Satellite of Love…

Ok, having witnessed a little demonstration at the weekend (the promotional video for N.E.R.D’s ‘Everyone Nose’ magnum opus no less, in glorious HD), i’m seriously considering Freesat now, like seriously.

Sure, Sky Plus (as Felicity Kendall and Ross Kemp are so very eager to tell you) allows the pausing and rewinding of live TV, and I’ll never have to miss another episode of one of ‘my programs’ (Gossip Girl, Ed, anything with Dawn Porter in it) again, but the image quality on Freesat HD is astonishing.

I don’t intend to finish each paragraph with a word in bold incidentally, I’ll stop that now.

I’m about 70/30 in favour of taking a dip in Freesat’s shimmering waters, so what did I learn over the last 48 hours that I didn’t know already? In truth, quite a lot:

• There are no subscriptions or contracts involved with Freesat whatsoever; all I need to pay for is the cost of the equipment, which stacks up at….

• £150 for the HD Box and £80 for installation and dish. Fairly reasonable in my opinion.

• Existing Sky Digital dishes can be used in conjunction with the Freesat box without affecting the service, so I might be able to negotiate a discount on the installation. Tasty.

• By Christmas, the Freesat EPG (electronic program guide, or channel list if you like) will have evolved to 200 channels. Currently, 80 channels (including BBC HD and ITV HD) are on offer.

• In a similar fashion to Freeview, the Freesat technology instantly updates itself each time a new channel is added.

• Freesat is available to 98% of UK households, including mine.

I was especially impressed by how future proof Freesat is. The box allows you to connect to the internet via an Ethernet port for extra services, iPlayer being the most eye-catching. This is exactly what I’m looking for. Moreover, the HD service is effectively free, and you don’t get that with Sky.

As Sting once said, sort of, “If you love someone, get them Freesat”. Or was that Richard Bach?

Either way, I’m getting it.

Videos - Utter Garbage

Sky Plus, iPlayer, 4OD, Internet TV, dedicated catch up channels; there are so many ways to make sure you don’t miss your favourite show.

So why on earth are VHS videotapes still more popular than internet TV? Check this out:

VHS still ahead of internet TV for catch-ups

I’m dumbfounded, and not for the first time.

Sure, it’s great to reminisce about the good old days when you taped Airwolf and recorded the Top 40 from the radio on your ghetto blaster, but (and I’ll say this in a Carrie Bradshaw style):

‘….in this day and age, are VHS video cassettes really necessary?’

I remember my first experience with VHS. We borrowed next door’s top-loading Ferguson VCR machine, which required four strong men to carry over, and watched Neil Diamond’s version of ‘The Jazz Singer’ as a family, all eyes fixed on its fuzzy, chewed up brilliance.

Great film incidentally, I love the bit where he rocks up at the airport with a massive beard. And the soundtrack (“Hello my friend, hello…..”) is a rare and precious gemstone.

However, this was 1990 (I’m from Northamptonshire; everything arrives 5 years too late there). John Barnes was urging us to hold and give but do it at the right time, we were wearing jeans that could accommodate the entire population of Macedonia, and Trafalgar Square was besieged by hoards of very angry poll tax rioters. Whisper it, but that was eighteen years ago.

I’m aware there will always be individuals who prefer traditional and established methods of enjoying media, and I only baulk at labelling this practice ‘Paul Weller Syndrome’ because I myself choose to listen to vinyl records above CDs and MP3. Additionally, reading a story online is no substitute for physically holding a book in my opinion.

My VCR got turfed out light years ago though, with good reason. There’s no pleasure to be gained from endlessly fast forwarding or rewinding, plus the gloomy spectre of ‘oh no, I taped over the bar mitzvah’ constantly hovers overhead like the Grim Reaper’s axe.

Frankly, Sky Plus rocks my world.

Am I right, or am i right?

  Tron’s Hair Extensions

I read this week the internet could soon be made obsolete due to a superfast alternative built by Cern, the particle physics centre who initially pioneered internet technology nearly twenty years ago.

The new network, know eerily as ‘The Grid’, runs at speeds of up to 10,000 times faster than a typical broadband connection, and has been built with dedicated fibre-optic cables. Capabilities of The Grid include the power to transmit holographic images, and the capacity to allow instant communal gaming to groups of over 100,000 online gamers. That’s some round of Command and Conquer.

However, it was the following piece of information that really captured my attention:

‘The Grid will be able to send the entire Rolling Stones back catalogue from Britain to Japan in less than two seconds.’

Impressive, very impressive.

I’ve just got one quick question: why the hell would you want to do that?

Granted, from 1964 to 1972 they were absolutely on top of their game, no question, ‘Exile on Main Street’ is a modern masterpiece. I’m even prepared to allow side one of ‘Goats Head Soup’ and two tracks from ‘Some Girls’ slip in.

But 80s and 90s Stones, are you insane? You would need a frontal lobotomy to appreciate that stuff, let alone a superfast internet network.

Why are we designing internet networks that can send 33 albums halfway around the world in seconds, when all you need is 6? Perhaps even just a sturdy Greatest Hits might do it? This statistic also pales into insignificance when I tell you it’s possible to download, burn, listen to, evaluate and discard the entire Kate Nash back catalogue in under a nanosecond.

My advice? Get yourself an i-pod that holds eight songs, and download ‘Master of Puppets’ by Metallica. It’s all you need. In previous years, you would have been able to download this album for free from Napster. Unfortunately, the Metallica drummer and co-founder, Lars Ulrich, elected to drag Napster through the federal courts and ultimately destroy them. Oh dear.

Rather than sending duff albums by flamboyantly dressed cadavers (and I’m back onto the Stones now) to Sepang, how could ‘The Grid’ be put to a more practical use?

Well, ironing out glitches in VoIP and IPTV would certainly be one great innovation, as would an increased capacity to run your home security system (CCTV and all) from your PC.

Looking further ahead, holographic video conferencing looks a distinct possibility, creating the illusion that every conference participant is present in the room at the same time. This feeling of physicality between disparate entities would significantly aid communication between businesses, and emphatically crystalise the saying ‘it’s a small world’.

The Grid will ultimately sound the death knell for desktop computing, with the majority of net users turning to online applications to store data. Landline phones (already under threat from the ‘dongle’) and mobile handsets could take a major hit too, with VoiP and social networking all set to replace them on a permanent basis.

Having been in development for seven years, this parallel network is now built, using fibre-optic cables that run from Cern to 11 nerve centres in the United States, Canada, the Far East and Europe. Testing begins this summer.

So, my question to you is this: In the light of iplayer, 4OD and other applications decimating our frail, existing broadband network, how would you use all this extra bandwidth if it was to be introduced tomorrow?

What could you do with 1000Mb?

Answers on a holographically generated e-card please.

  The ‘Adrian Chiles Effect’

Those of you up to speed with the latest superfast broadband happenings will be aware of two things:

(1)   The BBC’s iplayer service is an incredible tool, but it spanks your download limit into oblivion, particularly if you’re on a starter or low-user package. Even those with an ‘unlimited download’ agreement aren’t safe. ISPs have reported a significant increase in traffic and capacity problems since the iplayer was launched.

(2)   Despite an unremitting campaign by Tiscali to have the BBC make a financial contribution to help upgrade the UK’s creaking and overloaded broadband networks, Ofcom has ruled the BBC should not be held financially liable for this.

Well, you can hear the sigh of relief at Broadcasting House from here (although I will confess to being sat in an office less than a mile from Broadcasting House. If anyone living in Arbroath heard the sigh then leave a comment underneath. It’ll give the piece more resonance).

Last time I checked, my TV license (yes, you guessed it, I’m going down that road) cost £139.50. Apparently, you can still get black and white TV licenses for only £47, but who (outside of Leicestershire) owns a black and white TV these days? So those of us with a colour set are paying 38p a day for the following:

•  My Family – As funny as having all your vital organs removed and sold on e-bay by rogue Lithuanian surgeons.

• Adrian Chiles – All of a sudden, drawing on your eyeball with a rusty needle doesn’t seem like such a bad idea.

• BBC News – So far behind they’re still reporting on the Cuban missile crisis.

• Jools Holland – Try playing another note for heaven’s sake.

• Neighbours – Nope, that’s gone to Five.

Turnover generated by the BBC through TV license fees rose to £3.1 billion last year; upgrading the broadband network would cost in the region of £830 million. Wouldn’t you prefer to see your license fee pumped into a project that will vastly improve every facet of your broadband connection, rather than criminally unfunny sitcoms? Although unintentional, there’s no denying the advent of iplayer has strained the broadband network, to the extent that non-iplayer users are experiencing knock-on effects such as speed caps and overstretched customer service centres.

Potential solutions include a content-led exclusivity tariff, where ISPs do deals with content providers to ensure their products run more smoothly across that particular ISP’s network. Hence you could see Orange sign a deal with the BBC, and as a result iplayer would run glitch free using minimal bandwidth on Orange only, with the other ISPs having to settle for standard, bulky iplayer traffic.

In terms of trying to persuade the BBC to chip in, was the wrong ISP doing the chasing? Perusing the list of customer reviews on Broadband Choices, it becomes apparent Tiscali haven’t quite had their house in order since traffic shaping problems and LLU mishaps blighted their service earlier this year. Perhaps Virgin Media, with their Samuel L. Jackson fronted ghetto mentality, would have been better placed to storm Broadcasting House and ‘wup some corporation ass’ (or some such other generic action movie colloquialism)?

So, who’s accountable for upgrading the broadband network to the point that it can cope with iplayer-style applications?

Is it the responsibility of the ISP to get busy, the content provider to box clever, or the consumer to download sensibly?

Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s over to you.