November, 2008 Archive

Pictured to the right is the SWAP Mobile Phone Watch, from Dyal. We got our hands on one of these in early November, and now our Carl is wearing one with pride. If you heard Show 33 of our podcast, you’ll know that this watch contains a mobile phone and a 1.3Meg still and video [...]

The INQ1 Facebook phone – coming soon. OK, so could get get yourself an expensive iPhone to stay “social” on the move… or you could save a lot of pennies and get the INQ1. Due out very soon, this phone is being billed as The Facebook Phone as it integrates to your phone’s address book [...]

Here at FrequencyCast, we’d like to send special birthday wishes to… the Red Button. It’s been 10 years since the BBC launched its first pilot of the Red Button in the UK. The Interactive service for BBC TV has an audience of around 11 million people. Over the past 10 years, BBC’s Red Button service [...]

A quiet day here, so we thought we’d release a quick update ahead of show 34. A five minute show discussing the iPhone v2.2 release and some other snippets.

FrequencyCast Update 23 Nov 2008 [ 5:01 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Fetch TV has just launched, combining a Freeview box, PVR and a TV-over-Internet service. The Fetch TV Smartbox costs £150 and the service is available without a subscription. Made by French firm NetGem (makers of the iPlayer box a few years back), the Smartbox holds 60 hours of TV and claims to offer hundreds of [...]

The first Freesat hard-disk recorder is now available. The Humax Foxsat-HDR has a dual tuner, and supports HD, series link, live pause, live TV rewind and the ability to split recordings (where there’s a news bulletin). With two SCART sockets, one HDMI high definition socket, the Humax Foxsat-HDR has a 320GB hard drive, and is [...]

Sky’s recently announced plans to launch an online TV service offering Sky content over Broadband. The service will be available to everyone, not just Sky customers. Sky Sports content will be on offer, but no word on Sky 1 content as yet. The service is set to launch in early 2009.

A software upgrade for the Apple iPhone has just been released. The latest version of firmware includes a number of bugfixes and improvements, including: Enhancements to Maps, including Google Street View Enhancements to Mail, including issues with Fetch and HTML formatting Improved stability and performance of Safari Podcasts are now available for download in iTunes [...]

BT Vision already offers “on demand” TV shows from the BBC, Channel 4 and Five. Now, ITV will be joining that line-up. You’ll be able to watch ITV content from the last 8 days, as well as a back-catalogue of ITV shows. You can watch on a pay-per-view basis, or the all-you-can-view TV package. BT [...]

Well, well, well… it’s been less than a week since we released Show 32, and here we are again with another podcast! Show 33 is a special edition show featuring some new gadgets including Pure radios, the SWAP watch, TVonics boxes and more. We’re also covering some important news for Virgin Media customers, as well [...]

FrequencyCast Show 33 [ 29:03 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

After the Whitehaven switchover test, the UK-wide switchover has finally started in earnest. On the 6th of November 2008, the BBC 2 analogue service from the Selkirk transmitter was switched off, beginning the Border TV Digital Switchover. According to The Scotsman newspaper, 52,000 households get their telly from the Selkirk transmitter, and 97% of them [...]

Good news for Virgin Media customers. The Sky channels withdrawn from Virgin are set to return after an 18 month absence. It seems that Sky and Virgin have met, and resolved their differences, and the following channels are set to return to the Virgin platform: Sky 1, Sky 2, Sky 3, Sky News, Sky Sports [...]

Regular listeners to our podcast will be well aware of the story featured on tonight’s Watchdog. In July and August, Freeview boxes around the UK started packing up. The reason? Older Freeview boxes can’t cope with the increasing number of channels, and when the boxes scan for new channels, they lock up, effectively trashing the [...]

At last, the first phone powered by the new mobile phone OS Android, is here. The G1 is free… well, provided you’re prepared to pay £40 a month for the 18 month contract. The Google G1 is only available on the T-Mobile network in the UK. Here’s a shot of us, browsing at our own [...]

Lads channel Nuts TV is set to vanish from early 2009. Channel owner Turner Broadcasting has confirmed that the 9pm to 1am Freeview slot taken up by Nuts TV will be replaced by CNN International from next year. Nuts TV is also set to vanish from Sky’s line-up from January. Fans of Rude News, Overexposed [...]

Show 32 of FrequencyCast, the UK’s TV and Tech podcast, has just been released. Be one of the first to listen to this bumper show. Here’s what we cover: News Updates: Freesat PVR details revealed, Freeview HD next year, and lots more. Focus: We’re looking at three items in our focus – the only digital [...]

FrequencyCast Show 32 [ 30:58 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download