Something else which happened during my break from this blog was the full launch of the BBC's iPlayer. I wasn't expecting my usage of the new initiative to have been transformed by Youtube. At launch the player streams from almost any browser (I haven't tested in PC Safari) but only downloads programmes in Internet Explorer.
However, due to two years of Youtube usage, I haven't been bothered with wasting time or hard drive space downloading a programme from the iPlayer at all. I've been content to stream the desired programme on my backup machine. If anything, I've made sure that I've sat down and watched whatever television I really wanted to see, when on the big screen, because it's hard enough finding the time to watch back the non-BBC television I record, even with the luxury of zipping through the ads and keeping American shows down to 45-50 minutes and half-hour comedies at 20-25 mins.
The fact that whatever you'd watch on the iPlayer would be widescreen is useful for the factual programmes which used to have their own bbc.co.uk/ offshoots in a 4:3 panel but its full screen mode's best suited to smaller flatpanels. Up close, the encoding is necessarily naff, even on a quality CRT. It's best left to a window.
My only criticism of the iPlayer is that the Corporation should stop pretending that you can watch every single BBC Programme on it when individual decisions are taken as to which repeats it will include of programmes made before the utility's launch. The Cult Of... series as shown on BBC4 is one such programme. Even when the 60s/70s programmes under examination hailed from the BBC, and the actors were filming new pieces to camera, thereby making the clips show a totally Beeb creation, they were not in the iPlayer listings. Presumably someone in the BBC, once again, deemed science fiction as not cool enough to have any audience that wished to see quality.
Hopefully, decisions like this will not become the norm and it's heartwarming that specialist and popular programming such as Top Gear still receives a widescreen repeat on TV, whether or not it's received an iPlayer trail for the week. It's good to see the licence fee go to letting us see the majority of repeats available for watching anytime. If the programmes fall into the "radio-with-pictures" bracket and the camera work is not a selling point of the show (who'd bother with series one of Coast or Planet Earth in a comparatively small window?), that's where the iPlayer really comes into its own.
Monday, 21 January 2008
Catching Up
The DVD Recorder, Panasonic's EZ-27EB, arrived last November but, aside from the purchase of 40 rewritable discs which serve as videotape replacements, the mass transfers I envisaged have not happened.
However, it was heartwarming to realise that my QED Quenex range of cables for enhancing my Analogue signal have not gone to waste. Any other Freeview device could be looped into the second AV port using the RVR extension lead, a fact never publicised by What Hi Fi, and you could do "twin tuner" using separate boxes. My year-old Freeview box purchased in an emergency won't go to waste.
The AV forums veterans swear by the model up from mine, the EX77 or EX87, due to the 160 and 250Gb hard disks they contain. My view is, aside from a Widescreen flag issue which had not been corrected by firmware updates when I bought, is that coming from the PC side of things I would like to know the brands of hard disk supplied inside combination players. Although Maplin sells a Freeview tuning box into which you can install your own drive, this currently remains an EIDE unit at a time when SATA drives are taking over.
If, for example, you own a PS3, it's likely to be a Toshiba hard disk as shown by one modder's dismantling of a console. If you had such knowledge anyway, you would expect Toshiba every time rather than the company having the ability to sell you the cheap and cheerful brand instead, for the same fat price.
As such, it's only if you are planning to buy a DVD and Hard disk combination recorder from Toshiba or Samsung, that you can be more sure about firm selling the player also having manufactured the hard disk inside. Strangely, I am not as worried about whichever disk may feature inside an Xbox 360, since there are a myriad of reasons why this machine could go wrong (and it has technically failed on a high enough scale to cause mass warranty extension). The same mindset applies to the Ipod - it's a portable, you might drop it and cause it to fail, but that's what extended warranties are for.
It's a marketing angle that hasn't been exploited; I know that Western Digital hard drives have personally proven more reliable in the last decade of using them compared to other brands. Whoever marketed this fact, or if WD itself wished to market a PVR in the UK as it has in other territories, would be the next company to get my money.
However, it was heartwarming to realise that my QED Quenex range of cables for enhancing my Analogue signal have not gone to waste. Any other Freeview device could be looped into the second AV port using the RVR extension lead, a fact never publicised by What Hi Fi, and you could do "twin tuner" using separate boxes. My year-old Freeview box purchased in an emergency won't go to waste.
The AV forums veterans swear by the model up from mine, the EX77 or EX87, due to the 160 and 250Gb hard disks they contain. My view is, aside from a Widescreen flag issue which had not been corrected by firmware updates when I bought, is that coming from the PC side of things I would like to know the brands of hard disk supplied inside combination players. Although Maplin sells a Freeview tuning box into which you can install your own drive, this currently remains an EIDE unit at a time when SATA drives are taking over.
If, for example, you own a PS3, it's likely to be a Toshiba hard disk as shown by one modder's dismantling of a console. If you had such knowledge anyway, you would expect Toshiba every time rather than the company having the ability to sell you the cheap and cheerful brand instead, for the same fat price.
As such, it's only if you are planning to buy a DVD and Hard disk combination recorder from Toshiba or Samsung, that you can be more sure about firm selling the player also having manufactured the hard disk inside. Strangely, I am not as worried about whichever disk may feature inside an Xbox 360, since there are a myriad of reasons why this machine could go wrong (and it has technically failed on a high enough scale to cause mass warranty extension). The same mindset applies to the Ipod - it's a portable, you might drop it and cause it to fail, but that's what extended warranties are for.
It's a marketing angle that hasn't been exploited; I know that Western Digital hard drives have personally proven more reliable in the last decade of using them compared to other brands. Whoever marketed this fact, or if WD itself wished to market a PVR in the UK as it has in other territories, would be the next company to get my money.
Saturday, 27 October 2007
Countdown to switchoff
It's only been ten days since the first area of the UK switched off its analogue television signal in Whitehaven, Cumbria - though I suspect that they can't have been too happy that it was a BBC Channel which is paid for by law! By the middle of November, the other four terrestrial channels will also switch off, and a British DVB aka Freeview box will become necessary to view any television whatsoever in the town.
The rest of the country has up to four years of watching terrestrial whilst recording digital before it has to follow Whitehaven's example. I've been enjoying Freeview since 2005, replacing that box at the start of 2007. It's good to see that Digital UK, the organisation created to oversee the changeover, has stopped being economical with the truth about being able to run your VCR into the ground if you wish to, albeit recording a single digital stream like 1990s cable or satellite TV. Until this year, its representatives had merely told everyone to run out and buy a shiny new digital recorder of any kind. I suspect VCRs were either still working or too small to be noticed when fly-tipped, though I saw my first widescreen CRT television dumped on the street last week.
So, the future - for those not willing to pay Rupert Murdoch or Richard Branson for satellite or cable - began on October 17th. Those who scoffed at ITV for launching three new channels were made to eat their words as the intention to carry on with normal programming but provide a home for ad-supported sports coverage became clearest this year with Formula One, the Champions' League soccer matches shared with Sky and the Rugby World Cup. The BBC has been criticised for its digital output due to the taxable nature of its funding but as usual, none of the criticisms are totally right or wrong, merely a matter of age and taste.
Since the BBC has a decade's worth of guaranteed funding to 2015 and is a 60 year old British institution, it will go nowhere. As long as Dr Who and dance show fans are catered to, it will change little on the outside. The real worry is when David Attenborough retires...
The rest of the country has up to four years of watching terrestrial whilst recording digital before it has to follow Whitehaven's example. I've been enjoying Freeview since 2005, replacing that box at the start of 2007. It's good to see that Digital UK, the organisation created to oversee the changeover, has stopped being economical with the truth about being able to run your VCR into the ground if you wish to, albeit recording a single digital stream like 1990s cable or satellite TV. Until this year, its representatives had merely told everyone to run out and buy a shiny new digital recorder of any kind. I suspect VCRs were either still working or too small to be noticed when fly-tipped, though I saw my first widescreen CRT television dumped on the street last week.
So, the future - for those not willing to pay Rupert Murdoch or Richard Branson for satellite or cable - began on October 17th. Those who scoffed at ITV for launching three new channels were made to eat their words as the intention to carry on with normal programming but provide a home for ad-supported sports coverage became clearest this year with Formula One, the Champions' League soccer matches shared with Sky and the Rugby World Cup. The BBC has been criticised for its digital output due to the taxable nature of its funding but as usual, none of the criticisms are totally right or wrong, merely a matter of age and taste.
Since the BBC has a decade's worth of guaranteed funding to 2015 and is a 60 year old British institution, it will go nowhere. As long as Dr Who and dance show fans are catered to, it will change little on the outside. The real worry is when David Attenborough retires...
Sunday, 9 September 2007
Long awaited upgrade
Overnight, the regular radio shows that I generally back up and dump to CD-R and Minidisc, broadcast two extra hours - but I missed them. Today, option one involved re-imaging to Vista to even hear those broadcasts because the BBC Radio player doesn't work in XP. The second option just finding somewhere else to download them online within the seven days that you're allowed to listen to them anyway, I found somewhere else.
The unnamed website hasn't been shut down due to copyright reasons yet (even though a TV Licence fee makes some contribution to the royalties of the artists concerned - despite the non-existence of a radio licence fee). Whilst it's still viable, I'll get the three shows I actually wanted, but that decision means that every videotape I used to use for radio can be disposed of. Now I can get on with recycling at speed and searching for a DVD Recorder, and move this VCR to the PC to get on with video capture.
With the joining of this new site causing a change in my habits, just as the BBC are planning to change the day and time of my favourite shows, I'll make sure I obtain a recorder with a hard disk because day-to-day television isn't going to be kept and I don't want to waste the laser on it. However, it would be ideal to have the decision to watch the programme again and make sure. Now we're two months away from the What Hi Fi awards issue.
Both the VCRs due for replacement were recommendations from the annual awards issues, in one case, from 13 years ago. Naturally its video heads are long dead, thankfully the NICAM audio heads are still in good enough condition to obtain excellent recordings.
It's good to upgrade when technology's reached the end of its useful life instead of just because the Joneses have done it.
The unnamed website hasn't been shut down due to copyright reasons yet (even though a TV Licence fee makes some contribution to the royalties of the artists concerned - despite the non-existence of a radio licence fee). Whilst it's still viable, I'll get the three shows I actually wanted, but that decision means that every videotape I used to use for radio can be disposed of. Now I can get on with recycling at speed and searching for a DVD Recorder, and move this VCR to the PC to get on with video capture.
With the joining of this new site causing a change in my habits, just as the BBC are planning to change the day and time of my favourite shows, I'll make sure I obtain a recorder with a hard disk because day-to-day television isn't going to be kept and I don't want to waste the laser on it. However, it would be ideal to have the decision to watch the programme again and make sure. Now we're two months away from the What Hi Fi awards issue.
Both the VCRs due for replacement were recommendations from the annual awards issues, in one case, from 13 years ago. Naturally its video heads are long dead, thankfully the NICAM audio heads are still in good enough condition to obtain excellent recordings.
It's good to upgrade when technology's reached the end of its useful life instead of just because the Joneses have done it.
Sunday, 5 August 2007
I sometimes miss the hiss
There, I've said it. Compared to digital audio, old-fashioned analogue radio transmissions are at risk of interference and perhaps there would be some fuzziness which you could attempt to tune away. It depends on your tastes; interference isn't much of an issue with dance music, but may ruin the enjoyment of classical soundtracks. In the digital age, whilst the hiss has gone, any transmission issues will cause subliminal blips, or longer gaps of a second or two, to your broadcast.
The UK can still hear all three types of radio - analogue, DAB digital and online streaming. Give me the analogue hiss any day, because I can proceed to feed that audio into my computer and reduce or remove the hiss if I wish. Gaps are much harder to cover, and ironically, editing them out will recreate the effect of vinyl skipping. Once again, dance fans would appreciate the retro angle to it, but no-one else would.
When you "Listen Again" to a repeat of a radio show, you're a slave to the bit rate chosen by someone else to encode the streamed recordings. Thankfully Kiss100 has chosen a nice high rate for its shows from Armin Van Buuren and John Digweed, compared to that of early BBC broadcasts where the bit rate and resulting quality will vary.
At the present time, FM is such high quality if you have a decent hi-fi separate tuner, that you may as well enjoy it before it gets switched off. Preferably in the garden, on the seven days that make up an English summer.
The UK can still hear all three types of radio - analogue, DAB digital and online streaming. Give me the analogue hiss any day, because I can proceed to feed that audio into my computer and reduce or remove the hiss if I wish. Gaps are much harder to cover, and ironically, editing them out will recreate the effect of vinyl skipping. Once again, dance fans would appreciate the retro angle to it, but no-one else would.
When you "Listen Again" to a repeat of a radio show, you're a slave to the bit rate chosen by someone else to encode the streamed recordings. Thankfully Kiss100 has chosen a nice high rate for its shows from Armin Van Buuren and John Digweed, compared to that of early BBC broadcasts where the bit rate and resulting quality will vary.
At the present time, FM is such high quality if you have a decent hi-fi separate tuner, that you may as well enjoy it before it gets switched off. Preferably in the garden, on the seven days that make up an English summer.
Monday, 30 July 2007
The cure for Antivirus
I had reason to check my PC for viruses and other threats today. Apart from the fact that I now know that my PC has 550,000 or so different files on it across two hard disks, it took an hour and a quarter.
In the same manner that software backup is perceived as boring, checking your PC for viruses and spyware now takes longer and longer. Accordingly, many users choose not to perform regular checks. To be fair, users who re-format or re-image their machines regularly for performance reasons may view the scans as unnecessary. Every good Antivirus program, whether retail or free, carries the option to set a default scheduled time for virus checks, but, in the case of Symantec, Friday night at 8pm is hardly ideal. Personally, I'd be in the pub or cinema.
If I had lots of music files on my machine I would expect it to take a long time, but I wasn't expecting 75 minutes for a Vista installation that had the grand total of one game installed on top of its average 15Gb partition size, and a Windows XP installation on the other hard disk from a failed dual boot.
The option I believed to be the answer - to only install one game at a time, and minimize the music - hasn't worked. It's not about Vista per se, but I will certainly back up the computer with an image file and go back to XP for as long as I can get away with it, if I get the feeling that Vista's not sitting well on my two-year-old PC.
In the same manner that software backup is perceived as boring, checking your PC for viruses and spyware now takes longer and longer. Accordingly, many users choose not to perform regular checks. To be fair, users who re-format or re-image their machines regularly for performance reasons may view the scans as unnecessary. Every good Antivirus program, whether retail or free, carries the option to set a default scheduled time for virus checks, but, in the case of Symantec, Friday night at 8pm is hardly ideal. Personally, I'd be in the pub or cinema.
If I had lots of music files on my machine I would expect it to take a long time, but I wasn't expecting 75 minutes for a Vista installation that had the grand total of one game installed on top of its average 15Gb partition size, and a Windows XP installation on the other hard disk from a failed dual boot.
The option I believed to be the answer - to only install one game at a time, and minimize the music - hasn't worked. It's not about Vista per se, but I will certainly back up the computer with an image file and go back to XP for as long as I can get away with it, if I get the feeling that Vista's not sitting well on my two-year-old PC.
Thursday, 26 July 2007
It's not going without a fight
So there I was, about to empty this flat of videotapes, when made that fatal mistake; "let's see what's on this one". That's how I watched the rest of Phone Booth which I'd taped a few weeks ago and started dumping The Essential Mix to my hard drive on the other VCR. Now I'm recording Dodgeball on its second showing on FilmFour even if I've missed the first ten minutes and will probably restart the recording on +1.
Is there such a thing as blank media rehab?
Is there such a thing as blank media rehab?
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