Archive for October, 2009
Saturday, October 31st, 2009
Television losing older audience to radio
It seems that the older generations are retroactively moving from the latest technology to a more classic form of entertainment, as statistics show in increase in the number of older people who are tuning into radio stations rather than television channels.
In particular, Radio 4 has witnessed a sharp growth, reaching record listener numbers of 10.22 million, which is up from 9.45 million last year. It is thought the radio station, which has an average audience age of 55, has seen the boost in popularity due to ‘ageist’ television entertainment. Critics have claimed that there is little on the television to cater towards older people, leading to the ultimatum of them seeking alternative sources of entertainment.
Tuesday, October 27th, 2009
Xbox 360 Sky Player goes live and malfunctions instantly
Those of you with an Xbox 360 games console may have heard about the upcoming Sky Player update that was due to launch today. Well, the good news is it did indeed actually go live earlier today. On the flipside, the service isn’t actually working.
There is rumoured to be a problem with Sky’s distibution servers and Xbox 360 users are facing an error when they try to start the application.
The co-operation between Sky and Microsoft means people can pay for a Sky subscription and watch live tv, as well as a host of on demand content like films and television programmes. If you are a current Sky subscriber you will also have access to your current packages, but you need multiroom if you want to watch live TV.
Saturday, October 24th, 2009
Late night TV viewing may cause depression
A study into the affect of artificial light on emotions ahs discovered that replacing natural light with other light sources results in depression-like symptoms.
Researches discovered that mice who were exposed to unnatural light all day, rather than a normal day-night light cycle, were prone to tiredness and an overall lack of energy. The study, carried out by Ohio State University, gave late night television as one example of where this occurs in human lifestyles:
“This is important for people who work night shifts, and for children and others who watch TV late into the night, disrupting their usual light-dark cycle,” said Laura Fonken, lead author at Ohio State University.
Thursday, October 22nd, 2009
California may ban large screen TVs
One of the big technological trends over the last decade has been revolving around televisions. People just keep wanting the biggest and the best, and when they get it, a new bigger and better one comes out to compete with it. The problem with these larger sets is that they are needing more and more electricity to keep them running, which is a point of concern that has been raised by Calofrnia’ energy commission.
Arnold Schwarzenegger has agreed to proposals put forward by the cenergy commission in California, to impose energy consumption limits on televisions 40 inches wide or more. The commission claims that 10 per cent of Californias domestic energy consumption is caused by the 35 million tvs in use in the state. This may lead to a similar restriction impose on televisions that is already in place on other home appliances, such as refrigerators.
Monday, October 19th, 2009
Young Britons always leave the television on
A study carried out by the Energy Saving Trust has concluded that British children are the biggest offenders when it comes to wasting energy.
The study surveyed over 3,000 children, from the UK, France, Germany and Spain, quizzing them about their awareness of climate change and what their own energy saving habits were. 40 per cent of those questioned admitted to bad energy saving habits such as leaving lights on and televisions on standby.
As part of Energy Saving Week (19-25 October), which starts today, the Energy Saving Trust has given 50 children video cameras to film their families own energy habits to get a better idea of how they can improve the situation.
Thursday, October 15th, 2009
England football match only watchable live online (Part 2)
Following on from my post about the England vs Ukraine internet-only game, we will now look at the second problem with this situation; the price.
It turns out that the internet isn’t always the cheapest place to get things, especially watch television, after all. The price was set at £4.99, not a bank-busting amount but still a pretty penny. Even this price had a catch though; you had to pay up front. If you waited until the day, you had to pay £9.99, so immediately doubling the price, all for not ‘pre-ordering’ a virtual ticket to the game.
The big fuss was caused when Setanta went bust and no one else wanted to buy the rights to the game, because England had already qualified for the World Cup by this point anyway. This resulted in Perform, who are a solely internet-based sports broadcaster, obtaining the rights.
Wednesday, October 14th, 2009
England football match only watchable live online (Part 1)
The recent football match between England and Ukraine was only watchable by those in the UK by the use of online streaming. There were two significant drawbacks to this show of technological strength. I’ll split them into two easy to follow posts for you:
First of all, the comfort debate. It’s all well and good being able to get a good quality video stream broadcast over the internet straight to our computers, but most of us have an office or laptop set up at a table, whioch just doesn’t offer quite the same experience as wtaching on our own televisions. Although I’m sure some people have got a PC connected to their television or at least the ability to stream to it, especially with so many media centre devices available now (including, but not limited to, the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 games consoles).
Monday, October 12th, 2009
Australian toddlers to get less TV
A set of new guidelines that are to be put forth by the Australian government are to advise childcare centres and parents that children under the age of two years should not be able to watch any television. Apparently the ban is recommended because television can hamper a child’s concentration abilities and language development.
In addition to an all-out ban for under-twos, the government is also recommending that children that are between two and five-years-old should watch a maximum of 1 hour of television per day. The guildelines are intended to prevent obesity spreading amongst children and are currently only in a draft format so are subject to change before being finalised.
Tuesday, October 6th, 2009
Philips brings the cinema to your home
We’ve all heard of home cinema set ups, if we have the money we get a whopping HD TV, combine it with some extremely high wattage of surround sound gear and sit back while our eyes and ears melt from the special FX explosions. Philips have decided that just having a 16:9 widescreen TV isn’t good enough anymore though, they want to bring in panoramic, cinema-esque, 21:9 super-widescreen TVs.
APhilips 21:9 Cinema LCD that has been shown already, has a screen that measures in at 56 inches and is full HD (1080p) and comes combined with Philips’ Ambilight Spectra technology, adding to the lighting of the cinema feel.
If you have a few grand to spare and you love watching films in all their glory, this might just be the television for you.
Monday, October 5th, 2009
The Samsung widget TV
Despite most TV manufacturers researching heavily into 3D TVs, Samsung is going down a different route. Taking ideas from the apps trend that seems to be gripping the technologic world at the moment (see iPhone and PSP minis), he Samsung ‘Widget’ television is adopting a similar approach.
Building on their LE40B650 TVs, Samsung are integrating a widget experience which they are dubbing Internet@TV. At the moment the widget list is limited to a whopping four items, including weather and news widgets (aren’t there channels for these things?). Apparently more are on their way, including a YouTube app, and they can all be downloaded straight to the TV itself, as long as you have an ethernet connection nearby, because there’s no WiFi on this modern piece of tech.