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 camera. It has Bluetooth, MP3 music player and a video player.

Since our audio review, we’ve had a stack of questions about the watch, so we’ve created a page dedicated to the SWAP watch, and to answer your questions. You can see our review, Carl’s comments, an FAQ and some screenshots on our SWAP Watch page.

The SWAP is supplied SIM-free, and works with the major UK mobile phone networks, except 3. It’s available from I want one of those (Want 5% off? Use code AOFF5 at checkout!).

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 and lets you follow your mates using Facebook, Windows Messenger, Skype and Last.FM. A slick mobile, with web browsing and 3G. It can also be used as a laptop modem.

Due out in December 2008 for an expected £80 PAYG or from £15 a month contract – from www.three.co.uk

More on our INQ Facebook page

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 has won more than 15 awards including four BAFTAs.

Rahul Chakkara, Controller of TV Platforms for BBC Future Media and Digital, said: “From the initial development work conducted by the BBC Research and Innovation team, we launched the Red Button service to provide audiences with a more enhanced television experience. With the breakthrough innovation of our 2001 Wimbledon coverage, this redefined what was possible on the television screen. The recent coverage of the Beijing Olympics and the interactive services we’re offering with some of our most popular entertainment shows, like EastEnders, is testament to this.”

To celebrate this anniversary, there’s some special content online, such as an EastEnders quiz, Bob The Builder karaoke plus some Postman Pat.

Happy Birthday, you bright button

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 [5:01m]: 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 films and TV shows for download over broadband.

We’ve not tried it yet, but we’ll be keeping an eye on this one.

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 now available for £299 from John Lewis and Comet

Just £4.95 will get you a phone.

We think we’ve found the lowest-price mobile phone in the UK. Yes, you can now pick up a phone on Pay As You Go for just £4.95. The Samsung B130 isn’t too basic a phone either – it has a colour screen and Internet access.

The £4.95 phone requires a purchase of £10 top-up credit, and is available onOrange or T-Mobile for under a fiver at Carphone Warehouse.

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 application (over Wi-Fi and cellular network)
• Decrease in call set-up failures and call drops
• Improved sound quality of visual voicemail messages
• Pressing the Home button from any Home screen takes you to the first Home screen
• Preference to turn on/off auto-correction in Keyboard Settings

Good news for FrequencyCast listeners – you can now access our ‘cast from iTunes on the iPhone. Add us to 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 Vision gets on-demand content over Broadband via a set-top box with a built-in hard disk recorder.

More on our BT Vision page

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 as some Freeview and BT Vision snippets and info on a new series of Sat Navs.

Download Show 33 direct to your MP3 player, or listen online at http://www.frequencycast.co.uk/latest.html

If you’ve got iTunes, get new shows and updates first at http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=142899029

Show notes for this show, Show 33: http://www.frequencycast.co.uk/cast33.html

Our forum: http://www.frequencycast.co.uk/cgi-bin/forum/YaBB.pl

Share and Enjoy!

Carl, Pete and the FrequencyCast team

 

 FrequencyCast Show 33 [29:03m]: 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 were ready.

Looking for information on going digital? See Digital Switchover Help

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 News, Sky Arts and Sky Real Lives.

Channels are expected to return on the 13th of November.

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 box. Around 250,000 boxes have been affected.

The troublesome boxes are:

• Bush IDVCR01
• Daewoo DS608P
• Daewoo SV900
• Labgear DTT100
• Portland DP100
• Triax DVB2000T – set-top box

Well done to Watchdog for finally bringing this to a wider audience. Here at FrequencyCast, we’ve been pushing this story online, in our podcasts and on national radio. It seems that some of our listeners helped the BBC with their enquiries for this week’s Watchdog show.

For more on the story of faulty Freeview boxes, go to www.frequencycast.co.uk/freeviewlandfill.html.

If you’ve not tried our podcast, give us a try for the latest Freeview news.

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 site, on the G1…

This new phone, made by HTC, is always-on, has a touch screen and QWERTY keyboard, and as it’s powered by the new OS from Google, has Internet at its heart.

For more, go to www.t-mobile.co.uk

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 and Fit and Fearless note that Nuts TV will continue as on online service.

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 TV service we’ve not yet covered, a portable power supply and a British institution.
• Your Questions and comments on Freeview, local radio , eBook readers and more.

You can download Show 32 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 Show 32 [30:58m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download