Well, it’s time for another television related post which I hav’t done in a while…

Currently being slightly pushed aside by the TV-Phone in debarkle which is currently going on in the media, the Sky and Virgin Media War is still in full swing. Now, since the war kicked off Sky have lead a very good advertising campaign… but… it does seem it is pretty mis-leading to consumers, and so, here’s a short little back story on it all;

First thing’s first the main ‘war’ started back in late 2006 when 17.9% of the troubled broadcaster ITV was put up for sale. Richard Branson (then NTL Telewest) was in the running to purchase the portion of the channel, to in turn make them a more strong media company, and have more strength to compete against Sky (which is more powerful and worth more than Virgin Media). But, at the last minute, Murdoch jumps into the boat and pays for the 17.9% stake of ITV and without any further negotiations, leaves Branson left with nothing in the ITV sale.

Now, at the time this was seen as very controversal - is it really in the interest of the general consumer that ITV is now mainly controlled by Murdoch and his empire? It’s something Ofcom are looking into at this moment in time, but it wasn’t very fair to Branson and Virgin Media.

Onto the more recent news; and for a reason which still seems a little mistifying, Murdoch’s wish seems to be for every Sky channel to be exclusive to Sky, (unless you pay more for premium channels such as Sky Sports & Sky Movies). Yes, earlier this month, when Virgin Media’s contract with Sky to carry thier range of basic channels on thier platform (Sky One, Two, Three, Travel, Travel Plus, News & Sports News) was due to run out and be up for renewal. Now, unlike what would be expected, such as the same price (or even a slight increase in carrage fees), Sky decided to plan to charge Virgin a higher amount than had previously been charging to NTL Telewest (now Virgin Media). This price was never fully disclosed, however Virgin seemed to believe it was high, too high for them to pay, and in a cascading effect, what Virgin customers would have to had paid in thier increased montly bills, especially with recent trends of falling viewers on Sky’s channels.

So, with Sky not wishing to lower thier new fee’s and Virgin not wishing to pay them as they were seen as a ‘rip-off’ to the consumer, we were at a stand off. So, a week later, the Sky channels were removed from the Virgin Media lineup, much at first to the apparent joy of Sky who proceeded to advertise nationwide about how Virgin willingly removed the channels, and so to try to persuade customers to move to Sky from Virgin to ‘Get Jack Back’ and Not to ‘Lose Lost’.

That was then, this is now, and it seem’s as though the strategy failed to pay off to any substantial amount. According to both parties, only a small amount of people switched to Sky, nothing to get excited over, and now Sky in turn have lost out on 3.3 million potential viewers to it’s channels which now don’t have access to them on Virgin Media. It seems also that Sky’s decision is now further causing problems; as mentioned on the BBC News wesbite, now key advertisers such as Cadbury’s and Honda are wanted advertising refunds from Sky due to thier quick removal of the channels from the platform. To them, they had paid for thier adverts to be seen by a certain amount of viewers, which was in turn automatically reduced when Sky removed the channel’s viewers from Virgin Media, which in turn could cost them upto £20million to recover from.

Now, it isn’t fully all about Sky vs. Virgin Media. In February Sky announced plans to remove Sky’s channels from Freeview from early this summer, again losing a potential massive audience. Sky News has been flourishing since on Freeview and has been giving BBC News 24 a real run for it’s money. Sky Three (since replacing Sky Travel) has also been sucessful amongst viewers, and with the removal from Freeview, this will only hit thier viewing figures, and in turn advertising revenue hard. Thier new plan is to offer Sky programming for a price on the platform on Top-Up TV, but this move hasn’t been welcomed by other broadcasters such as the BBC, ITV (strangely) and Channel 4, and nevertheless, has to be approved by Ofcom in the next few weeks, who in turn may reject the plans.

So, is it all going to pay off for them? It does seem a little rocky at this moment. The whole Virgin Media debate doesn’t seem to have produced much for Sky, and because of Sky’s tactics in the whole matter, and how it seems as though from the start they were trying to make Virgin Media pull out of the contract by offering such a high deal, it does beg the question if Sky’s plan worked.

In many ways it doesn’t;
Not many people switched from Virgin Media to Sky, even though of thier expensive nationwide advertising campaign
Loss of a potential 3.3million viewers to the Sky channels, which inevitably will hit ratings hard
Advertising refunds from companies which could result in hefty payouts.

Sky’s aquisition of ITV late last year also seems to be on a knife edge as Ofcom along with the Office of Fair Trading look into the matter, and how thier plans for Freeview has to also go through Ofcom, many believe thier plans will be rejected.

We can only wait and see, but for sure, this won’t be the end of the Mudoch’s and Sky! With thier worldwide media corporation, they won’t be going anywhere too soon, but nevertheless, they can’t be in thier ideal situation right now.

The Ori, a group of ascended beings who through evolution became pure energy to form a higher level of existence of our own along with their Priors who have been dispatched to Earth…

…Now, at this point you’re either thinking… ‘What the hell is this guy on?’ - or you know what I’m on about - either way - they’re in Stargate SG1… a formidable enemy who plan to take control over the Milky Way by either making everyone pray to their religion Origin to give them power or destroy all non-believers.

They go about this by despatching Priors (believers who are given god-like powers) to worlds who either convert the world to Origin, or destroy them, one of which you can see below…

Now, after rustling through the various websites on my daily rounds today, one namely being the BBC News site, I came across this photo of Clint Eastwood…

Has Clint been prior-ised?!?!

Digital TV - Freeview - whatever you want to call it, we’re all getting it if we like it or not. From 2008 the UK is switching off the old analogue services (BBC1, BBC2, ITV1, Channel 4, Channel 5) and making television digital, so everyone will have the standard digital channels currently available on Freeview as standard television. Wherever you live, even if you can’t receive such services now, you will be able to by the time your region ‘turns digital’ - anytime between 2008 to 2012.

But, nothing is ever simple. A quick run down on how digital television works, is that there are several ‘multiplexes’, technically it is where digital TV can mix, and broadcast half a dozen television channels in the space of one ‘old’ analogue channel, as well as radio and interactive content; this is the reason why digital tv can hold so many more channels. However, there is a limit of how many there are, and currently, all space on these multiplexes are completely full, so no new television channels can join (without one leaving before hand of course).

In 2012 when the country goes completely digital though, there will be five ‘empty’ multiplexes (each one which was used for the current ‘old’ analogue channels). The potential here is that a whole host of new television channels could then join again. However, this is entirely upto the government and Ofcom (the broadcasting regulator) as it could seem to them that these spare channels could be sold off to the likes of mobile phone companies and such for a healthy price - leaving digital television without extra space.

It’s not just more television channels though which is at stake however, but also high definition television (HDTV) would also be held back. HDTV takes up lots more space than current standard definition channels (SDTV), and so needs more space to broadcast - hence why none currently exist on Freeview, only on cable and satellite (where space is less of an issue). With HDTV being the ‘future’ of TV, its worthwhile to think that it should be available on Freeview in some state rather than only on premium rate subscription services like Sky.

There is an official government petition online at http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/openhdtv/ which I urge you all to sign, which is letting Tony know that the extra space which will be made avaliable come 2012 is better off being used to provide more television channels, and HDTV on Freeview, rather than being sold off to companies - with the aim of trying to keep Britain as the world leader in broadcasting, and not fall behind the likes of America and Australia where HDTV is taking off much faster than in the UK, and where these type of services are already being rolled out.

Hey folks, so the other week - well it must be a couple now but I havn’t blogged in a little bit it seems, I managed to get an interview - exclusive I might add - with Sherri Shepherd for the unofficial site I run about the digital UK channel ABC1; www.abc1uk.co.uk, which some if not most of you already know I do!

Anyways, for those who don’t know, she plays Ramona in the ABC comedy Less Than Perfect over in the states, which in turn is shown in the UK on ABC1. After emailing her agent who seemed enthusiastic, I sent off a bunch of questions. Now, I expected to have to wait a few days - even a few weeks for a reply, but behold the very next day I got her response!

 So, then I got on to the task of publishing it to the site, and after a short while it was online! Amazingly about a week later, someone signed up to the forums, apparently Sherri herself, and replied to the forum thread about the interview! Now, I’m not 100% sure it was her - but - its pretty cool to think about!

You can read it at: http://www.abc1uk.co.uk/interviews/sherrishepherd.php

Yesterday we went to Discovery Place here in Charlotte. It’s like the Science Museum in London if anyone has ever been. Anyways, the building was split up into different exhibits, mainly being about, the body, physics and such, illusions, a rainforest area, and the main part being all about Movies! The movie part was a featured exhibit which is going around the country, whereas everything else is pretty much standard. The ‘normal’ stuff though was pretty good - some piccies in the gallery of course!

The movie part had costumes and props from alot of films, such as Pirates of the Carribean, Star Wars, ET, I,robot, Titanic, Indiana Jones to name a few. Pics below, and more in the gallery of everything from there!

From left to right, Indiana Jones, Keira Knightley’s Dress in Pirates of the Carribbean, Catwoman

From left to right, I,robot, I,robot Drawings, Star Wars

Find more photos in the Discovery Place album in the gallery by clicking here

But no! It wasn’t over just yet… we could also pay a little extra to make and appear in our own ‘movie’. So, we did, along with a family. There were a few sets and we basically were all given mini acting parts in each to tell a story… watch it below!

Ok lets start with a rant about ITV - it seems like the new craze, hitting everyone by storm. Since the majority of the regions have been swallowed up by Carlton/Granada (now ITV plc), it seems to have lost the very essence that the channel was intially created for… which was regional broadcasting. Since being virtually entirely nationalised, it would seem the BBC are more renownded for thier regional output.

And with this, comes the recent obsession of ‘celebrity’ programmes, often with celebs who you’ve never heard of, such as, “the background extra from Eastenders”. With the near axing of ITV’s latest attempt at reviving these celebs, Celebrity Wrestling, and the lower than expected figures from Celebrity Love Island, can’t the channels realise that most of the public are becoming tiresome of such programmes?

Next week sees the start of the sixth Big Brother, no doubt hordes of people will moan about Channel 4 having it on again, as it seems its one of those love / hate programmes. Knowing me though I’ll probably watch it a bit, and in the end just keep on lol, especially as Channel 4 are bringing E4 to Freeview from the 27th.

You also see the major terrestrial networks advertising thier digital channels, trying to get everyone informed and over to digital TV before the switch off in a few years time, but come on, are the TV companies really funding thier digital channels enough?

In a few years, everyone will recieve at least all the channels avaliable on Freeview now, but alot of the channels seem stale compared to the other main channels. They come accross that they’ve been pre-programmed on a computer months in advance, only for it to roll out the programmes on that day.

We all have the standard 4 channels on terrestrial TV, and if you’re lucky enough… 5. Alot of people nowadays have Sky or Cable, but for those who dont, the reality is that within the next five years they will have to upgrade to either that, or Freeview. Now, even though Freeview is being seen as a big step for digital television, providing the basic channels at no cost (other than the purchase of the digi box in the first place).

But is it really a good thing? Yea, you get alot of more channels, for free, but it would seem at the moment, that they just want to make a quick buck and dont really dont care about quality, rather than quantity. With better compression rates, they are cramming new stations in left right and center to get more money, ever while the picture quality falls to allow for the additional stations. for example, you can visabily see the difference between the picture quality on BBC1 than on a digital channel on freeview like ABC1, especially when actions on the screen is fast paced, like sports coverage.

The future of television is ultimately High Definiton (HD) and Video On Demand (VOD), but they’re two technologies which if you speak to people, most will know nothing about. Maybe thats because of the pressure to advertise and get people aware of DTT before the switch off of analogue… Well, HD, something being heralded as the biggest thign to hit TV’s since colour, sounds promising, but without seeing it for myself, its hard to imagine how high a quality it will be, even though its already in the states.

I kinda like the sound of VOD aswell. Being able to choose what programme you wish to watch at any one time sounds like a very attractive feature, but again, its another thing which I’ll have to wait to see. It has potential, and no doubt the TV stations will try to use it, but Im slighty skeptical as to how useful it really will be come the end…

I also applied for the BBC iMP trial today, to test the technology behind downloading BBC TV programmes from thier site after 7 days of broadcasting from September, and which will be rolled out publically in 2006. Hopefully I become accepted, as it is something I would be really interested in, and it would be great to be a part in something like that…

After just downloading the iMP, you can see some screenshots of the BBC iMP in my gallery; here… even though only two sections are working at the moment…