September, 2009 Archive

If you’re reading this on Wednesday the 30th of September 2009, today is Freeview Retune Day.

If you get your digital TV from Freeview, you will need to get your Freeview box or TV set to re-scan its Freeview channel lineup, to make sure you get all of your channels.

The changes that are being made at transmitter sites will do a number of things:

1. Improve reception of Five for around half a million Freeview viewers (as a result of a change of multiplex). The downside is that affected users may start having problems with ITV3 and ITV4 instead.

2. The longer-awaited Quest TV documentary channel from Discovery will appear on Channel 38.

3. A bunch of channels will be renumbered – and you’ll find that the following channels won’t be where they were yesterday – Price-drop TV, Super Casino, Rocks and Co, Smile TV2, Babestation and Partyland.

Changes at transmitter sites should be complete by lunchtime, so get ready to re-scan as soon after lunchtime as possible to make sure you don’t loose out.

If you’re not sure how to retune, it’ll be a setting somewhere in the on-sceen Freeview menu, possibly labelled “Channel setup”, “Tuning”, or “Scan for Channels”. BT Vision users should select BT Vision > Settings > TV Settings > Add channels,

If you need help rescanning for channels, see the instructions at www.tvretune.co.uk or call the automated Freeview Retune helpline on 08456 05 11 22.

Happy retuning, everyone!

From October, X-Box 360 users will be able to get TV shows from Sky.

Sky subscribers will be able to watch selected channels from their Sky package on the X-Box 360 once a planned software update is rolled out in October. Sky Player will also allow you to create an avatar of yourself and watch live events with friends.

As well as adding Sky Player, the software update is also expected to bring Facebook and social networking to the X-Box platform.

American comedy TV series WKRP in Cincinnati is finally available in the UK.

If you’re not familiar with the series, it was first shown in the late 1970s, and it’s a US sitcom based at a commercial AM radio station. The largely dysfunctional staff show how not to run a station – the first episode shows how the station switches from elevator music to Rock-n-Roll.

The crew includes Breakfast Jock the burnt-out Dr Johnny Fever, stunning receptionist Jennifer Marlow, vegetable-obsessed newsreader Les Nessman, Programme Director Andy Travis, salesman Herb Tarleck, plus the spineless boss, Arthur ‘Big-guy’ Carlson.

The show was shown here in the UK now and again in the 80s and 90s on ITV, but has not been available here for quite some time. DVD releases have been an issue due to copyright royalty issues arising from the show’s use of original rock and roll tracks.

WKRP Series 1 is now available in the UK, after a long wait by the series fans. It’s available for download from iTunes. The 22 episodes will cost you just over £20. Some music tracks have been edited or altered to overcome the copyright issues.

Thanks to listener and forum member Speedrite for letting us know.

Want a better way of getting Internet on the move? How about carrying your own wi-fi hotspot in your pocket?

3 has just launched MiFi, their mobile wi-fi modem service. Get a Mi-Fi modem for a one-off £70, and use it as a portable wi-fi 802.11 access point. The modem is a combined 3G data modem and wi-fi access point, and it connects to 3’s data network, re-broadcasting Internet over standard wi-fi to any wireless-enabled device in range.

A nifty product, and one we’ll be featuring in one of our upcoming podcasts, no doubt.

For more info on 3’s MiFi wireless modem product, go to three.co.uk/Mobile_Broadband/MiFi

Hot off the press, over 16 minutes of tech and TV news from the team at FrequencyCast.

In this update we look at the merging of two mobile networks, what Apple’s been up to this month, Freeview HD testing, BT Vision updates, a Sky offer, the latest on iPhone sat nav applications, and a new DVD release.

The show is attached to this blog entry, or you can listen at www.frequencycast.co.uk/update.html

 

 FrequencyCast Update 16 Sept 2009 1597790 [16:37m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The FrequencyCast News Blog (wot you’re reading now!), is now iPhone, iPod Touch and Google Android compatible.

Here’s a before-and-after on how our Blog behaves on an iPhone:

FrequencyCast on an iPhone – Before

FrequencyCast on an iPhone – After

Our blog now detects if you’re connecting on an iPhone, Touch or Android device, and if so, presents a cleaner, mobile touch-friendly layout.

The new-look interface is designed to be used on touch-enabled mobile devices, and is made possible using a Wordpress plug-in called WPtouch.

try it for yourself – On an iPhone, go to www.frequencycast.co.uk/blog on an iPhone, and see how sexy we look now!

Got an iPhone? Turn it into a Sat Nav for £27.

If you listen to Show 43, you’ll have heard us review the Co-Pilot Live satellite navigation application, comparing it with the TomTom and Mobile Navigator applications. CoPilot came out very well, especially given it’s half the price of the TomTom equivalent.

In our review, we had two issues with the CoPilot – the lack of speed cameras and the fact that it lost your route if you answered an incoming voice call.

Good news is… a free update has been released to address this. Well done to the team at ALK Technologies.

CoPilot, is now available from the App Store. Click the icon to open iTunes on the Co-Pilot Live page:

For a comparison of the three iPhone Sat Nat apps, see the FileSaveAs iPhone Satnav Apps Compared page.

If you’re looking to get Sky in the next few weeks, there’s an opportunity to get a £50 Tesco voucher if you sign up to Sky’s TV service online and take out a subscription to Sky Sports, Sky Movies or Sky+ HD.

The £50 Tesco voucher offer is only available until 30th September 2009. Snap it up at the following link: Choose your Sky options

Here at FrequencyCast, we’ve been playing with the new iTunes 9 released yesterday, and it seems that one of the key features for podcast listeners has vanished. The list of podcast categories no longer appears on the main iTunes Podcast page.

The new iTunes interface makes it easy to select from the top podcasts and editors picks, but not so easy to browse by category, as you could do with iTunes 8.

Here’s how it used to look on iTunes 8…

Podcast Categories from iTunes 8, mising in iTunes 9

… and here’s how you get to the Podcast Categories in iTunes 9 – Hover over the end of the word Podcast, and a tiny white arrow appears. Click the arrow and a pop-up menu appears…

Podcast Categories now hidden in iTunes 9

Which do you feel is easier and more intuative?

By the way, if you’ve not signed up to our UK TV and Tech podcast, and now can’t find us – here’s the direct link: FrequencyCast on iTunes

Lots for fan of Apple products to sink their teeth into as Apple has released a new set of iPods, a new version of firmware for the iPhone, and an updated iTunes. Here’s a summary:

New iPods:

A new iPod Nano has been released, sporting a video camera and a slightly larger screen. 8 Gig version is £115 and 16 Gig model is £135. At last, an FM radio has been added, as has voiceover, Genius mixes and a pedometer.

There has also been an update to the screen and button-less iPod shuffle, which now comes in Pink, Green and Blue.

There’s also a 64 Gig iPod Touch, for just under £300

iPhone OS3.1

The new iPhone OS adds support for Genius mixes, and will recommend applications that you may be interested in downloading, based on your previous purchases. There are a number of fixes too, including better Wi-Fi performance when using Bluetooth, a phishing alert in the browser, and improved Exchange calendar sync.

iTunes 9

An improved user interface and a new feature called Home Sharing that will let up to 5 authorised computers share music, TV shows and applications.

There’s also iTunes LP, which will supply extra goodies with purchased albums, including song lyrics, photos and video clips.

You can also organise the layout of your iPhone and iPod Touch screens from within iTunes, and there is now more control over what you decide you want to sync to your device.

Lots of new toys to play with. Enjoy!

It’s just been announced that UK network Operators T-Mobile and Orange are set to merge into one company.

This will make the new combined network operator the largest in the UK, with 37% of the mobile phone market, knocking the current number one, o2, off the top spot.

Although the merger will mean less competition in the UK, there are a number of benefits. By pooling resources, it will result in stronger network coverage as rationalisation of the cellbases takes place, Orange will bring their Broadband offering to the mix, and High Street stores will be rationalised. The company will also be able to make cost savings by removing duplicated cellbases and stores, and consolidating departments. This will doubtless mean job cuts.

The merger won’t happen for at least 18 months, and is subject to due diligence checks and UK regulator approval. No new name for the super-network has yet been proposed.

The Boat That Rocked DVD is out on DVD today. If you haven’t got a copy yet, why not?

If you didn’t get to see the film at the cinema when it was released in April, you may want to watch the DVD. From the pen of Richard “Four Weddings” / “Notting Hill” / “Love Actually” Curtis, this BritCom is set aboard the floating pirate radio ship “Rock Radio”.

Our Carl and Pete love it – Pete saw it 3 times, apparently, and the film gets top marks from FrequencyCast.

The DVD is out today – available from Amazon or with free delivery from Play.com

Show 43 of FrequencyCast, the UK’s TV and Tech podcast, has just been released.

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

• News Updates: 3D TV is with us, the end of the ISS, Freeview changes, and Lazy Britain.
• Focus: GPS gadgets – track your location, get sat nav on an iPhone and own a geotagger.
• Hands-on: Garmin Forerunner 405 GPS watch reviewed
• Hands-on: Sat Nav for the Apple iPhone – We compare the TomTom and Copilot Live
• Hands-on: The SWAP Watch, as featured on the Gadget Show (8 months after we featured it)
• Your questions on Freeview HD, Virgin on a PC, plus the survey results are in… love us, or hate us?

You can download Show 43 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 43 [30:57m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download