FrequencyCast UK – Show #33

• Sky Back On Virgin: 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 The Sky channels withdrawn from Virgin are set to return after an 18 month absence.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.
• Freeview Landfill update: The BBC Watchdog programme on 3rd November featured a story we’ve been covering for months – the death of around 250,000 Freeview boxes made by Bush, Daewoo, Labgear, Portland and Triax. The Beeb approached some of our listeners to help research the story. Great to get some national coverage for this, but a plug for FrequencyCast wouldn’t have hurt guys!. More on this on our Freeview Landfill page
• BT Vision Kids Contents: BT Vision customers with kids in the house will be pleased to know that a deal’s been done with Disney to make shows and movies from the Disney Channel and Playhouse Disney available on BT’s TV service. Users can view shows on a pay-per-view basis, or as part of the BT Vision Kids Pack.
• Nuts TV Allergy: 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.
• Android Attacks: The first phone powered by the new mobile phone OS Android, is here. Unlike the iPhone launch, folk weren’t queuing in the streets for the G1. The handset is free… well, provided you’re prepared to pay £40 a month for the 18 month contract. The Google G1 with a touch screen and sliding QWERTY keyboard is only available on the T-Mobile network in the UK. The phone’s slightly clunky, but the Android interface looks good and shows promise.
  Available now from www.t-mobile.co.uk.
  

• Slingbox news: The Slingbox is a magic box that allows you to access your home TV while you’re on the move from anywhere in the world. It allows you to connect to your home broadband and take control of a set-top box. Until now, Slingbox was limited to playback on a desktop, laptop or mobile phone, but now the long-awaited SlingCatcher is available, allowing you to watch your Slingbox on a TV. Slingcatcher also supports Internet video and personal media. Slingbox reviewed
  
  
  SlingCatcher is available from BT Shop and Slingbox UK.

• Channel News: Eurosport UK’s been dropped from TopUp TV‘s live service just leaving a few hours of live content from Gold and UKTV Style. Radio station Clyde 1 removed from Freeview, and Mojo is also set to vanish from Freeview soon.
• Latest Sat Navs: The Sat Nav gurus at TomTom have announced three new additions to their Go range. The TomTom Go 540, 740 and 940 all have embedded Vodafone SIM cards for Internet connectivity, allowing them to make use of a service called “Traffic HD”. Information about your journey speed is uploaded anonymously and shared with other connected users, to provide a real-time status on current road conditions. The new devices also offer local petrol prices and local search from Google. From £299, with a money-off fuel voucher. Available from Halfords
• And finally: a warning for Facebook users – 13 staff at Virgin Atlantic have been sacked after using a Facebook group to discuss passengers, branding them as “smelly and annoying”. We only ever say nice things about our listeners on OUR Facebook page.

Pure is best known for their excellent DAB radios, and they’ve been increasing their audio range again. We featured their basic range of Pure One radios back in Show 31, but what about some of their newer, high-end creations?

We were able to catch up with the team at Pure to discuss two of their newer radios. We got chatting to Andy Davies, a Product Manager at Pure, who told us about two of Pure’s latest radios:

First, the Evoke 2S with stereo DAB and FM – this supports pause and rewind of radio, plus the Evoke, ideal for anyone worries about buying a DAB-only radio as it offers Internet radio and podcasts too.

Then, we looked at the Pure Evoke Flow – Internet streaming radio, podcasts, DAB and FM:

You can get the Pure Evoke Flow from Play.com

We also caught up with Freeview box manufacturers TVonics. They’re not your run of the mill boxes, and they brought out the TVonics MFR200 – probably the smallest box our guys have ever seen.

The MFR200 does have a SCART socket, so works on the huge number of TV sets that don’t have a SCART socket, such as kitchen and bedroom TVs, plus TVs that weren’t bought in the last 10 years or so. Even TVs with SCART sockets support aerials, so this box will work on just about all TV sets, as well as analogue PC TV receivers. A cinch to use and connect.

For this special edition show, we spoke to Paul Fellows, Marketing Director at TVonics, and asked him to tell us more. He also passed on a handy tip for elderly users to make it easier to get Freeview tuned in on their TVs.

Available from
Argos

We also met up with the guys
(and girls!)
from Olympus.

Olympus are probably best known for their range of cameras, but they also make a range of voice recorders.

We were able to meet up with Olympus to get a look at the LS-10 Linear PCM Recorder.

The second we got our hands on the LS-10, we could tell this was a quality piece of kit. Seriously high build quality, and an impressive specification. The FrequencyCast team uses a less professional recorder at the moment – the interviews in the show were recorded on the Olympus DS-30.

We spoke to Rob Noel, National Account Manager for Olympus, to find out more about this new recorder.

For more on the LS-10, specification and availability, see our Olympus LS-10 page

And finally in our special hands-on show, we got our hands on a new mobile phone watch. We met Ty, Das and Pete from a company called Dyal who’ve just launched a watch called SWAP.

Carl was so impressed, he bought… one.

A mobile phone in a watch. Unlocked for all UK networks except 3, with Bluetooth, 1.3Meg camera, MP3 and MP4, up to 2 Gig flash card, SMS, MMS, 1.5″ touch screen and 100 hour standby. It recharges from a USB. Impressive wingspan!
A little chunky, but the ultimate gadget. FrequencyCast now owns one, so if you have any questions about this top tech mobile phone watch, let us know!

More on the GPRS Mobile Phone Watch, on our Dyal SWAP page

• Pick a browser: Ed Tulloch asked “Please could you tell me what web browser you would choose out of the many out there? I currently have Chrome, Firefox 3, IE 7 and IE 8, and Opera. I just want one! Also, in Chrome, I sometimes get a blank page when going to gmail and sometimes get a normal gmail page.
  
  Well, everyone has their own favourite browser. Pete told us that Windows IE still dominates the market, and Firebox has a huge following. Pete’s a Firefox man, mainly due to the range of plug-ins. I default back to IE on occasions – there’s still a couple of sites that aren’t great with Firefox. Pete Also recommends Google’s Chrome browser for use on the Asus 901, as it’s fast and not too thirsty.

• Freeview Breakup: Dave Evans asked us: “Do you have any information about the breakup of some Freeview channels?”
  A question we get asked a lot – normally signal breakup is a sign that your box or TV’s not getting enough signal, and typically it’s an aerial or cabling issue, or it’s down to where you live. You’ll be wanting to have a listen to Show 14 for all your Freeview woes

• DAB Multiplexes: Scott Simpson says: “You asked what should be done with the ‘spare’ DAB multiplex. I suggest it should be given to the BBC to allow an increase in the bitrate so that the quality at least matches FM, as intended when DAB was first introduced. This should delay the need to change to DAB+ and avoid forcing listeners to purchase new radios at a time of economic recession.”

• Wi-fi on Nokia N96: We had a podline call from a listener asking how to enable wi-fi on their Nokia N96. An easy one – Go to Tools > W.LAN wizard, and it’ll walk you through the process

• Is HD all that? Waylander popped up in our forum – He says “thanks for the tip in your news update page about the Sky+ HD package offer. I had it installed last week. The only thing is I can’t tell the difference! Am I alone in thinking this or are there others out there that think hd isn’t all its cracked up to be?”
  Well, HD is pretty impressive – check out a nature programme on National Geographic, and compare it with a standard def channel. You need to make sure you’re connecting via an HDMI lead and that your TV is set to the HDMI input, not the SCART input, otherwise you’ll only be seeing standard Def. HD TV advice

Any questions for Carl & Pete? Got a comment on the world of TV and Technology?
Call 020 8133 4567 and leave a message and be heard on the show.

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