and associated channels and services, who had a piece about BBCi, with a rather puzzling screenshot.

29 March 2005: There’s No I In Team (BBCi Freeview Rebrand)

Over the last few weeks we’ve been steadily rolling out the new rebranded BBCi, and today it got to stop three - Freeview. And that launch, along with the others, wouldn’t have happened if there hadn’t been a good team of people working away on it.

24 March 2005: Post Launch Mayhem

On Tuesday, the old launch seemed to have gone reasonably smoothly. Yesteday and today on the other hand…

22 March 2005: BBCi Rebrand Goes Satellite

It’s pretty hard to celebrate something when at the same time all is doom and gloom thanks to redundancies, budget cuts and so on. So internally, the relaunch of BBCi on satellite probably wasn’t on the cusp of many peoples minds. But relaunch we did, and I got to write another email to tell everyone how wonderful they are.

13 March 2005: BBCi Rebrand Comments

Whenever we launch something at work, I like to have a look around and see what people are saying - hoping of course that it’s good feedback!

8 March 2005: BBCi Rebrand Hits Telewest

It’s all change to BBCi as we relaunch on Telewest with a new look and a new logo. Warning - contains several large images!

14 December 2004: Sky Text On Freeview

Today Sky launched Sky Text on digital terrestrial television. The service was originally a traditional text service, has been on satellite in a ‘digital’ form since 2000.

6 December 2004: More BBCi Page Numbers

Less than a month (just!) after BBCi launched page numbers on satellite, at around 4:20 today, they went up on the DTT/Freeview version as well!

13 November 2004: To Tweak, Or Not To Tweak

Here’s an interesting problem. You have a 30 year old concept. It’s established and everyone knows what it is, and how its used.

10 November 2004: Page Numbers Are Go

Just after 2pm today we launched page numbers on BBCi on satellite.

6 November 2004: Don’t Panic! Teletext have got page numbers first! Don’t panic!

With page numbers about to launch on BBCi, I spent some time this morning lurking around some of the more ‘opinionated’ (read ‘full of know-it-alls’) message boards, seeing what people have been saying about the idea coming to the service.

3 November 2004: BBCi Page Numbers

Well the press release has gone out. It could only mean one thing. Page numbers will be hitting BBCi very soon.

23 September 2004: Should that be 179?

In the week that Ceefax turns 30, it’s kinda appropiate that on Monday I did something which a couple of people probably did 30 years ago.

28 July 2004: BBCi Zooms Along

Today the new and improved BBCi launched on DTT (digital terrestrial television - the platform also known as Freeview).

5 July 2004: Why is BBCi so slow?

Mention that you work for BBCi, the BBC’s digital text service and you may regret it as you’ll get told 500 things that are wrong with what you work on. And the big gripe is speed.

14 May 2004: Key dates from BBCi history

Key dates from the BBC interactive text service history.

29 April 2004: Internal Project Names Unleased To The World

Don’t you just love it when internal project names end up on big documents that are released to the public?

14 January 2004: Code navigation for digital teletext.

Pretty much ever since it was launched, people have been moaning about the lack of page numbers on digital teletext services. But wouldn’t it be interesting to add a little more of a link between the numbers and the content they point to?

26 November 2003: Teletext Future.

Teletext has been in a bit of a limbo land on digital and questions had to be asked as to whether it could even survive in the digital land. Recent developments do seem to give it a chance…

21 October 2003: Interesting Digital Television Launches.

The BBC has launched News Multiscreen, and EMAP seems to have some big plans, but what they’re not saying. Interactive services on Freeview are really getting interesting.

26 September 2003: DAB Text on BBCi Radio Stations.

The BBC stations on DTT/Freeview now have an updating text feed. It’s cool.

top ^