Tag Archives: satellite

Freeview HD Coverage Checker

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As the UK slowly moves towards turning off the analogue terrestrial TV signal and switching to digital transmissions, it’s been overtaken by consumer demand for high definition (HD) broadcasting. The satellite and cable providers, namely Sky and Virgin Media, have been quick to offer HD on their subscription services, but the terrestrial digital broadcast system, Freeview, has been somewhat slower to offer HD. Some regions of the UK, e.g. Northern Ireland, will not have HD terrestrial broadcasts until 2012. Consequently, there’s been a great deal of uncertainty and misinformation.

So it’s fortunate that ConsumerChoices has added Freeview HD coverage to its HD Coverage Checker. By putting in your postcode and your house number, you’ll be presented with all the HD options available to you, including satellite, cable and terrestrial. In addition, for Freeview (terrestrial), the website will tell you which transmitter to use, how far away it is and the likely signal strength. If Freeview HD is not yet available in the area, it will give the expected date for it to be turned on.

With Freeview decoders now available in a range of products including set-top boxes and HD TVs, there’s often a small price premium to pay for the HD decoder over the standard definition. By using the HD Coverage Checker, you can make informed decision whether to go HD and pay more, or stick with the standard definition decoder.

The Simple Functionality that DirecTV Still Lacks

DirecTV, DVR, , , , , ,

directv logoA few days ago I had a DirecTV HR23 box go belly-up.  I awoke one morning to the smell of melted plastic.  I didn’t open the box, so I don’t know what went wrong, but it was obviously something bad.  Despite having no LED lights on the front panel there was still power – although it wouldn’t even try to boot up.  But, as long as the power cord was plugged in, the smell and a chirping sound (which probably was from the hard drive) continued.

DirecTV has always had excellent customer service, at least in my experiences.  This was no exception – they were ready to send me a new HR23 via priority shipping.  The box arrived in two days, along with a paid label to send back the old DVR.

Setup is simple – just plug in the old connections that are already in place.  Of course, you need to call DirecTV to activale the box, but that isn’t a big deal either.  It’s after that step that you see where DirecTV, and every other DVR (as far as I know), are lacking.

What do these cable and satellite companies need to add?  Backing up all of your recorded shows would be nice, but we have seen how difficult a netwrked DVR has been for Cablevision.  What I noticed when re-setting-up my HR23 was a glaring lack for backup of personal settings.  I had to, once again, add all of my season passes, set my video preferences, re-enable my network settings, etc.

Is it too much to ask that all of these personal settings be backed up by the provider?  Or at east that they provide a path for backing them up locally to a networked PC?  After all, the HR23 has ethernet and shows up on our home network.  It seems like a simple update to add backup of personal settings.  More importnantly to the providers, it doesn’t seem like anything that would cause them to end up in court.

This seems like a minor addition to the software package of any TV provider.  Still, it doestn’t seem to be mentioned by anyone as an update that is on the roadmap.  I know that I would seriously consider moving to one that decides to add it.

 

Shredding The Cord

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Ah, my once-beloved Dish Network account – the thing I once thought I could never do without; the budget monster that consumed $100 per month, month after month, year after year. I agonized for months over the idea of simply killing it before finally pulling the plug.

It’s been the better part of a year since I put the budget-busting beast to rest and cancelled the account. Dish Network itself seemed to want to throw up as many roadblocks as possible to get me to change my mind. They wanted the LNB module off of my roof, in addition to the two receivers. I had 30 days to send the units back in the packing boxes they sent or they would make me pay full price for them.

I was able to talk the guy out of forcing me to climb up on my roof to retrieve the LNB, and I was able to get the two receivers sent back to them within the 30 days of cancellation. However, somehow they had in their billing system I had three receivers, not two. They sent return packaging for three units. I spent time on the phone with them to make sure this discrepancy was resolved, and they assured me it was.

Ooops, not so fast! A month or two later I got a letter from them stating I still owed them for a receiver and they intended to hit my bank account for the amount. A phone call to them resolved the issue and I haven’t heard a peep from them since.

How has life been without all of those channels? $ome part of me hate$ to admit it, but I haven’t missed it at all. I’ve got an Intel Mac Mini set up as a DVR for local over-the-air HD broadcasts, as well as a Netflix account and several other Internet-connected set top box viewing solutions.

Observations

A very large percentage of TV programming is marketing presented as content. Much of what passes for entertainment depicts multitudes of dysfunctional drama queens assaulting and insulting the people around them. The more dysfunctional they are, the more likely it is the marketing messages will seep into the mesmerized minds of the audience. Even if one isn’t watching commercials, product placement and even behavior placement abounds. Viewers are being programmed to buy certain products, as well as behave in certain ways.

Think you can’t do without cable or satellite TV? Think again. I was paying $1,200 dollars a year for Dish Network. Multiply that by just 5 years and that’s a whopping $6,000 dollars for the privilege of being shaped and influenced by marketing messages so I would spend even more money.

Let’s go one step further. For many people TV is an addiction. These people are crack dealers in disguise. How else could it be that they can continue to raise their prices and people continue to pay ever more?

Let’s be honest. The vast majority of cable TV programming is less than worthless. Could that $6,000 dollars been better spent on higher-quality programming? Of course it could.

Unplugging Cable/Satellite – Not Quite Yet

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I know many of us keep discussing unplugging cable/satellite and going with set-top boxes and Internet programming instead.  An article on Mashable by Christina Warren explains pretty well why most video media consumers won’t be switching from cable and satellite anytime soon.

The fact is, moving from passive pay television, where you can easily channel-surf your way through the lineup (or use the guide with the touch of a button), to a more active style of not only finding content, but viewing content, is just not going to happen for most people.  While the Boxee, Roku, AppleTV, and other devices enter the market, the ease of use hasn’t caught up.  Regular television provides an easy-to-access method for figuring out what you want to watch, and the rise of the DVR means you can also record what you don’t have time to watch at that moment.  There is very little physical or mental encumbrance in using passive television to fulfill a need for entertainment.

Ms. Warren goes on to point out that if set-top boxes are going to be a replacement for cable and satellite, then they need to actually provide what people are not only used to, but what they want.  No one wants to spend ten minutes picking through a menu to find what they want to watch.  They want to turn it on, flip through a few channels, and be ready to watch.  Most users of DVR’s are doing the same thing, albeit with recorded shows:  bring up the guide, pick what you recorded, push play.  There is instant playback, instant access.

The other piece of the puzzle is live television.  Live news, live sports events, breaking weather, all of these things are not being accommodated in the set-top box space.  They can’t be, by definition.  I just lived through three days of gloom and doom regarding a Midwest blizzard, and believe me, that live connection to information was critical in determining if we were going to make it to work, doctor’s appointments, etc., and also helped us decide if we needed to take extra emergency precautions to keep our homes and families safe.  I could have never gotten that information from my AppleTV.

When solutions can be found to these issues, and set-top boxes can act more like passive television viewing, we might just see more adoption in the market.  But as it stands, I don’t see anyone giving up cable/satellite for set-top boxes anytime soon.

Dish Offering HD Satellite TV on the Road

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Jeffrey chats with Marcel at the Dish Network about HD satellite TV for RVs and tailgate parties. With thousands of channels on offer, even in the wilderness you can still get your TV fix.  The new pay-as-you-go subscriptions also mean you only have to pay while you are travelling and not sign up to long-term contracts.

And with the latest Winegard aeriels, it’s even possible to watch HD while the vehicle is in motion. Drivers, keep your eyes on the road, please!

Interview by Jeffrey Powers of The Geekazine Podcast.

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The Best; Then There’s The Rest

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One of the classic methods of marketing centers around the idea of bundling; i.e. getting people to pay for lower-quality merchandise by pushing sheer quantity over quality. This strategy isn’t always successful, but when it works it can work brilliantly.

When I was a teenager growing up in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, music was sold via vinyl records. The “hit” songs were played on the radio, thus creating artist familiarity and product demand. Radio stations of the day would sometimes play the “B” side of the record but most often they only played the “hits.” In other words, they weren’t playing the “misses” on the radio.

In a stroke of marketing genius, however, someone somewhere got the idea to bundle the musical misses and missteps on the “B” side of the vinyl records. When 33-RPM records came along, this trend was amplified because there was more room than ever. Make consumers think they were buying not only the artist’s latest hits, but throw that filler material in there too. Sometimes with certain artists the filler material could be brilliant too. However, most of the time it was just filler material.

This strategy mostly worked until digital recording and playback techniques, combined with the Internet, caused massive changes in the way people manufactured, discovered, marketed, and purchased music. For a variety of reasons, today people tend to only want to buy what they consider to be the very best “hits” from services such as iTunes, and there’s little to no market for the “filler” misses.

The same marketing concept has been used via bundling to get people to pay for “filler” cable TV channels. Want a “good” channel such as Discovery, TLC, or History? Sorry sir, that sandwich only comes with pickles, mustard and horse radish – take it or leave it.

What consumers often fail to realize is that substantial portions of their cable TV and/or satellite bills are paid directly to bundled channel providers that they probably never watch. Bundled mediocrity gets rewarded.

Why are you mindlessly paying good money for bundled channels you probably don’t know the names of? Stop rewarding bundled mediocrity. Turn off your cable or satellite subscription. I promise you – your heart won’t suddenly stop beating. The world won’t suddenly come to an end.

Astra Satellite 3B

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Ariane Rocket on LaunchpadThis is Real Art was commissioned in 2009 by the satellite operator SES- Astra to document the build of a new bird, the Astra 3B, at their factory in France and its subsequent launch.  Collaborating with photographer Simon Norfolk, they’ve produced a stunning series of photographs, a brochure and seven documentaries that show the commerical side of space.

If you want to go on the same journey as they did in producing the material, the best way is to follow their blog articles to the finished products.

Rocket Science (initial announcement)
Factory Visit
More Factory Visit (best photos are here)
Astra Documentary Films
Astra Brochure
Documentary Films  

Those of us in the UK of a certain age will no doubt recognise the film narrator Johnny Ball, who presented the science television programmes on the BBC when we were younger.

Astra Satellite Dishes

Satellite Testing

Spacesuits

Photos copyright SES Astra, This Is Real Art & Simon Norfolk.