Media

March 24, 2014

It looks like Le Mans is JUST within the new Astra 2E spot beam

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As any readers of my blog will know, I have a little Sky HD multi-room box in my caravan “kit”, as well as a little folding arm satellite dish, which is for use on any site where Freeview / terrestrial reception is not possible (I have been to one such site in Appletreewick in the Yorkshire dales).

I also plan to use the dish and receiver when in France later in the year, for use at the 24 hours of Le Mans. The idea is to watch the race on Eurosport whilst we are at base, but also to watch some of the world cup, and specifically the England V Italy match on the Saturday evening!

The UK free to air satellite channels have recently moved to a new satellite with a tight UK spot beam, meaning reception of these channels (which will air the England world cup games) is much more difficult outside of the UK. Thankfully, the official reception “spot” for this satellite looks to extend to the Le Mans region of France, but only just!  This means my little 50cm dish should pick up BBC and ITV channels no problem, although alignment may be a little more critical than it is at home.

I would imagine that for Eurosport, and other encrypted channels, reception will be no issue whatsoever as these services are on a satellite with a much wider pan-European spot.

February 7, 2014

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Today marks the first day of the two week long Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. Following the huge success of the London 2012 Olympics, I’m sure Russia are keen to emulate this in Sochi. The opening ceremony airs live on the BBC today at 4pm, and there are several HD streams, as well as a red button channel, available to cover the games over the two week period.

The Google doodle today (shown above) is designed to offer support to the Olympic Charter, there has a been a lot of publicity surrounding gay rights and laws in Russia in the run up to the games.

I’m looking forward to watching the coverage. Go team GB !

February 6, 2014

Flappy Bird; the most frustrating and addictive game in a LONG time?

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Another year, and another game appears from nowhere to smash it’s way to the top of the download charts. Everybody is talking about Flappy Bird at the moment. It’s gone viral!

It is top of the free charts in the Google play charts and the Apple App store, and is also available for your Chrome browser from the Chrome store!

My best score, at the time of writing, is 15. I don’t even like the game, but I can’t stop trying to beat it!  The game is very simple, almost like an old “Mario” on the NES (but even more simplistic)

Go and download it, and be equally frustrated !

January 21, 2014

How to view the encrypted Motors TV channel for free in the UK (satellite)

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Having purchased a little Sky HD “multiroom” box for £18 on ebay, to use in the caravan, I have been playing with the box and setting any Free-to-Air channels (FTA) as favourites, so that I can have a basic channel list to easily view those channels that will work without a card.  After reading some info on-line, it appears  that at least two channels are FTV on Sky (Free-to-View). These are LiverpoolFCTV and Motors TV. Free to View channels are channels which are encrypted by Sky’s software, so need a Sky box and card to decode, but they are free channels, and aren’t included in any of Skys channel packages.

Motors TV is actually a channel I would like to be able to receive, as they cover the World Endurance Championship, The Rolex series, and loads of other Motorsport. Why they are operating as an effectively “free” channel, but behind Sky’s encryption system, is beyond me. If they would broadcast encryption free, the channel could be viewed by anybody with any satellite receiver, such as Sky, Freesat, or generic hardware.

Oddly you can actually view MotorsTV with a Sky viewing card, even if the card is no longer linked to an active account. Some cards get deactivated, and these wont work, but most cards appear to remain as a “freesat” card after a customer cancels their contract, and in this state, the card will decode Motors TV. I bought a card on ebay for a few £££ to test this theory, and sure enough, the card works for Motors TV!

This is quite interesting, as I may well buy another of these HD boxes to stick  under the living room TV, specifically to view this channel. The multi-room box will receive all the HD and SD channels that Freesat hardware would receive, but additionally, as it is a Sky box,  it will decode Motors TV!  It will be handy to have this as a backup too, I suppose, should my YouView box or aerial fail.

For anybody interested, older Sky digiboxes can be obtained for almost nothing, and if you can obtain a Sky viewing card (you can purchase a Sky “freesat card legitimately, in your own name, for £25 from Sky) you too can view Motors TV for free.

January 15, 2014

ASTRA 2E currently moving into final orbital position, signals an end to UK TV for many expats?

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Currently many of the satellite based FTA (fee-to-air) services broadcast by the UK channel operators, primarily the BBC, originate from their temporary home on ASTRA 1N. This satellite has a wide footprint meaning that these services can be received all over continental Europe, and as far as southern Spain. Many thousands of expats rely on this to receive our UK TV abroad.

With the imminent arrival of ASTRA 2E at the 28.2E position, it is expected that many FTA channels (Sky and Freesat) will migrate to this satellite. As 2E has a much tighter spot beam focussing on the UK and ROI, it is likely that receiving these broadcasts will become much more difficult the further south it is attempted. People in the south of France and beyond are likely to require bigger and bigger dishes until the signal drops of completely at some stage.

This is bad news for those people who live in Europe, or who holiday there, who enjoy the ability to receive UK FTA or even subscription satellite TV.

November 16, 2013

All the BBC channels are going HD, starting December 2013

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As you may of heard, the BBC announced some months ago that all of their channels will be launching HD versions in December 2013 / January 2014. This means BBC Three HD, BBC Four HD, CBBC HD, CBEEBIES HD, BBC NEWS HD and BBC PARLIAMENT HD will appear in TV guides up and down the country. The new channels will launch on digital satellite (Sky and Freesat) as well as digital terrestrial (YouView and Freeview) and Virgin Media. On the terrestrial platform, new HD multiplexes have been enabled, utilising capacity freed up by the analogue shutdown. This new capacity is paving the way for up to 14 new HD services.

This is all great news, particularly so for viewers of subscription free TV, as this more than doubles the amount of HD channels available.

BBC Four HD and CBeebies HD have started testing on satellite, at the time of writing this, so their launch, and inclusion in the Freesat (and Sky) EPG’s must be imminent. Apparently this will be some time in December 2013. Presumably CBBC HD, BBC Three HD, etc, will follow in the new year.

January 23, 2011

365 Project going well

I’ts been a few weeks without a blog entry, and I cannot believe January is nearly gone already! In the time since my last blog Christmas and New Year have well and truly turned into a distant memory! Since New Years day however, I have been taking a photo every day to serve as a pictorial memory calendar of the year. It has been a challenge to try and think of something interesting, or more specifically meaningful, to photograph. Going to work Monday – to Friday to the same office desk does make things tough! I’m sure once the summer comes and I get out and about more the photos will become more interesting!

I am using the 365 project app for the iPhone which sends me a daily reminder to take a photo, organises all the photos into a calendar view, and uploads to twitter and Facebook.

Even after this short time, it is interesting to look back and recall the day, and circumstances that led to each picture. I think come the end of the year this will obviously become fascinating as 12 months and 365 photos will be available to review the year!

Edit 9th October 2013: This 365 project is now long since finished, but the archive can still be viewed here:  http://www.crimsonstripe.com/photos/garethdphillips?date=201101 (you will need to scroll to January 2011 onwards)

November 24, 2010

365 Photo Project

There seems to be a few people talking about 365 photo projects at the moment, or at least I have somehow stumbled accross a few references to this. Its a new concept to me, although it seems to have been around for a while. The idea is simple, you take a photograph every day of your life, over a 365 day period. This creates a kind of photo diary, or story of your year. You can blog the photos, share them to Flickr, Facebook, whatever, so long as there is a photo every day.

I think as you get older you enjoy looking at photos more and more, and every photo tells a story. I think this could be a really interesting idea, as looking back afterwards it will be easy to recall certain events, emotions, places, people etc from the images. I’m no great photographer, and I suspect most days I will have very little to photograph, but I’m going to try and make this work, if I can keep it up!  I found an app for the iPhone called “Project365” which is basically a calendar into which you can embed an image each day. The paid version also comes with cloud storage so you can upload the same calendar to a public website, and post an image to Facebook each day. Pretty decent for 59p.

I need to experiment over the year with the actual app used to take the photo, as the project365 camera only takes a standard photo, whereas many of other photo apps have great filters and effects to get help achieve some really good arty effects.

I plan to start this on 1st Jan 2011, so wish me luck!  I just need to try and remember each day!  I will mainly use my iPhone for obvious reasons, but any photo from any camera would do also, its just I will always have my iPhone with me.

November 24, 2010

HulloMail is a great, free voicemail upgrade for iPhone

I read about a new service today called “HulloMail” for iPhone (and other smartphones) which is a replacement for the basic voicemail service provided by your operator. For ages I’ve been frustrated by 3UK’s voicemail offering. For one the notifications are lame, you simply get an SMS. Secondly you just get basic voice access by dialling 333 to play your messages. I tried HulloMail this evening and I am impressed so far!

HulloMail replacses your usual voicemail service with a visual service, a bit like the service provided to iPhone users on O2 in the UK. All you need to do is install the free app, and during the setup your calls will be diverted to HulloMail instead of you “old” voicemail. When a caller leaves a voicemail you instantly recieve a push notification to your screen telling you who left you a message, and the HulloMail applicaion displays a badge showing how many new voicemails you have. When you open the app you will see a contact photo of the caller, and their name (pulled from your contacts) and the option to play the voicemail, either through the earpiece or loudpspeaker. You can then delete the voicemail from the app, as if it were an email, and you can also configure the service to email you the voicemail files so you can play them on a PC, even if you dont have your phone with you!  You can also manage your voicemails on the website.

The only issues I have at present are slight; I cannot find a way to re-program the default voice mail button to call the Hullo service, but there is no need to call now as it is all handled in the app, so that’s no huge problem. The answer delay has increased quite a bit which is a shame, and I cannot reduce it for some reason. Other than that this seems like a really worthwhile “upgrade”

October 23, 2010

Remote Potato – Remote Recording for Win7 MediaCenter

I think I’m uncharacteristically late to the party with this one, but I have stumbled across a brilliant free application for Windows 7 which allows remote recording and sheduling via the web. It’s very similar to “WebGuide” which I used to use with Windows XP and Vista Media Center, but this seems a lot more polished. Basically Remote Potato installs a web server on your Media PC which can be accessed via the internet. The TV Guide is presented in a nice looking web page using Microsoft Silverlight. Once you ae viewing the guide in your chosen browser you can set recordings, as well as schedule series recordings and manage existing schedules! I’ts fantastic. The app also appears to support media streaming so you can access your existing recorded TV shows. This could be useful too, but it is the remote record features I am most interested in.

The caveat I suppose is that because this is hosted by a little web server on the media PC, the PC must be switched on for the service to be accessible. I think once my PC wakes up to record something it tends to stay on for a long time anyhow, so my chances of this working are quite high ! The app also offers a basic HTML version of the site which works well on my iPhone, and from what I have read in the forums it looks like a full iPhone app is on it’s way which would be BRILLIANT.

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