September 2011
Freesat today announced that it is adding Massive R&B to its range of existing music channels: NME TV, Bliss, Chart Show TV, Flava and the Vault. Massive R&B is the home of the hottest R&B and Hip Hop videos, interviews, countdowns and exclusives.

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Freesat confirms Sagemcom as lead manufacturer for its next generation of set-top boxes

September 2011
Freesat today confirmed it is partnering with Sagemcom as its lead manufacturer for the development of its next generation set-top boxes, due to launch in early 2012. Freesat confirmed that Humax would also be producing new boxes later in 2012.

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Freesat hits 2 million sales

September 2011
Freesat today announced it has sold its 2 millionth unit, far exceeding original sales projections made when the company launched three years ago, and taking gross retail sales to nearly £1 billion since launch in 2008.

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Freesat team member scoops prestigious RTS Young Technologist award

July 2011
The Royal Television Society (RTS), Britain’s leading forum for discussion and debate across the television community, has announced this year’s winner of their Young Technologist award as Freesat employee Peter Sellar, beating stiff competition from across the television industry.

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Freesat strengthens its On Demand service with the launch of ITV Player

July 2011
Freesat today made it even easier for customers to take control of their TV viewing as it announced the arrival of ITV Player on its subscription-free TV service. The only TV service to offer both ITV Player and BBC iPlayer, Freesat’s customers can now catch-up on all their favourite ITV1, ITV2, ITV3 and ITV4 programmes, up to seven days after broadcast.

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Freesat appoints new Finance Director

July 2011
Freesat, the subscription-free satellite TV service, is delighted to announce the appointment of a new Finance Director, Alistair Thom. Alistair brings a wealth of experience to the role of Finance Director, joining Freesat from KPMG where he has worked for the last five years as a Manager in the financial advisory team, across a wide range of commercial clients including AOL, Arqiva and Jaguar Land Rover.

Eliminating other possible problems first

The first is that very, very old equipment will not function with the digital signals split into 6,817 sub-signals, as it was only designed to work with 1,705 sub-signals. This is known as the “8k mode issue” – see  TVs and boxes that do not support the 8k

It is also common that people do not clear out the old channel list (by selecting “first time installation” retune, “Factory Reset” or “Shipping Condition”) before doing an “autoscan” for the available broadcast frequencies, and this results in everything from missing channels to no subtitles, programme guide, wrong channel numbers and no text services. If you can’t find how to do it see either  Freeview Retune – list of manuals or do it this way:  My Freeview box has no EPG, is blank, has no sound or the channel line up is wrong.

A third problem is caused by having signals from more than one transmitter – see DigitalRegion Overlap.

The final very common issue is “too much signal“.

Transmitters have much more digital power after switchover

At most transmitters, the digital signals after switchover are considerably more powerful than before. This was because when the analogue and digital services ran together, the digital services were kept low to prevent appearing as snowy interference on television sets using analogue reception.

Here is an example, from Sutton Coldfield, of how the signals change at switchover:

4,000kW of analogue signals are turned off, and the digital services increase in total power from 48kW to 1,200kW – that is an increase of 25 times in numerical terms, also know as +14dB. (The reduction of -7dB from the analogue strength is intended – the digital services require less power to cover the same number of homes).

This large increase in power should cause no effect for most people. A stronger signal does not increase the picture quality (you need Freeview HD for that), sound levels – the only effect should be that more homes that are further away from the transmitter mast can receive a stable digital signal.

High gain aerials and signal boosters

However, many people have been tempted into buying one both high gain aerials and signal boosters.

High-gain aerials were very suitable for places where the Freeview signal before switchover was very weak indeed, but if you have one of these and you are located closer to the transmitter, you will probably now have a signal overload.

Generally speaking, signal booster devices are never really much use for Freeview reception, and much of the time they actually amplify the interference more than they do the signal, causing reception to get worse, not better.

How to tell if you have too much signal

There are almost as many ways for a Freeview box to display the “signal strength” and “signal quality” as there are types of Freeview box. Here are some of them:

Speaking generally, there will be two indicators:

One is signal strength – this shows the power level of the signal entering the Freeview box. Often “0″ is the lowest and “10″ the highest, but sometimes it can be a percentage, sometimes coloured boxes and so on.

The signal strength should be around 75% – more than this indicates too much signal.

The other measure is the signal quality and this is much more important to high-quality Freeview viewing. Any measures that increase this to the maximum will provide for uninterrupted viewing, lower values will result in “bit errors” that cause the picture to freeze and the sound to mute out.

One problem with over powerful signals is the overload can sometimes show as a low signal because the receiver circuitry will enter a “blown fuse” state to protect itself.

How to deal with too much signal

First, if you have a booster or amplifier – remove it from your system. Don’t just unplug the power, as this will result in no signal getting though the device.

If you can’t just disconnect the output cable and connect it to the input cable, you might need a coax female-female coupler to connect two male connectors together.

If you don’t have a booster or amplifier, you might have to fit an attenuator onto the cable. They come in two types, either a “single attenuator”, around five pounds, or a variable attenuator, for around ten pounds. The variable sort has a knob that can be turned to select the required level of signal dampening.

Original from Brian Butterworth  (More Content at http://www.ukfree.tv)

As the Broadcasters, Freeview and Digital UK have notified, throughout 2011 and 2012 the Digital Switchover will come into effect in the majority of the UK (that has not already switched).

Why is Digital taking over?
Digital Television is now the best technology for broadcasting, ensuring availability of more channels with greater picture and sound as well as new interactivity features.
Digital Switchover – get set for digital

To make sure this is nationwide; the digital signal needs to be available across the UK.

Currently, approximately 75% of households are in areas where a digital broadcast signal is available. After the Digital Switchover, almost everyone (a minimum of 98% of the UK) will be able to receive digital TV through a conventional aerial.

As a result, it will be necessary for all customers to re-tune their Freeview product, possibly more than once, depending on your area.
Digital Switchover

For information regarding the dates of these changes in your local area please go to TV Re-tune or DigitalUK

To the right hand side of this page you will find retune guides for different models of TV and DVD Recorders to guide you through how to perform a retune on your product.

If you are unsure whether your Panasonic product is digital ready; look for the DVB logo (below) on the TV or the instruction manual.
DVB – Digital Video Broadcasting

The above information is useful for the Digital Switch Over related retuning, however we would always recommend, as good practice to retune your product periodically, to ensure that you receive all channels available in your postcode area.

For additional information regarding channel availability and your local transmitter, please refer to Digital UK website.

The digital switchover began on 14 September when BBC Two’s analogue signal was turned off at the Oxford transmitter group.

Freeview channels are now available to viewers who had previously been in digital blackspots.

The move completes the digital switchover in the Oxfordshire area.

Before 14 September, about 6,000 viewers in areas including Chipping Norton had been unable to receive BBC Freeview channels.

The final switchover on Wednesday has meant further Freeview channels from ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 are available from local transmitters for the first time.

Existing Freeview viewers will have to retune their sets.

The research could well be right: 5 million Samsung TV apps have been downloaded to date. Whilst the fifth most popular app is amusingly “How to tie a necktie”, the number one app is vTune Radio, which allows you to listen to the radio on your TV. Further proof that, as Google chairman Eric Schmidt put it later, “with gigabit internet, the distinction between tv and internet & radio disappears.” We may as such already be in the era of entertainment as a stream…

Then four veritable giants appeared onstage: TV presenter Piers Morgan, TimeWarner CEO Jeff Bewkes; Aaron Sorkin, the screenwriter best known for The West Wing and The Social Network; and David Simon, creator of The Wire.

The panel’s theme was what TimeWarner sees as “The golden age of TV. Everywhere”. For Bewkes, we are currently in TV’s second golden age, firstly because “there’s a lot of great stuff on TV, and a huge migration of talent to TV. Viewers & quality are up; it’s no longer mass-market TV, rather bold, targeted programming.” The second factor behind this golden age, said Bewkes, is “TV going on the internet” (and not, as he pointed out later, “TV versus the internet”).

“So does this mean the end of TV as we know it?” asked Morgan. “Well, there’s the big screen on the wall of your lounge, and there’s the small one you take with you,” said Bewkes. “You’ll soon be able to see whatever you want on either of those screens, anytime. It’s going to bring tremendous vitality. And if people are more engaged, it’s a good thing (for brands). Furthermore, you don’t have to give the same message to every viewer.”

This ‘targeting’ point was also made by Google’s Schmidt later, underlining its importance for TV advertising moving forwards. “People are worried about the role Netflix is playing in movie distribution,” said Schmidt. “Whereas they’re succeeding because they know their consumers. A TV should know not to show nappy ads to people who don’t have children,” said Schmidt, promsing Google TV would be capable of such a feat, one day.

So what is the impact of this innovation on TV creatives? Said Simon, “When we started The Wire, we knew it was complicated (plotwise), but as HBO was showing it 3 times a week we decided we could get away with it. Now that TV’s no longer appointment-based, rather a lending library, that serves complicated stories, because as a writer, you know people won’t miss an episode. That’s revolutionary.”

“I think and hope we are (in a golden age),” said Sorkin. “The best theatre in the US is on TV right now, because the best talent is coming from theatre and film to TV. We’re beginning to overcome the passive relationship viewers have with TV, and that’s great for us. And happens to be great for advertisers too.”

Key to the “golden age” of TV, then, is the notion of limitless choice for consumers in the post-scheduled TV era. The content offering of TV, said Bewkes, is “like books now. There’s everything from best sellers to lesser known works.”

What this means is new opportunities for edgier works like The Wire. “The renaissance now is that you longer have to reach 50m people to survive,’ said Sorkin. “The Wire is one of the most-talked about shows in the world and many would say it’s the best TV show ever. But its ratings couldn’t stand up to the biggest flop.”

Faced with this overwhelming choice of new content, Google naturally has an answer: search. “Look at YouTube’s billion views a day ; most of this is user-generated content,” said Schmidt. “You’ll never be able to watch all of those videos. So it becomes a search problem. We need to move past the search box model, so we should know what you’re searching for. With your permission, we could select videos based on what you watch, or suggest content to your mobile phone based on your location.”

Brave new world indeed…

On January 1, 1954, television viewers were treated to a glimpse of the future with the very first national broadcast in color — the Tournament of Roses Parade — but only 200 RCA sets capable of showing it existed. Talk about low ratings!

However, it still signified the death of black-and-white and the things to come for TV. Since then, rabbit ears have been replaced by excellent digital cable service, like www.direct.tv, and grainy picture quality has given way to crystal-clear high definition. So what does the future hold for your next home entertainment system? Let’s see.

3D: Things Get a Little Closer

The glasses have changed — they’re made of LCD lenses instead of thin plastic and are much more expensive — but the concept is the same. Readily available, for a price, from electronic retailers, 3D TVs fool your brain with alternating screen images and shuttering lenses to make you feel like you’re in the action.

However, follow the rules and avoid watching television in 3D while drunk or pregnant. Fortunately, 3D TVs are being developed and are starting to hit stores that will not require the use of special glasses. So far, 3D is popular among sports fans and male viewers of The Hills, but that is sure to change once prices start to decrease.

Internet: Your TV Becomes a Computer

Hate when nothing’s on? With Internet TV you can only blame yourself for being indecisive or production studios for making horrible programs — we’re looking at you Baywatch Nights.

Internet-connected televisions access the Web similar to computers but offer a more personalized viewing experience than normal TVs, letting you watch what you want to watch by streaming your favorite shows through services like Netflix and Hulu. Or you can catch up on the latest way someone can injure their groin on YouTube.

UD: Ultra Definition

As television screens start taking over larger portions of your living room walls, better picture quality will have to follow suit. Farther into the future, and farther back in the dictionary, will be ultra definition television.

UDTVs will boast around 3840 x 2160 pixel resolutions compared to the 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution in HD. One thing; such picture quality will provide extreme zooming capabilities. Again, it will probably be pretty popular with men who watch shows like The Hills.

Visible Light Communication: Light Speaks to You

In the future, the backlighting of your television may do much more than display an image. Each tiny backlight just might send you complex pieces of information. Visible light communication technology utilizes LED lights to send information through high frequency blinking.

Such technology will make it possible to control devices with lighting and open a Pandora’s box for advertisers. One day, simply turning on your TV will make you thirsty for a Coke.

Shrinking Bezels: Stack Screens Like Blocks

The bezel is the edge of your television where glass panels meet to form the LCD screen, pretty much dead space. Eliminate bezels and you have a seamless screen, and possibly the TV screen of the future.

Samsung is the first to give it a shot, scaling down bezel size to 7.33mm for new TV from Runco, the luxury home-entertainment retailer, called WindowWall (pity the neighborhood kid who puts a baseball through this window). And with thin bezels, you can stack several screens in numerous combinations anywhere in your home.

Quantum Dots: Bend Your TV

If Dippin’ Dots is the future of ice cream, then quantum dots just may be the future of television. These semiconducting nanocrystals shine brightly when stimulated by light or electric current, using significantly less energy than LCDs.

Scientists at Samsung have started to tap their potential by placing them on flexible plastic and charging them with a thin-film transistor. That means, in the future your TV might be made of some interesting material, such as plastic or rubber that can be bent and stretched as you see fit.

Smell-O-Vision: Get a Whiff of Your TV

One day, you may find yourself wondering what smells so good, only to realize it’s your television. That’s right; your future TV may be capable of emitting odors in accordance to what’s on your screen. You’ll be able to smell the latest creation from Emeril’s kitchen or the dead body floating in a New York harbor on CSI (okay, maybe not this).

Already, University of California, San Diego researchers have created a small box that uses electric currents to heat liquid solutions inside and produce a combination of 10,000 distinct smells. Based on the setting or featured objects on screen, such a device embedded in your TV will concoct the appropriate odor to stimulate another one of your senses. Can we consider this 4-D? If so, 5-D TVs just might be serving you lunch.

Conclusion: A More Interactive TV

Today, it’s safe to say watching TV is no longer simply staring at a box. But in the future, watching TV at home will be an even more interactive experience with additional sensory stimulations. You will be able to physically manipulate your TV, while advertisers will draw you in with much more than clever Super Bowl commercials. No pun intended, but the future of TVs in homes looks bright.

“TV is dead. Long live the internet,” proclaimed a Guardian headline just a couple of months ago.

Yet what once seemed the conventional wisdom now looks premature at least – as Google’s chairman Dr Eric Schmidt admitted at the weekend at the Edinburgh International Television Festival.

“In 2010, UK adults spent as much time watching TV in four days as they did using the web in a month,” he said in his keynote McTaggart Lecture. “TV is still clearly winning the competition for attention!”

A Deloitte analysis for the festival reported that TV viewing had risen every year since 2006. In May 2011, it said, total television viewing was up by 6% year on year, an increase of 364 million hours.

“To put this rather large number in perspective,” said the report, “it is equivalent to double the time the UK spent on Facebook, Linked In and Twitter in the same month. Not too shabby for a medium that has been, and continues to be, prophesied to disappear.”

The chair of the Television Festival, George Entwistle, director of BBC Vision, said: “This year we’ve seen enormously resilient audience figures for traditionally scheduled TV experiences – from the Royal Wedding and Saturday night blockbuster entertainment to a resurgence in high quality drama from the big broadcasters.”
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote

I think we’re on the cusp of a golden age for TV – a vast choice, made manageable by a magical guide, ensuring there’s always something wonderful to watch”

Dr Eric Schmidt Google chairman

People are also buying more – and bigger – TV sets, according to TV Licensing, with more than two million 40-inch-plus sets sold last year.

Far from being killed by the internet, television viewing has never been more popular. Some in the industry claim TV is now set to be the dominant partner, creatively at least.

John McVey, director of the producers’ association PACT, said internet companies were crying out for top quality television content to feed the demands of its audience.

YouTube (owned by Google) is one. Created on the back of “user generated content”, with millions of ordinary people sharing their video clips, the company now has a director whose job is to build its partnerships with broadcasters and other professional content providers.

In a session called The Battle for the Living Room, Ben McOwen-Wilson said a major priority for YouTube this year was to bring more “high-end” content onto the platform by offering to split advertising revenue with broadcasters and independent producers.

Channel 4 was the first broadcaster in the world to put its full catch-up service on YouTube.

Another priority, McOwen-Wilson said, was to make it easier for people to watch YouTube on the television screen – a further example of how TV and the internet need each other.

Reporting challenge

TV may still be much more popular, but the internet can add millions of viewers to some audiences.

More than half the viewing to ITV2′s The Only Way Is Essex is online and catch-up viewing is almost as important for some editions of the BBC’s A Question of Sport and Torchwood.

The Royal Wedding was live-streamed 72 million times in 188 countries, even though almost every broadcast outlet was showing the footage.
Dr Eric Schmidt Dr Eric Schmidt said that the internet is transforming the way television works

This was the underlying theme of the festival – not which of the two was going to “win”, but their convergence, and how this is changing the way people watch and engage with programmes, often using two screens at a time.

“The internet is fundamental to the future of television because it is a platform for things that traditional TV cannot support,” said Dr Schmidt.

“I think we’re on the cusp of a golden age for TV – a vast choice, made manageable by a magical guide, ensuring there’s always something wonderful to watch.”

The internet enables us to have mobile and video-on-demand devices such as the iPad, Sky+ and the iPlayer, and services such as iTunes; electronic programme guides, which help viewers find programmes and channels more easily; and social media networks such as Twitter and Facebook which let people share comments and draw attention to compelling programmes, through hashtags and the “like” button.

It was Twitter that alerted the world to Alex Crawford’s remarkable Sky News reports from Tripoli, as she joined the rebel convoy on its triumphant progress into the Libyan capital, through thousands of cheering people, hugging and kissing the soldiers.

In a memorable Worldview session at the festival, the award-winning reporter was interviewed live from Tripoli with her camera crew.

She vividly described the technological challenge of bringing the pictures to the world, with a lap-top linked to the satellite, balanced on the bonnet of the pick-up truck, powered by the vehicle’s cigarette lighter.

And she reminded the audience of the continuing importance of experienced reporters from established news organisations, in an age when anyone can upload video and other “user-generated content” to the internet.

“People didn’t believe what was happening in Tripoli til they saw the pictures – and a journalist they could trust, on the ground,” she said.

‘Giant predator’

But how is all this television content going to be paid for in the future?

Sky itself seems secure, with a firm base of 10 million paying subscribers.

Often criticised for not spending enough on “traditional” TV programmes, a Sky executive described how it was rapidly increasing its investment in UK drama, comedy and arts programmes, as well as buying HBO series for its Sky Atlantic channel.

Others are more concerned about their income.

Can the convergence of television and the internet help replace the advertising revenue being sucked away from traditional broadcasters and newspapers by the web?

In a session called Chasing the Convergence Cash, ITV and Channel Four spelled out their attempts to harness the new opportunities, but it was said that Apple’s iTunes was the only service making proper money out of video-on-demand.

And what about Google itself, often seen as a giant predator?

Dr Schmidt denied claims that Google was a parasite, taking billions of pounds in advertising without investing in content.

He insisted Google was a friend of television, not a foe, and had shared $6bn (£3.7bn) worldwide with its publishing partners in newspapers and broadcasting.

It was also entering into a partnership with the UK’s National TV and Film School, to fund a course in online film-making.

But John McVey of Pact said Google needed to pay far more before independent producers would consider it as a regular outlet for their programmes.

Google may not be a foe – but the consensus among TV folk in Edinburgh was that it’s not yet a true friend.

Landmark report reveals how today’s TV is changing lives.

TV’s influence on British life is bigger than ever before, according to a unique freesat study. The Joy of Sets study, in collaboration with media psychologist Dr Brian Young from the University of Exeter, reveals that the biggest motivation for watching TV is the opportunity to talk about it with others. People no longer just tune in to be entertained. When we are not talking about it, we are inspired by it – to change jobs, take up a new interest or even shape relationships.

The adoption and accessibility of digital media has changed behaviours and attitudes towards TV for good. People now tune in to actively participate in the TV experience. We are a nation of ‘a

The only other applicants for the HD slot, Channel 4 and S4C, were unable to provide Ofcom with confirmation of their ability to launch a service within a defined timescale.

Any capacity within Multiplex B that is not reserved by OFCOM is available for the BBC to use. This brings forward by around two years the date when it was anticipated that further capacity on Multiplex B would revert to the control of the BBC Trust.

Further evidence of how competitive all this could get is in the story of how Sky subscribers could be convinced to stay as customers by the offer of free viewing via their gadgets and widgets.