It’s a week before the first phase of digital switchover happens in South Devon, and even with the high publicity campaigns in the region over the past year there still seems to be a fair few people who havn’t even converted their main television set to Freeview yet. The majority of people I know do seem to atleast know when its happening, and that they’ll have to do something to keep recieving television after the second switchover in a few weeks, but the main reason why some people are holding off, and the main question which people keep asking seems to be – why?

Many people don’t seem to either fully understand, or want to except the reasons why digital switchover is happening, and seem content with their existing four channel lineup. (Channel 5 cannot be recieved with Analogue in South Devon). The fact of the matter is, is that the world moves on, and whether you like it or not, at some stage you have to embrace change, and that time has come. I’m sure there were waves of people saying exactly the same thing when colour replaced black and white, but given the choice these days, those same people would more than likely choose colour over black and white without blinking.

So what’s so wrong with changing to digital? Switchover has been a long time coming, and set top boxes have come down considerably in price over the past couple years, so there’s no real excuse. Even people on certain benefits are entitled to a free set top box and installation from the government. There’s even the incentive that most people overlook, which is that everyone currently spends over £100 on a TV Licence, no matter if you have analogue or Freeview, you both pay the same, even though on analogue you recieve just 2 services from the BBC, whereas on Freeview you get 7 channels, and loads of digital radio stations.

The numbers; according to DigitalUK, currently 74% of the country can recieve Freeview, but the government need to make that avaliable to everyone (or as many as possible), and that can’t be done unless digital switchover happens across the country. We can’t stand back and watch the world move on while we don’t, just because of a few people who don’t think its needed, and arn’t willing to spend £30 on a box.

So if you’re one of these people who are still umming and arring, stop living in the past and upgrade, cause guess what, most people don’t want to live and use a system which was designed over 50 years ago.

Today was the first Nano Show; a bi-monthly series of science lectures presented simultaneously in real life at NPL and in Second Life. A real life presenter, in front of a real life audience in the NPL auditorium discusses Nanotechnology related topics, while an audience in Second Life, listens and watches the presentations in real time, and all having a chance to participate in voting and questions at the end.

All in all it went successfully, and hidden amongst a tower of cables and computers I came out ok! The set-up was – and is – quite hectic! The speaker, and thier Second Life avatar use and are logged in to the main Auditorium computer on the main screen. Then there’s a moderator taking questions from Second Life attendees and managing the presentation slides on his own computer.

Then there’s me… managing the audio, from three microphones – one for the speaker, one for the moderator, and one for the real life audience when they ask questions, all feeding into Second Life as and when required. I’ve also got 2 laptops, one showing the second life audience for the real life audience to see on a TV, and a second using Wirecast, to record everything as it happens from the computers, and two video cameras.

Here are some photos taken before, and during the event of the real life speaker and audience!

More Photos >>>

An interesting meme which has been travelling the blogosphere lately is people’s ‘media consumption diets’. I found this on Ian Forrester’s blog where he had written his media ‘diet’, however it was originally started by Jeremiah Owyang. It’s a detailed list and explanation of how individuals recieve and digest thier news and information, and generally get entertained.

Web: I get alot of news and information from the web, from subscribing to RSS Feeds, to browsing websites in general. For all main news, current affairs and some technology and entertainment news my most popular resource would have to be the BBC News website, and it’s Have Your Say section. I also find myself often on the ABC News site just to try and get perhaps a different perspective on certain stories.

Other sites I reguarly browse to for news is Digital Spy for media news, E! Online for entertainment news, and Neowin for technology news.

I subscribe to just over 30 feeds, which include friend’s blogs, technology and media news feeds, and various people who work within the industry.

I have a Dell Inspiron laptop which I use most of the time while at home, and all of the time when I’m up at university, as well as a old Time computer at home I use on the odd occasion. At home we have AOL Platinum 8MB Broadband, and in our flat at Kingston while at university, we have Virgin Media 4MB Cable Broadband.

Communication: Out of the four main methods I reguarly use to contact people, the first would have to be my mobile phone. I have a Sony Ericsson W810i, which is a great phone which I use to text and call people on Pay as you Go from Orange. I also have a bluetooth headset with it to use in the car, even though I rarely use it, and I’m pretty much sure it’s out of battery anyways.

Secondly, there’s email. I have many accounts, three of which I reguarly use; Hotmail – for circulars, subscription emails etc.; Kingston University Email – for all things university related; and my lloydengland.com Email for everything else.

Then there’s Windows Live Messenger which I pretty much use daily, to communicate with friends and family.

Finally there’s Facebook, which since last Autumn has become a main focus for me to keep up to date with friends from the past and now!

There’s also Skype I use on the odd occasion to talk to friends and family, and to use while playing online games.

Music: I have a large collection of albums of all genres on my home computer and laptop which I listen to while at home. I rarely listen to the radio anymore and have an MP3 CD which I listen to in the car with 130+ tracks on. I also own an iRiver H140 MP3 player with alot of music on, even though I rarely use it these days, as I only listen to music while at my laptop or in my car.

Television: I reguarly watch TV at home, as well as downloading American and British TV shows online. I tend to watch Drama’s such as; Lost, 24, Studio 60, West Wing, Greys Anatomy; Comedies such as; Scrubs and Only Fools & Horses; and Sci Fi’s such as; Doctor Who, Stargate SG1 & Atlantis, Enterprise and Eureka.

At home we have Freeview (Digital TV), and reguarly watch digital channels, even though the main 4 are most watched.

Pictures: I have two cameras, not including mobile phones. A Sony P12, 5 Megapixel, point and shoot camera which until recently was my main and only camera. I now also have a Canon D400 (Digital Rebel XTi) SLR camera which will now become my main camera which I’ll take with me to capture places, people and events.

Over the past few years I have gathered a large collection of digital images, using over 16GB of space on my laptop, with partial backups on both my home computer and an external hard drive. I use Windows Explorer and Adobe Lightroom to organise my ever growing collection.

I store and save virtually all photos I take so I have a library of past photos. I upload selected photos online, such as Events to my gallery on my blog, as well as uploading the best photos I take to Flickr.

Movies: I enjoy watching movies, both at home on DVD and at the cinema. My tastes in film are similar to that of TV, where I find myself watching and enjoying Dramas, Action, Thrillers and Comedies.

Gaming: I have a Playstation 2, however have not used it much the past year or so, as well as playing several PC games, such as Sim City 4, Flight Simulator X and Supreme Commander.

Newspapers & Magazines: I rarely buy magazines, even though since getting my SLR camera I suppose I may start buying the odd photography magazine if it takes my interest! I also rarely actually buy newspapers, however reguarly read the headlines, and if I do happen to find myself reading one at home it would either probably be the local paper, The Daily Mail or The Guardian.

A run down of the top ten blogs I keep an eye out for and read on the net regularly in alphabetical order;

Rory Blyth
Microsoft Channel 9 employee, interesting reading his often bizarre and crazy posts! Even if they’re sometimes on the long side, often most of the time worth the read!

Evan Davis
A business look and viewpoint to current affairs from the BBC’s Economics Editor.

Nikki Denis
Friend from the States! Good to keep up on what’s happening on the other side of the pond!

Ian Forrester
Another Beeb Employee, writing some good blogs on all things technology.

Thomas Hawk
Professional photographer from San Francisco, good general technology orientated and photography related blogs, and even better actual photography!

Joseph Mallozzi
Exectutive Producer of Stargate SG:1 & Atlantis, getting all the latest info and spoilers from the two shows!

Ben Metcalfe
Ex BBC Employee, now living in the states, writing interesting technology and media related blogs!

Myles Noton
My fellow friends blog, who I read to keep an eye on what stupid or evil plan he’s plotting next… Oh, and to snoop on what he’s writing about so I can compete against him to produce a better blog. Hah.

Kristin Veitch
Columnist for E! Online, dishing the dirt on all the latest news and insider information about all your favourite American TV Shows!

Long Zheng
A student in Australia, blogging all things technology and Microsoft!

While I sit here typing away with James Bond; Tomorrow Never Dies playing in the background on our seven year old standard definition (SD) television, people around the world are snapping up the latest in technology – High Definition (HD) televisions. With the chance to watch much better quality TV, and with prices becoming lower and lower you can’t blame people for moving over.

But already, the next generation of TV’s have started being developed, in the form of Ultra High Definition (UHD). Back in November 2005, the Japanese public service broadcaster, Nippon Hoso Kyokai (NHK), first demonstrated the technology, but with the recent news development has begun, it only shows that we’re one step closer to it becoming a reality in our homes.

Now, how does UHD compare to HD you may ask? Well, its alot. An awful lot. If UHD was a Ferrari, HD would be an everyday Ford, and SD would be, well, a Skoda. An old Skoda at that, from 1981. Anyways, UHD is capable of a very impressive 7680 x 4320 resolution compared to 1080p HD (thats the decent HD, not the cheap ass HD) which broadcasts at 1920 x 1080. Yes, I know that’s alot of numbers which probably mean less to you than anything. But, in a nut shell, you would need 16 HD TV’s, placed into a 4 x 4 grid to replicate what UHD TV can produce.

To make it easier to understand and actually visualise, the image on the right is an accurate representation of the sheer magnitude of UHD TV. The blue area represents UHD TV, the yellow area represents 1080p HD TV, and the white area is 720p HD TV. The picture quality is undoubtly un imaginable until we actually see it for real, but my question is, what size TV would you need to make UHD TV actually worth it?

But with this increased resolution brings an increased file size for video and television broadcast. One minute of uncompressed video footage is 194GB, which would mean a two hour movie would need approximately 25TB of storage, (thats 25,000GB). The transfer rate currently is 24 Gigabits a second, something which is unbelivable in todays current broadcast systems. This is one of the biggest hurdles at the moment facing this new technology. The video data would have to be encoded to be able to be broadcast to make it feasable, but seeing as how at the moment each encoding unit (you technically need 2, one at the broadcast end (ie. TV Studio) and one in the TV itself) being as tall as a person, they would need to be the size of a few chips able to fit into the back of a TV to make this technology work.

Either way, there’s no doubt UHD TV is years and years off yet, so there’s no need to throw away those sparkly new Blu-ray and HD DVD’s just yet, but it does go to show that one day we will have to again, and with his new technology already in development, it’s only a matter of time.