FrequencyCast - UK TV and Tech News Feed

Show 41 of FrequencyCast, the UK’s TV and Tech podcast, has just been released.

In our regular online radio show, we discuss all that’s new with digital TV and technology. Here’s what we cover in this show:

• News Updates: Setanta Sport collapses, a date is set for Freeview HD, plus what’s set to change in our Digital Britian.
• Focus: Broadband – what changes are ahead and how to get a faster connection.
• Hands-on: We play with o2’s fridge door, and a Nintendo get-fit fob.
• Your questions on Sky+, recording radio, photo keyrings and the Setanta aftermath.

You can download Show 41 direct to your MP3 player or listen online at http://www.frequencycast.co.uk/latest.html. If you have an iPod or iPhone, get shows faster by signing up via iTunes.

 

 FrequencyCast UK Show 41 [30:59m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

If you’re thinking of getting BT Vision – you have until the end of the week to sign up. BT will be charging £90 for boxes from midnight on Friday the 3rd July.

Full details of BT Vision at btvision.bt.com

This evening, ESPN America has started broadcastoing on Freeview channel 34, the slot taken by Setanta Sports until its collapse yesterday.

It seems that ESPN America is being transmitted by Top Up TV, and anyone with a Top Up TV subscription can view ESPN for free though it’s not clear how long for).

Users with an old Setanta Freeview box / card should also be able to get ESPN America.

It’s assumed that this channel will be used to show the Barclays Premier League matches that ESPN has just bought the rights to – they will offer 46 matches from the 2009/2010 footy season.

We’ve been reporting on the ongoing financial problems at Setanta for weeks. Today at 6pm, the plug was finally pulled and the Setanta channels in the UK went dark.

The company formally went into administration at 2:30pm on Tuesday 23rd June, leaving an estimated 1.2 million UK customers without their sports service.

We’ll be covering this in more detail in our July show (sign up now!).

In the meantime, check out the Radio and Telly Setanta Help page for the latest.

News just in on the Setanta saga. Setanta has today failed to make the required £30 million payment to the English Premier League, and accordingly, the Premier League has terminated the agreement

This means that Setanta’s 1.2million UK customer won’t be able to watch the 46 Premier League matches planned for the upcoming 2009/2010 football season.

This now looks like Game Over for Setanta Sports.

More: Sport on UK TV

Woo-hoo! This has been a great week for those that like their phones shiny with a picture of an apple on.

Two days ago, the new version of operating system OS 3 came out offering cut-and-paste, MMS and a lot of under-the-hood tweaks.

Today, Friday the 19th of June 2009, the iPhone 3GS went on sale at o2 and Carphone Warehouse stores across the land.

The 3GS (the “S” standing for Speed) offers a faster processor, improved battery life, video recording, a uninspiring 3 Meg camera and a digital compass.

The new 32Gig variant is likely to be a popular choice, but boy it’s not cheap – £890. (Assuming £275 for the phone, and £35 a month for 18 months). Those with an iPhone 3G will have to buy out their old contract to upgrade – for many, £245 or more…

Queues at a local o2 store at 8:30am today

Still, you have to hand it to Apple, the iPhone is revolutionary, and for many, including our presenter Pete, this is the must have phone, and it’s still hard to fault (if not afford!)

More on the iPhone: UK iPhone details

The Digital Britain report is finally out. On the 16th of June, Lord Carter’s long-awaited report into plans for our digital future were revealed.

There’s been lots of media chat about this already, but in case you’ve missed it, what we think are the three headlines are as follows:

1. Analogue Radio off by 2015: The intention here is to get national FM services and existing local services over to DAB by 2015, freeing up space for what’s being called “ultra local” stations on FM. Listeners would need to migrate from FM to digital by 2015. There are also targets proposed to get digital radio listening up to 50% by 2013, a somewhat ambitious target, and a target of DAB-only car radios in new cars by 2013. AM stations also need to shift to DAB.

2. Broadband tax: To help achive the Government’s “every home must have at least 2Meg broadband by 2012″ pledge, a stealth tax of 50p per month on all landlines is proposed to improve the infrastructure.

3. Internet piracy. The target is for UK ISPs to reduce online file-sharing and piracy by 70% within a year, with measures ranging from warning letters, speed throttling, to details being passed to copyright owners. Ofcom will be given the power to enforce this.

For the full report, see http://www.culture.gov.uk/what_we_do/broadcasting/5631.aspx

The US digital TV switchover is now complete, and the transition seemed to be a smooth one.

The switch was delayed from the original February 2009 date, but finally went ahead on Friday the 12th of June, and 900 TV stations turned off analogue. There are still a few rural services running on analogue.

According to Nielson, the firm that monitors TV viewing habits in the US, 2.8 million homes (2.5% of the US) still aren’t digital, so will now be losing out, despite the Government’s ‘Here’s $40 … go get yourself a box’ coupons.

All in all, a controlled switchover, with no serious problems reported. Let’s hope our staggered approach to the switch goes just as well.

Help on the UK Switchover? switchhelp.co.uk

This month, Ofcom announced details of the fourth service to be offering free-to-view HD content, when the new Freeview HD service goes live.

Bids are in and the fourth slot has provisionally been awarded to Five. That makes the lineup unsurprisingly BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Five.

Five will be offering some of their fdaytime and evening shows HD, with an HD-on-demand service overnight. Five HD aims to launch by the end of 2010.

More details: HD on Freeview.

There’s been lots of breaking news since the last full-length show at the start of June, so we’ve just released a short audio update.

In the update, Carl and Pete cover the following: Setanta close to collapse, changes to DAB, the new iPhone 3GS, iPhone OS 3.0, Sky on the X-Box, and rise of the Pirates….

If you’ve got iTunes, you should have got the update automatically, otherwise, you can get to the update at http://www.frequencycast.co.uk/latest.html

Here’s our iTunes link: http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=142899029

Hope you enjoy the update…

 

 FrequencyCast Update - 10th June 2009 [14:28m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

An update on the ongoing Setanta Sports story..

The Daily Mail is running with the story Setanta on the brink of collapse.

Setanta needs to pay £30m to the Premier League by the end of the week as part of its contract before the end of the week, but appears to have been unsuccessful in its bid to raise the money.

The company’s survival is “hanging in the balance”, with many thinking that collapse is days away. It’s not clear how this would affect Setanta’s 1.2 million UK subscribers.

We’ll update you in the next podcast

It’s been in the press over the last few days, so we thought we’d give this a mention.

When you use your mobile to call a mobile on a different network, you’re charged an MTR (Mobile Termination rate) for the priviledge. This is typically 4.7p a minute. The same is true when you call a mobile from a landline, and the costs can mount up.

Organisations including BT, 3 and Moneysupermarket have kicked off the “Terminate The Rate” campaign, aiming to collect signatures to convince regulators OfCom to be fairer to UK consumers.

If you feel you’re paying too much, sign the petition at http://www.terminatetherate.org , which will be presented to UK regulator Ofcom. You’ can also fire off a quick electronic message of the subject to your local MP, using the provided template.

In San Francisco at Apple’s Worldwide Developer conference within the last hour, Apple’s been presenting all that’s new iPhone-wise:

First off, we can expect a new iPhone later this month in the UK. Launch date on o2 is 19th June for the iPhone 3GS. The “S” stands for Speed – the phone has a faster CPU, a 3 meg camera with autofocus and video capture, better battery life, a digital compass, and voice control. Two models will be available in 16GB and 32GB models. Prices £184 and £273 respectively.

Also, existing iPhone users will be getting a free upgrade to OS 3.0 on 17th June – this adds cut-and-paste, bluetooth gaming, push notification and MMS.

No doubt we’ll be covering iPhone 3GS in the next show!

We’ve had an amazing response to one of the products we covered in Show 40 of our podcast… the Pulse Smartpen.

Thanks to all those who’ve been in touch asking questions about the pen, or who tried our first Pen Cast.

Yes – the Pulse pen appears to be our hit gadget of the year – following on from last year’s mobile phone in a watch.

The pen has a built-in camera to keep a track of every scribble you make, it records what it hears as you write, and converts your writing to editable text – plus that magic piano.

If you’re looking for more info, see the review over on our sister site: FileSaveAs review of the Livescribe Smartpen.

 

 Pulse Smartpen Review in Show 40 [30:36m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Tired of your slow old “up to 8 meg” download? BT’s about to ramp this up to “up to 20 meg” at no extra cost.

As part of their roll-out of ADSL2+, around 40% of properties are about to get the speed ramp-up, with this number rising to 55% by March 2010.

The bad news is that if you’re over 3km from your local phone exchange, you might not see much of a difference. Also, speeds will still be throttled during peak hours to ensure that everyone gets a fair crack of the bandwidth whip.

The good news is – the upgrade is free, and for many, there’ll be a sizable speed improvement. All you need to do is agree not to move away from BT for 12 months. More on BT Broadband

See our Speed up Broadband FAQ for some help on speeding up your downloads (including info on the iPlate!)

As we reported in our podcast, Tiscali users are about to find themselves getting their broadband from the Carphone Warehouse, after CPW stepped in to bail out floundering Tiscali.

BT’s been quick to leap in with a deal to tempt people from Tiscali. On offer is £50 off your first bill, a new 802.11n high speed wireless router (the BT Home Hub), speeds of up to 20 megabits per seconds, plus access to BT’s digital TV service, BT Vision.

Tiscali users have until the 30th June 2009 to make the switch for a £50 credit on their BT bill.

Full details of the offer at www.broadband.bt.com/offer

In 2008, a number of national DAB radio stations vanished, due to cost cutting measures.

To fill the void left by speech station Oneword, a 20 minute loop of birdsong took to the air, delighting many and being a welcome and relaxing breath of fresh air.

Yesterday, the 1st of June – Radio Birdsong was abruptly removed.

The now famous birdsong was recorded by Digital One Chief Executive Quentin Howard and was used for the test transmissions used when Classic FM launched – and it was abruptly removed yesterday.

Replacing Birdsong for a trial period of six months is a new station – Amazing Radio. This station aims to showcase new music in a number of different genres, with an element of listener interaction to select what’s played, and who plays it.

Oddly, there’s enough spare capacity on the national DAB channel to allow Birdsong to continue, and it’s reported that Quentin Howard has granted permission for the recording to be used, and is as surprised as we are that birdsong’s no longer being broadcast on DAB.

Sky has announced that it will be offering Sky TV, Sport and Film content over the Internet for Microsoft X-Box users.

This deal will mean that it’s possible to watch Sky content on your TV without the need for a Sky dish or set-top decoder, although some kind of Sky subscription, plus a broadband account, will still be required.

Channels will be streamed (i.e. not available as a download), and the service won’t support HD at launch.

Sky on an X-Box can be expected in Autumn 2009. No pricing or package information is available.

Interestingly, BT Vision content was scheduled to hit the X-Box in mid 2008, but all’s quiet on that front…

Show 40 of FrequencyCast, the UK’s TV and Tech podcast, has just been released.

In our regular online radio show, we discuss all that’s new with digital TV and technology. Here’s what we cover in this show:

• News Updates: Plans for Freeview HD in doubt, all change for the charts, new content for Top Up, and odd news for H2G2 fans
• Focus: What’s new with wi-fi wireless technology.
• Hands-on: We plan with the world’s most sophisticated pen.
• Your questions on BT Vision, Virgin Media HD, plus your feedback on the Top Up TV failure in May.

You can download Show 40 direct to your MP3 player or listen online at http://www.frequencycast.co.uk/latest.html. If you have an iPod or iPhone, get shows faster by signing up via iTunes.

 

 FrequencyCast UK Show 40: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Satellite Navigation devices could start to fail from 2010, according to a US Government report. The network of orbiting GPS satillites is now around 20 years old, and satellites are expected to fail shortly.

The satellites need replacing after their 20 year lifespan, and the first launch of a new satellite was due for the start of 2007 by the US Air Force. This has slipped by over two and a half years so far due to “technical issues”, and the budget has already been exceeded.

It’s not clear just how close to failure the system actually is, but the official predictions are that if nothing’s done, we could start seeing breaks and unreliable GPS data from 2010, causing grief for the many military and commercial services that use GPS for positioning.

Bet you’re glad you didn’t throw that old A-to-Z away now?