Regional Victoria switching off Analog TV, this Thursday.
Posted Tuesday, May 3, 2011 at 7:58 pm by Jason Cartwright
In less than 2 days, Thursday 5th May, large parts of Victoria will transition to digital TV. This means the old analog TV signal in regional Victoria will be turned off forever. Cue the dancing ants. If your still holding onto that big tube TV, its time to convert it to a fish tank and upgrade to something made this century. There is another option available for those on a tight budget, that is to buy a digital set top box.
A digital set top box comes in two varieties, standard or high definition, so which one should you choose ? What you need to understand is there are two things at play, the first is the quality of the picture your TV can display, the second is the quality of the broadcast.
A lot of free-to-air TV channels are still SD and your old TV is only capable of displaying SD, so you’d think an SD set top box would be your best option right ? Wrong. While buying a HD set top box won’t score you a better picture, the extra expense may be warranted if you want to see the new HD-only channels like OneHD, GEM, 7mate, SBSHD and ABCNews24.
Below is a map indicating the areas that will be turned off Thursday morning. Other parts of the country will be switched off progressively with the 700Mhz spectrum completely free by the end of 2013. This valuable spectrum that travels long distances and penetrates walls will be sold off and used for 4th generation mobile networks, also known as 4G.
If you, or your parents need help, you can visit the website – http://digitalready.gov.au or call 1800 2010 13.
You could be on Beauty and the Geek Australia
Posted Saturday, April 30, 2011 at 12:52 pm by Jason Cartwright
Beauty and the Geek Australia is now putting the call out contestants on the next season of the show. If you’re an "academically gifted yet socially awkward geek", Beauty and the Geek may be your one and only chance to find true love! Last time there was 100k on the line as well.
The producers of the show are looking for 18-30 year-old male geeks, so if you think you fit the bill, head on over to the official Beauty and the Geek casting website. www.beautyandthegeek.com.au
To enter you’ll need to complete a form that should take 10-15 minutes to complete, a recent photo, and while a video entry isn’t necessary it may help your application. Basically if your serious about getting on the show, do a damn video, just keep it less than 3 minutes.
While I wouldn’t enter the competition personally, there may very well be some geeks out there in the audience who A. want to meet girls or B. get publicity. I’ve recently had the chance to meet 2 of the previous contestants, both of which a really smart guys who enjoyed the experience.
Image credit: Yahoo7
Samsung SMART TV’s, claims world-first HDTV app store
Posted Wednesday, April 6, 2011 at 1:52 pm by Jason Cartwright
Today Samsung announced a brand new line-up of HDTV’s in Australia. Branded as SMART TV’s, this generation come equipped with what Samsung say is the worlds-first HDTV app store. Obviously it’s completely unlike an electronics manufacturer to get a little creative with the truth to sell products, but the reality is widgets (also known as apps), have been available on TVs for a couple of years now. The most successful being Yahoo’s widget platform which made its way to TV’s by Samsung, Visio, Sony and a number of others.
In November last year, Yahoo announced that developers could charge between $0.99 and $99.00 for a widget or application. So with that small detail aside lets take a look at what on offer with the latest generation of Sammys.
Samsung’s SMART TV will feature a connected TV experience with links to social media services like Facebook, Twitter and Skype that can be used concurrently next to your favourite show. Some of the applications to be released ‘soon’ include BigPond AFL Game Analyser, BigPond Movies, NineMSN and ABC iVew.
Also built right in is a Web Browser which runs a full version of flash (version not detailed). Along with Skype support, there’s also Google Talk support to really get those discussions cranking with friends and family (assuming they also have a Samsung SMART TV).
There’s also built-in WiFi with DLNA support, so streaming content from your home network to the big screen is a cinch. The Smart Hub also allows users to get personalised movie recommendations based on the content you watch.. awesome.
Taking a leaf from Boxee’s remote control, Samsung’s SMART TV comes with a traditional remote on one side, but flip it over and you’ll have a full QWERTY keyboard to input text.
While Samsung announced SMART TVs in January at CES2011, today’s announcement confirms Australian availability. Its actually great to see the headline for a TV release not be 3D related, instead being a line-item feature.
For more information about Samsung SMART TVs, visit http://samsung.com/au/tv.
WP7 finally gets a good Australian TV Guide app – QTV
Posted Saturday, April 2, 2011 at 11:24 am by Jason Cartwright
While Microsoft may have 11,500 apps, one of the stark differences WP7 and iOS is the ability to find apps for the common experiences we expect. Competition in this space is very limited, so its great to see TV buffs finally get a great TV Guide app for WP7 called QTV. After installing the app, setup is a breeze, simply select the ‘Package’ or location and the channels available in your area are pre-selected. Naturally you can customise this list to only show your favourites.
Launching the app loads the current list of shows across all channels, giving you a single list view of everything. A quick swipe up and you’ll see what’s coming up for the rest of the day. Each entry provides the name of the program, channel, time and duration, pretty much everything you need.
The app also features the ability to set Reminders for your favourite shows. Just find your show, either in the list or by searching, then press Get Reminder. These come in the form of a push Notification as your the show is about to begin so you don’t miss a thing. Also in QTV’s bag o’tricks is the ability to find shows (use the in-app search) via category, cast member or an A-Z list of program names.
Another use for the app is to find out every time your favourite show is on. To get to the showings screen, find your favourite show, then swipe to the left twice. The first time will show you which categories your show is in, Arts and Living, Family, Comedy etc, the second swipe will get you to the showings page.
Over all its a fantastic TV guide, certainly the best I’ve seen on WP7 and even better than a lot of iOS options. Unlike some other WP7 applications, this one performs really well with load and resume times and that’s pre-NoDo.
The app is available in the WP7 Marketplace now for free and supports both Free-To-Air and Pay TV.
More info @ http://www.quidsmobile.com/qtv/
Sorry North East VIC, I made you rescan your channels
Posted Wednesday, March 2, 2011 at 6:01 pm by Jason Cartwright
Since the start of February 2011, I’ve been unable to get the GO! channel and guide data for GEM had stopped updating. As TiVo is my set-top-box / PVR, I turned to TiVo support for assistance on the issue and emailed them on February 18th. Strangely not everyone in the area experienced the issue. Fast forward 2 weeks and finally a response from TiVo arrives in the inbox.
Hi Jason,
Apologies for the long delay, we have been investigating this issue since 4 February. Channel 9 has doubled up on triplets in your region and this has caused this cross-wiring and loss of EPG data. Channel 9 acknowledged the issue on 16 Feb and have promised to implement a fix tomorrow morning. The data should be available on the TiVo as of this Friday.
I am very sorry for the long delay in the fix, it was a struggle to get Channel 9 to even believe there was an issue in the first place. Thank you for your patience.For any future enquiries related to this issue please reply to this message leaving the reference number in the subject.
Regards,Hybrid TV Level 3 Support
WIN are trying to market this as an ‘upgrade’ but in reality the required re-scanning is just a fix for this issue. Affected channels include WIN, GO! and GEM.
You can check out WIN’s Rescanning guide PDF for details of how to perform the ‘upgrade’ for your TV/STB.
More @ TV Tonight
TiVo EPG update. Up to the minute guide data (if supported)
Posted Thursday, February 24, 2011 at 3:07 pm by Jason Cartwright
It’s finally here ! An update to TiVo’s electronic program guide (EPG) arrives today ! This means that changes will be reflected ‘up-to-the-minute’ rather than half hour increments previously. If your TiVo has ever recorded the wrong program, this was likely the reason why. Stations frequently re-schedule or cancel programs at the last minute and with TiVo basing its recordings on guide data this creates a frustrating issue for users.
The following networks: Seven, Nine, Ten & ABC will now all display scheduled program start and finish times that are “up-to-the-minute”.
