Television

Watch me on the Tee-vee. Oh yeee.

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30 November 2007: Freesat Logos: I suspect that when the Freesat launched the other day, it was the first time that anyone had seen, publicly, the Freesat logo. And a few eagle eyed people might have noticed that Freesat originally had a completely different logo, which appeared at a press launch some time ago.
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.
14 November 2007: Whitehaven loses Ceefax: In the early hours of Wednesday 14 November, an entire town lost something no one else has lost. Teletext and Ceefax.
7 August 2007: No Beer and no TV make Bods something something…: What happened to the days when things lasted? I’m sure they existed. I remember owning a TV for about 12 years - and it got transported around the country a few times to boot… Sadly it doesn’t seem to happen very often any more. Just two months short of being five years old, and my TV has decided to give up the ghost.
13 May 2007: Eurovision: Told You So: Have to confess that I didn’t watch Eurovision - Catherine and myself were being more cultured and seeing the fantastic Waterson Family live at the Royal Albert Hall - but I came home to find we’d not only lost Eurovision, but we’d spectacularly come in joint second-to-last.
18 March 2007: Congratulations. We’ve lost Eurovision again!: I didn’t watch Making Your Mind up last night but caught a bit of the rather shambolic results programme (spectacularly they announced one person to be the winner, only to five seconds later decide they got it wrong).
4 March 2007: Ditching the VHS tapes (or, getting a new Humax PVR): A couple of weeks ago, I invested in a PVR - one of those digital video recorder things. It had been bubbling in my mind for a while, especially as I seemed to have a never ending pile of VHS tapes floating around the room with stuff on them, that had to be watched in strict order lest anything get missed.
10 January 2007: AppleTV? No drolling necessary: I’m sure half the blogosphere is busy drooling over the iPhone right now, but I was more interested in hearing about the Apple TV. Well I was interested until I actually took my eyes away from a very average looking grey box, and looked at the detail instead.
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.
19 October 2006: Have I Lost Lost?: As a Lost adict, the news that Sky have poached the programme from Channel 4 so that they can put it on Sky One, is not one I especially wish to hear. Especially as I don’t have pay-TV.
1 July 2006: Doctor Who: Cybermen AND Daleks? ARGHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
18 March 2006: The times they are a changin’: People might understand a Freeview set top box, but how about a PVR? A TiVo? A Media Center PC? Howabout how a simple games console has become a media centre in the home? And so on. Which is why Auntie runs sessions about such things, and that’s where I found myself yesterday afternoon. Not learning about it all - but helping to explain such things to other people.
26 January 2006: Sofa Tour!: So I’m flicking through the North West Tonight website (don’t ask) and I come across an interesting link. Yes, it’s the North West Tonight sofa tour! Gordon Burns and Dianne Oxbury go out, sit on a sofa in the Trafford Centre, and have their pictures taken by as many people as they can possibly persuade. Fantastic!
16 January 2006: The More Complicated They Are, The More They Go Wrong: Reading through the BBC’s Reception Advice help pages can be a bit depressing sometimes - all the problems that users have just recieving services. OnDigital boxes crashing, video and audio being out of sync, channel numbers not working properly… And that’s not the half of it.
6 October 2005: Satellite Signal Found: I know, I know. You’re all desperate to know what the state of play is on my satellite signal. I can tell this because of the flood of emails that have been bombarding my email address ever since I first mentioned the problems.
4 October 2005: Online TV Gateways: The Guardian’s Emily Bell seems to suggest that that the iMP is the bold new world for the BBC, and that the BBC backed service could be opened up to ‘host’ services from Channel 4 and ITV. The suggestion is a sort of TV programme version of Google News - do a search and find legal-to-download programmes.
25 September 2005: No Satellite Signal 3: Should you be wondering - unlikely I know - but no, I still don’t have satellite television.
20 September 2005: No Satellite Signal 2: The trauma of Sunday where I spent far too long nudging my satellite dish is still in my mind, especially when various Googling and discussions at work did suggest it might be a problem with the LNB (that’s the prong that sticks out of the dish) but before I started buying new satellite bits, or calling up people to check things, I thought it would be worth just checking the box on someone else’s satellite dish.
18 September 2005: No Satellite Signal: When we moved into this house, I was rather delighted to find a satellite dish on the side. After some time I got a cheap second hand set top box for it, then a remote. Before going on holiday, I finally got a viewing card too.
29 May 2005: The Weather: There’s been a lot said about how much more accurate the new weather forecasts are. How much easier they are. How much clearer they are. How much better it is than having one big symbol covering a large area.
11 February 2005: Tape Playing: Some of the tapes in my collection are probably getting on for 15 years old, and with the DVD collection expanding all the time, I thought it was about time I sifted through some of the VHS tapes cluttering up the shelves - watch through them to see if there was anything worth saving, and binning the rest.
10 February 2005: Vive La Revolution: Out of the entire BBC News at One, there was only five minutes of actual news - the rest of the programme taken up with hoardes of journalists talking about a bloody royal wedding.
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!
8 October 2004: Crap Video Recorders: My Sanyo VCR - probably about three years old if that - has recently started chewing up tapes for Britain. Which is, to be blunt, shit. Three years old and its knackered.
6 October 2004: Flashmob - The Opera: Okay I’ll be honest. When it comes to opera… well. And as for flashmobbing… well the phrase ‘new media wanker’ is what usually springs to mind.. So you can perhaps see why something called ‘Flashmob - The Opera’, well… might not really work in my mind…
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.
12 August 2004: It’s Anti-Political Correctness Gone Mad!: It’s quotes like these that make the rabid, foaming-at-the-mouth brigade such easy targets.
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.
28 June 2004: Henman or News?: Coverage of Tim Henman playing tennis means digital viewers wishing to get regional news viewers in England are told to go back to analogue…
19 June 2004: The Nick: In Ealing Common is a road - it cuts through the common, although is a dead end. Quite often in the morning, there will be a series of film crews and trucks wandering around. But that’s nothing in comparison to what is right next door to our new place…
17 June 2004: Bye Bye GDB3, Hello DT210F: So after it being initially perfect and then very bad indeed, my Goodmans GDB3 DTT (Freeview) set top box went back to Argos last night.
9 June 2004: Set Top Box Woe: Last September I bought (and raved about) a new Goodmans GDB3 set top box. It was a good box. Until a few months ago…
14 May 2004: Key dates from BBCi history: Key dates from the BBC interactive text service history.
6 May 2004: Are you?: Had an email via my website email form today. Rather odd one cos someone had obviously been searching through websites and spamming them through website contact forms.
16 January 2004: DVD Grinding Noises.: Loud grinding noises on some DVD discs. Why? Why? Why? Why can’t things just work properly.
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…
18 November 2003: Little Britain DOG Pondering.: One thing puzzled me whilst watching the excellent Little Britain on BBC Three which ended a few weeks back but iscoming soon to BBC Two - why was it shown without a DOG?
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.
20 October 2003: Alchemists of Sound: BBC Four told the story of the wonderful Radiophonic Workshop.
15 October 2003: Freeze It!: A Sagem DTT set top box has a rather nice freeze frame function, oh yes.
26 September 2003: DAB Text on BBCi Radio Stations.: The BBC stations on DTT/Freeview now have an updating text feed. It’s cool.
23 September 2003: All Day In The Company of Set Top Boxes.: Deep in the delves of Bush House is a room full of set top boxes. They are there for speed testing…. And it’s fun testing. Oh yes.
21 September 2003: New Media Blog.: Transdiffusion launch a new MediaBlog.
15 September 2003: Goodmans Digital Box (or how to impress a potential customer).: I’ve got a new digital set top box. It’s great. But the customer service is even better.
4 August 2003: Political Correctness my arse.: Funny how when anyone ever mutters the words "political correctness" in association with the curent BBC One idents, they always point to the one where there’s a black man in a wheelchair, doing some wheelchair dancing
13 July 2003: Futurama: Futurama is good, Futurama is great.
1 June 2003: Video of Police Squad? Yes I know.: From the Files of Police Squad - one of the best TV programmes, and the one that gave birth to The Naked Gun.
24 May 2003: Eurovision 2003.: It’s Eurovision! For some reason…
11 April 2003: Ali G in da USAiii.: Ali G has a new series set in the USA. Tired or revitalised? Matter of opinion really.
9 April 2003: The Fall of a Statue.: The destruction of a statue in Iraq saw the world once again united in collective viewing of an event that’s liable to go down in history.
3 April 2003: ITV Digital returns for the final time: The letter arrived from the liquidators. ITV Digital could give you some money to make up for that cash you lost. How much? Well… not a lot!
2 April 2003: BBC Three: The Experiment Results: Ah, and the results of the DOGless weekend are in!
31 March 2003: The Mysterious Missing BBC Three On Screen Logo: BBC Three went DOGless, those blobs are great and I’m reading No Logo. It’s a brand world apparently.
10 February 2003: The World Of Television: Radio Times reports what annoys TV viewers, BBC Three launches and I watch Phoenix Nights on DVD. Oh yes.
21 January 2003: Where’s the money?: What was the incentive for Carlton and Granada to buy all those set top boxes and give them away to former subscribers? Several millions of pounds a year it seems…
20 January 2003: The Great Set Top Box Fiasco: So the news comes in that we don’t have to return our ITV Digital boxes after all. But was the whole exercise viable at all?
19 January 2003: Where have all the boxes gone?: Are they incompetant? Have they given up? Does anyone actually know what’s going on? Isn’t this ITV Digital stuff fun!
5 January 2003: Boxes, Get Your ITV Digital Boxes!: Waiting, endlessly waiting. This time I’m waiting for my letter from ITV Digital asking me to pay £40 or send their box back. It hasn’t come yet… They’re obviously in a hurry.
5 January 2003: Boxes, Get Your ITV Digital Boxes!: Waiting, endlessly waiting. This time I’m waiting for my letter from ITV Digital asking me to pay £40 or send their box back. It hasn’t come yet… They’re obviously in a hurry.
12 December 2002: Boxing Steady: No letter yet from ITV Digital, but some interesting developments occuring non the less. Speculation abounds that former pre-pay customers like myself, may not end up giving up their set top box!
10 December 2002: The Great Set-top Box Swindle: ITV Digital lost me £60. And now they want me to give them even more money so that I can keep the digital box I have in my flat. Err. Yes. That sounds like a good idea.
28 October 2002: Bye Bye LWT.: London Weekend Television signs off from the air waves for the last time.

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