Posts by cheekyangus

    I'm not a super fan of the user interface, the new one is better, but still annoys. Also their app crashes on my Roku occasionally, and far too regularly the audio sync goes off, though less than it used to thankfully.

    The shows are of a consistently high quality, and tent to be a little more unusual than other content providers, which I appreciate.

    I also love the Foundation books, but I disagree. (I've only watched Season 1 at this point though and about to start S2.) The first book always struck me as unfilmable, so they needed to be creative in the approach. Some of the look was unexpected, and I don't like that strange monument, I know what it's meant to be, but that's not how it was in the book at all and is weirdness for weird sake. Overall they need to hammer home the point more about societies needing to retain knowledge and then crumbling because they built themselves so many layers high, and forgot how the lowest layers worked and they decayed, stopped working and civilisation crumbled as a result. The problem with making a film or TV show on the books is the scale of the ideas covered and how you convey it. Book 1 is particularly difficult, not helped by the huge span of time it covers.

    Yeah, as Steve says, it's the transition to an online only world.

    Clearly, Freesat is in the crosshairs and will be the first to face the chop, then Freeview at some point later. Why make new deals with broadcasters for the platform, when it's going to be shut down soon? So, this is the start of the death of Freesat and other channels will follow as existing deals expire and are not renewed.

    I do not know of anyone who has Freesat, so I am surprised this service has been going on for so long, but I suppose if you were in the Highlands and Islands and a long way away from a tv transmitter, then perhaps Freesat may have been the only free tv option for those people. But most of these areas will get upgraded to fibre optic cable and will be able to stream like the rest of us.

    Well you do, me, unless you mean In Real Life ^^. I have FreeSat in two rooms and my relatives have it as the only source for their only TV. And a friend has it too for their main set and young family. I have long been connected to high speed internet but I don't stream live channels, I don't want to.

    Streaming live channels via the internet is, the method most do it by, totally inefficient use of resources. Current broadcasts send one signal and it's available to however many devices you can fit in the reception range, internet streaming, the way that most of them are doing it, is providing an individual stream to each and every device. It's daft for mainstream channels.

    Freely should have been 5G Broadcast with some IP, Digital Terrestrial & Satellite mix. 5G Broadcast is both modern and efficient, and the way our neighbouring countries are going, so costs can be shared in technology scale/availability.

    I don't think that Freesat will be closing anytime soon. Its primary purpose is to provide TV for those without a useable Fteeview signal.

    Tiny Pop is due to go online only soon and I suspect that removing these channels from Freesat is a test to see if the 20% of people that use it will happily move online for the remaining channels before taking the channels off Sky.


    Eventually Freely will take channels from Freeview, satellite or the internet and the viewer won't know or care how the content is delivered. At this point I suspect that broadcasters will gradually stop broadcasting on satellite & DTT to cut costs.

    If they connect their new Smart TV to the internet the moment they unpack it and set it up, maybe. Not everyone is like that though.

    I have a Smart TV. I've never connected it to the internet. No intention of ever doing so. I would only have done so if there was an issue and I know it would be resolved by a firmware update,and then I'd download it and disconnect the TV afterwords. Or I'd download it to a USB stick and never connect it directly to the internet.

    When I buy any further new TVs I won't be connecting them to the internet either.

    Aside from TV software/apps going out of date quickly and then being unsupported, some people don't want all their devices, TV or otherwise, connected to a network. My internet is solely for services using it when they need it, I don't want absolutely everything using it, even though I have a high speed connection. The best way to get live TV is broadcast, I'll use it until it doesn't exist any more, regardless of whether I have sufficient internet capability, which I do.

    Many people use internet services of various sorts without realising what it takes to deliver any of it. Take Artificial Intelligence. It's been calculated what energy these systems use just for them learning, and it's a huge amount. Simple, average requests have been worked out and the energy used for those is ridiculous. Someone just typing in a request for fun to see what it churns out, and lots of people are wasting hours doing it at the moment from what I gather, uses lots, and for nothing at all useful to the world. The server farms for all these streaming services aren't any better. All the worries about getting us to use less energy and focusing on the likes of cars, and we'll end up not reducing our usage at all because the world's population are addicted to nonsense on the internet and are using it for stuff they don't have to.

    Yes, I'm rambling off on one. ^^

    I use On-Demand services for film and TV shows, don't get me wrong, but I'm not going to stream Live content via an inefficient source. I still watch a significant amount of live TV, internet delivery, even with my plenty-fast-enough connection, isn't the best way to get it.

    Off I go to do some more typing. Hopefully I'm now in the zone. Life eh? :D

    They're wasting time and more importantly, money, on minutiae, while the big American streamers are spending billions on drama, sports etc.

    Who will come out on top? It's obviously won't be the ones pissing around with irrelevant rebrands.

    I question this rebrand too, it's twee and a tad naff to say the least and does seem to be P'ing about at this stage, but when you're trying to make it obvious which app all your services use a unified brand helps, even a daft one. And as on-demand is important I can understand it. Having said that UKTV Play isn't that bad a name and I don't think the current setup was failing for them.

    But how do they look in comparison to the US streamers? In that sense, they are definitely minnows.

    Well yeah everyone is compared to them, but the BBC isn't small and isn't in its death throes.

    And some genres/subjects are never going to be catered for at all by the big services, small services will continue to be required.

    Much like the computer games industry I suspect the medium size companies/services will be the ones that vastly reduce, but not disappear.

    Bauer UK is closing 10 radio stations on Digital TV. Sky, Freesat and Virgin Media. Those on Digital Terrestrial (Freeview) will remain.

    Media Boy mentioned this on Cable Forum re: VM but didn't mention it was Satellite too.

    Can't say I'm surprised, I suspect people who use Freeview are the type of demographic that are liable to use it for Radio, whereas those with Cable/Satellite are predominantly in different demographics, certainly proportionately.

    I use my Freesat & VM boxes for Radio, but not for Bauer stations so it won't affect me. I still like having the option though, but I understand the decision. And they seem in the mood to close things what with their MW closures in the news recently.

    Bauer to remove all radio stations from satellite and cable TV platforms
    Radio stations owned by Bauer will be removed from Sky, Virgin and Freesat in December, RadioToday can reveal.Messages are starting to appear on 10 radio…
    radiotoday.co.uk

    Definately, Horizon. At a time when streamers are worried about making a profit, this will add to their income. If anything, a smattering of Disney programmes will encourage people towards subscribing to Disney+, I'd have thought.

    Until Disney have gift cards it's a No from me.

    The HD version has been available for ages and Virgin still only provided the SD feed. I wasn't happy that it went HD on Freesat, but was still SD only on a service that I pay for.

    It could indeed have been a contractual thing, but the average customer won't know or care about such things. They just want a channel that they particularly want to watch to have a good picture and will move to another platform if the one they have doesn't provide one.

    Freesat availability in HD was only very recent. A matter of weeks doesn't bother me. Previous HD availability on Satellite was encrypted as far as I know. CNBC probably didn't want to pay for VM's much smaller TV userbase until they absolutely felt they had to.

    I've never been against choice, but when you have a judge judy channel, or whatever it's called, I think it's stretching things very thinly.

    The Judge Judy channel is called CBS Reality, it existed before FAST.

    ------

    I think the merged My5 Pluto will have to have C5 branding somewhere to ensure it gets Public Service prominence at top of devices. It may not be a straightforward entitlement, there may be an identity element to the automatic allocation rules.

    Christ. VM need to up their game.

    That was one of the main reasons I went to Sky stream, as the SD quality of the channel on VM was so poor. Glad VM will now have this option.

    That could be unfair. There may have been a contract they were waiting to expire.

    And it wasn't that long since it went HD only on satellite, they aren't far behind compared to previous syrup speed updating for other channels.

    Pluto has a bloomin' awful interface if you want an individual episode rather than a FAST channel...and even then it's not great. Last I watched it proper was either Bold & The Beautiful FAST channel or the Star Trek Discovery premieres as they didn't have a UK broadcaster. It's been a while now.

    My5 at least has a logical interface.

    I fear the worst with the merging.

    What interests you on there?

    I'll be resuming Foundation (my main reason for returning), The Morning Show, Central Park and See. I have no idea if Schmigadoon is back.

    I will probably start For All Mankind.

    Be interesting to see if others do the same as you over the next few years.

    Apple are not making the same volume of shows that Netflix makes, but what they do make, they seem to spend a lot of money on. An awful lot.

    And I'll be forever grateful, I never thought Foundation would get made.

    AppleTV+ has arrived on 360 Virgin boxes today. I believe it is also available on Virgin Stream.

    Good. No use to me as not V6, and doesn't matter as I use on Roku, but glad it's been added.

    Yay! I know someone who will be super pleased as this will greatly benefit the sports highlights on the weekends e.g. golf. I occasionally watch the channel for sport myself.

    The off EPG simulcasts of Sky Mix SD are still broadcasting in case anyone with an SD only box wants to watch it.

    I think that these must be feeds for Virgin Media Ireland as they only have it in SD.

    VM tend to downscale HD if they need a SD feed.

    You remember Love Nature? That didn't have an SD version (it may not even havenhad an HD version, they may have reformatted the UHD, I can't fully remember now).

    https://www.cordbusters.co.uk/sony-unveils-a…vice-in-the-uk/

    After removing its crackle streaming service from the UK some years ago, it looks like Sony has had second thoughts about having its own streaming service and is back with a new one, possibly including access to Sony films which are still in cinemas.

    As the article says, the market is saturated and Sony has stated up until now that they were happy for their content to appear on other streamers like Netflix, but this is clearly an about-turn.

    Will you subscribe to the new service?

    Just tagging this onto this thread as there are Apps involved on TVs and Gaming Consoles.