Back To The TV Future

Cutbacks are everywhere.In the workplace, the public & private sectors. Value for money is the new watchword. Television budgets are being cut in both the public service broadcasting and commercial sector.

Cynics will look at the recent announcement re BBC programming cuts a merely an expedient way of reclaiming the pensions hole of many of its employees but as we’ve seen over many years the BBC is everyone’s favourite scapegoat that constantly needs to justify how the license fee is spent.

Television audiences have been falling for some time as viewing habits are more fragmented. Gone are the days of the three main channels and that’s your lot.

Personally I find the almost old fashioned output model of many digital only channels such as BBC3 and BBC4 a welcome reminder of the past. In ye olden days there was no breakfast TV and minimal daytime TV output. The test card was a common filler during these off peak times.

Many digital TV channels have limited broadcasting hours because they share a channel slot on Freeview (OK technically it’s called a Mux) which means that say CBBC uses the same space allocation as BBC3 but they broadcast at different times of the day.One channel that just looks like two.

Personally I’d have no problem with a more frugal hours output across all channels if it helps them save money and helped place the emphasis on quality.In this age of PVR’s, iPlayer and Video on Demand do we really need to fill up the day with so much television. Perhaps the budgets would be more focused on quality if we returned to reduced hours rather than spreading it more thinly across the current number of hours.

The so called golden age of television had the luxury of less channels and less hours to fill. Maybe an austerity television era could reap some benefits.

Picture by marksmanuk under this creative commons license

BBC iPlayer Going HD

The BBC iPlayer is tentatively preparing to offer high definition streams and downloads.It will be interesting to see how UK ISP’s react to the increased load HD material may  bring to their infrastructures as many of them already impose bandwidth throttling techniques for users who consumer too much data during certain time of the day.

An Internet bandwidth test will determine the best quality available to each iPlayer user.

HD material is expected  to later be added to Virgin media boxes , playstation 3 and Freesat at some time in the future.

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Video Archive:Do Tell 4-Tel 1986

done

Paula Yates highlights the 4-Tel teletext service circa 1986.Oh the fun we had waiting for the pages to come round.

Ta Ta Teletext And So Long Ceefax

Teletext and its stable mate Oracle were probably where many of us in the UK first got to tap into a stream of pre-Internet information which was  available via our analogue television sets. Page 888 for subtitles together with pages for news, cheap holidays where page numbers were accessed via a remote control.

Teletext did make the jump to digital TV though  these days is often a reworking of content available on the Internet which of course has largely taken its place.

Ofcom have now stated that they see no reason to renew a public service teletext license beyond 2014 and so teletext services will slowly become another technology of the past going the way of VHS video recorders, film cameras and other gadget of the analogue era.

The BBC had already committed to phase out its own Ceefax service in the run up to the 2012 digital TvVswitch over. Subtitles are likely to remain on separate streams for digital TV programmes.

It’s thought that hybrid IPTV and Internet service enabled televisions are more likely to appear over the coming years

Photo by lambigred under this creative commons license

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BBC iPlayer Download For Mac (And Linux) At Last

Despite the success of the streaming version of the BBC iPlayer which was introduced in order to allow Mac & linux users access to the BBC’s TV & radio catch up content the BBC was still under pressure to level the playing field with a version that allowed  downloading of content such as was available to Windows users.

Adobe Air

On the same day that Adobe announced that Adobe Air for linux was to move out of beta we find a decidedly low key introduction of an Adobe Air based download service for Mac users (and presumably linux and Windows users too as Air is a cross platform technology).

The first challenge is to actually find the download link for the air application which is deeply hidden within the iPlayer labs section of the iPlayer site (you must be signed up to iPlayer labs to use this new download application). You then have to set an appropriate download location and allocate some of your hard drive space. I allocated 5GB which apparently reserves me up to 22.5 hours of download content.

Hide And Seek

The next trick is to actually find content that is available to download. We still use the web browser based iPlayer but keep our eyes peeled for an additional ‘download’ option next to an individual programmes iPlayer page.

Picture Quality Impressions

The slightly disappointing first impression of two programmes downloaded is that the quality appears to be inferior to the streaming version. Certainly a download equivalent of the high quality streaming option does not currently seem to be available which makes full screen playback of downloaded content a huge let down (is rubbish quality the ultimate DRM?)

Help For ISPs

Meanwhile the BBC is taking steps to head off continuing disquiet from British ISPs concerning their worries over how much the iPlayer is putting a strain on their available infrastructure as the popularity of the Internet service increases. The BBC has offered to make available specific iPlayer content caching servers to be installed by the ISPs into their own distribution networks. Whether this will quell some ISPs demands for payment subsidy for carrying the bandwidth intensive content remains to be seen.

The BBC iPlayer Air application can be downloaded here