FrequencyCast UK – Show #34

This show’s news section covered the following stories:.

• Digital Switchover update: The Selkirk transmitter in the Scottish Border region has now turned off its analogue service with no major incidents. Next transmitters scheduled for switchover in the Border TV region are Caldbeck and Douglas.

• ITV on BT: BT Vision already offers “on demand” TV shows from the BBC, Channel 4 and Five. Now, ITV will be joining that line-up. You can watch ITV content from the last 8 days, as well as a back-catalogue of ITV shows, either as part of a package, or pay-to-view.

• Fetch TV: Next, news of a new IPTV service. Fetch TV has just launched, combining a Freeview box, PVR and a TV-over-Internet service. The Fetch TV Smartbox costs £150 and is subscription-free. Made by NetGem, the Smartbox holds 60 hours of TV and claims to offer hundreds of films and TV shows for download over broadband. We’ve not tried it yet, but we’ll be keeping an eye on this one. Fetch TV information
  
  
  Fetch TV Smartbox
• Phone for a fiver: This has to be the lowest-priced phone out there. You can now pick up a phone for under £5 on Pay As You Go.
  Get the Samsung B130 with colour screen and Internet access on Orange or T-Mobile for under a fiver at Carphone Warehouse.

• iPhone update: iPhone users note that v2.2 of the firmware’s was recently released – finally with support for downloading podcasts over 3G or wi-fi. An update has also recently been made to iTunes.
  If you have an iPhone – sign up to FrequencyCast!

• Facebook phone: Sure, you could get yourself an expensive iPhone to stay “social” on the move… or you could save a lot of pennies and get the INQ1. Due out very soon, this phone is being billed as The Facebook Phone as it integrates to your phone’s address book and lets you follow your mates using Facebook, Windows Messenger, Skype and Last.FM. The INQ1 can also be used as a laptop modem. We’ll be adding an INQ Review shortly.
  Due out in December 2008 for an expected £80 PAYG or from £15 a month contract – from www.three.co.uk.

• Channel news: After renaming many of their digital channels to names such as Dave, Blighty and Eden, now UKTV History is to change name… to Yesterday. Also, we’ve just seen rival “The History Channel” rebrand to “History”. Five is finally available on Freesat, on channel 105. On Freeview, note that radio station Mojo was removed on 30th November 2008. Disney’s Cinemagic movie channel is set to go HD from December on Sky.

• SWAP watch: An update on Show 33’s review, this mobile phone watch is now on sale in the UK! It’s available at I
  want one of those . For more on this mobile phone watch with a built-in camera, Bluetooth and media player, see our SWAP Watch page.

• And finally: Here at FrequencyCast, we’d like to send special birthday wishes to… the Red Button. It’s been 10 years since the BBC launched its first pilot of the Red Button in the UK. The Interactive service for BBC TV has an audience of around 11 million people, and over the past 10 years, BBC’s Red Button service has won more than 15 awards including four BAFTAs. The button’s celebrating with some extra Eastenders, Bob the Builder and Postman Pat content, but no jelly or icecream.

We last covered hard-disk recorders back in Show 6, so we thought it was about time to see what’s new with PVRs.

We have a page dedicated to the various PVRs which you’ll find here: PVRs explained.

In the show, we mentioned a few specific models. Here are our top three:

• Sky+: Sky customers can set their Sky+ boxes to record TV using the seven day Electronic Programme Guide, can watch one satellite channel while recording another
  satellite channel, and the box supports Live Pause and Live Review.
  Available for £99 when ordered at www.sky.com

• Humax FOXSAT-HDR: The first Freesat High Definition recorder. Store over 200 hours of subscription-free TV on the 320Gig drive. Twin tuner, 8 day EPG. Available now from Laskys

• BT Vision: This supports Freeview as well as content downloaded from a BT broadband Internet connection. The BT Vision V-Box supports HDTV, holds 80 hours of TV, and makes use of a BT Broadband connection to download TV shows and movies for on-demand viewing on your telly.
  The BT Vision set-top box is available free to BT Total Broadband customers.
  More on our BT Vision page, or at get.btvision.bt.com
  

We’re still not 100% sure how this managed to get into our studio, but Carl and Pete had fun with this … thing.

Elmo Live is apparently a state-of-the-art toddlers toy that sings, dances, tell jokes and stories, play games and move about in a jaw-droppingly realistic manner.

Seems it’s a struggle getting hold of these at the moment. If you’re struggling to track down one of these for your little one, we’ve found them in stock at the time of recording at:

• Play.com
• Firebox.com

In the show, we took a look at, or rather a listen to, the top-notch Denon AH-NC732 noise-cancelling headphones.

These are exceptionally well-made set of headphones offering superior noise cancelling. The battery is a single AAA that slots into one of the ears, so no need for a noise-cancelling dongle of any kind. Great sounding, and with comfy earpads, these are a nice set of closed-ear cancellers. Comes with a tough carrycase, a choice of two lead lengths and a couple of adapters.

The Denon AH-NC732 headphones are available in Black or Silver. Here is a list of online suppliers:

• £249 from AdvancedMP3players
• £248.95 from PurelyGadgets.co.uk

Denon AH-NC732 earpads

• Freeview PVR and HD: Jack Smith asks: “I’ve been hearing there will be HD channels coming to Freeview. I take it I will get the HD at switchover in my area in 2011 if I buy an Freeview HD box. Should I not buy a Freeview PVR just yet and wait for an HD one?

  HD should be coming to Freeview in some parts of the UK by the end of 2009, with four channels coming online by 2012. You’ll need a Freeview HD receiver to get these. Expect Freeview HD PVRs to be in the £250+ price bracket when they finally hit the market. Up to you if you want to wait three years before getting a PVR. You could consider a Freesat HD PVR, which is available now.

• Freeview HD now? Alderman from the FrequencyCast Forum asks: “Assuming HD is broadcast on Freeview and we have a HD ready TV and it has already a integrated ‘Freeview’ tuner, does that mean we can get Freeview HD, or is that just too simplistic?

  If you have an existing TV with a Freeview receiver, that receiver won’t be capable of getting Freeview HD, as this uses the DVB-T2 format. You’ll be able to plug a new Freeview HD set-top box into your TV though.

• Slingbox remote access: We had a podline call from Carolyn having problems getting external access to her Slingbox. Chances are, your home firewall is blocking incoming requests from Slingbox. You’ll need to play with your router’s Port Forwarding settings. We have some instructions on how to port forward for a Slingbox on a BT router on our BT Home Hub FAQ.
  
• Freeview – watch one, record another: Barbara asks: “I have a Freeview set-top box, but I cannot record one channel whilst watching another. What do I need to buy to give me this facility? It seems that there are often two programmes going out at the same time and I want to watch both.”

  Two choices. One – consider getting a PVR, as discussed earlier in the show – second, you could consider getting a second Freeview box to connect to your existing recorder. Something small like the TVonics MFR-200 (that doesn’t require a SCART) may do the job.

• PVRs and SATA: Jeff Craig is looking to buy a decent Freeview+ PVR, either a Humax 9300 or perhaps a Topfield 5810. He asks “Am I the only person who can foresee these machines being binned alongside the recently dead Daewoos? They all currently use IDE interface hard drives which are already getting thin on the ground to replace. Why can’t they get with the times and use easy to source SATA bits?

  Good question. SATA and IDE are two interfaces that connect to a hard drive. SATA’s faster, but a heck of a lot more equipment out there is IDE-compatible. Anyone know of a SATA PVR?

• Home Hub phone echo bug: Next up Thanks to Geoffrey Miller for a Home Hub snippet. He’s just bought his daughter a Hub Phone 2.1 for her Home Hub. He says: “it’s a nice piece of kit, but, in use the quality of the phone call has proved to be poor, with the user’s voice echoing in the earpiece. He phoned the BT Hub Helpline on 0800 111 4567 , and was told that this is a problem which BT now recognise as a generic fault with the Hub Phone 2.1 and their engineers are working on a fix, which should be issued as a firmware upgrade soon.”.

Any questions for Carl & Pete? Got a comment on the world of TV and Technology?
Call 020 8133 4567 and leave a message and be heard on the show.

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