1.1 The three months to the end of December 2006 (Q4) saw over 1,000,000 net household conversions to digital television (DTV) in the UK, following on from 800,000 additions in the previous Q3. Growth was driven by another strong quarter for digital terrestrial television (DTT), with total sales of DTT equipment reaching 2.4 million.
1.2 The digital cable and satellite platforms also added over 300,000 households between them during the quarter. This means that 77.2% of households now receive digital television services on their primary set, up 3.9 percentage points from the previous quarter.
1.3 With a further 1.4% of households subscribing to analogue cable, the total number of homes receiving multi-channel television at the end of Q4 2006 stood at 78.6%.
What this means is that narrowcasting is no longer within the grasp of early adopters but slowly getting into the hands of the everyday public. As more people have more choice so their viewing habits and choices will be different.
At the same time television is getting a lot of competition from online resources, especially for programs that are aired in territory months earlier than in others.
There are many things I have done in the past but having a barbeque at five am whilst the birds are tweeting and the sun is rising is not within my normal realm of experiences. It was nice, felt more like the end of a festival night than anything else.
The party took place at a friend’s place along the Metropolitan line. We arrived at about 7 pm and that moment everything about the party was normal, all the usual features, barbeques, people, drinks and more. Not that many people ate much at the beginning of the night, preferring to socialise instead.
At the end of the night when most people were responsibly going to bed we decided to have a barbeque. It was a mission at first. We had to find out how to open the garden door. It had been locked therefore we could not go out through one door and had to get another one. After this, we had to struggle to find the fire lighting blocks. Finally, we lit the blocks and now it was time to wait for the fire to be warm enough.
By this point, the birds were tweeting more and more excitedly as the sun was rising. As the blue of the sky started to appear our fire was warm enough for the steaks. It took a little time to cook with improvised tools. The food was finally ready and those steaks were good. It doesn’t end there
A popular phrase was “there’s plenty of meat left in the fridge”, resulting in some turkey being fetched and cooked. The pieces were thicker so aluminium helped speed up the cooking process Once we had eaten this it was time for bed for my friends whilst I decided to go home on the tube.
There was just one problem, the tube station was closed and there was no indication of when it’d open. You can imagine my joy at the thought of waiting for them to open. It didn’t matter though, I walked back. It was actually a nice walk. No one in the streets except the occasional post worker. The air was nice, felt like a proper summer morning.
Finally, I was home, having no special need to go to sleep quite yet I stayed up for a little longer. By around 8 am I was asleep. It had been an interesting night.
Having the dissertation hanging over me is unpleasant. I often spend a few hours a day doing research which is divided between books and documentary films. Over time I organised all these ideas and I’m ready to start writing. I want to finish the first draft by Saturday. i.e. the day before april fool’s
On Saturday I went out to four parties. The first party was a nice mauritian buffet to celebrate a friend turning 25 and joining the generation old club. I was there for two or three hours before moving on.
The second party was a small affair although the participants were not university students therefore I left for the next venue.
It was the SU bar, busy on a Saturday night, something which is not that normal. It’s usually deserted but due to a person having their birthday there it was better.
The fourth party was the best part. Everyone from the bar got into 7-10 taxies and headed down to a house party. The house is in the middle of the suburbs, has two living rooms although one of these is half kitchen/half living room. Maybe it’d be called a dining room.
Many friends were there and there was a live dj to add to the ambiance. At the beginning there was no sound because they were lacking a cable or two to plug the speakers in. The issue was quickly resolved and sound began.
The party would involve the taking of 100 pictures, chatting to many people about many things. One of these people was glad to practice her french. Others shared drinks and such.
Saturday started around 7pm and ended 12hrs later with me walking a road I had walked many many times in the past. It was a really good night and I hope to have more like it.
It’s a nice screen, it’s a laptop replacement similar to the phone I’ve had for two or three months but the hard drive is much better.
He advertised all these features as new yet I’ve got most of those capabilities already so I’m laughing slightly. I was just two months ahead of that particular market.
I’m wondering about wifi access. How easy is it to connect to password-protected networks and how strong is the antenna?. Would it work only on open networks?
I like the screen but where’s the keyboard for fast texting? How easily will it scratch?
I know at least one person that’s going to be looking forward to the PVR with integrated wifi although I don’t find it interesting because the hard drive is too small at the moment. The fact you can stream from five computers at once is nice.
Recently Netflix added a Browse by Language option which means that you can browse for content by original language. Yesterday I saw that I can browse for content in French, Italian, Polish,, Korean, German and many more languages. I could list more but that’s dull. Instead I want to focus on the opportunities it opens up.
With YouTube, Apple Films and other platforms you can search for films but they are either in French, German or Italian in Switzerland and it’s hard to find content that is in its original language.
For English speaking YouTube creators they always say with “frogspawn VPN you can pretend you’re in country A to watch content from there” etc. This does appeal to me in rare situations. What appeals more is the freedom to search for French, Italian or Korean content. By watching a film made in French, Italian, Korean or any other language you are entering a different culture.
One of my favourite films, when I watched 90 films in the span of 9 months or so was that I saw films I would not otherwise see. Brotherhood, the Korean film is excellent. I also really enjoyed Hong Kong martial arts films.
It is for this reason that last night I watched the King’s Affection, episode 1.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4zM7jHdVFc
With Netflix and Amazon Prime it is was to get stuck watching US and UK content without thinking of watching content in other languages. Netflix has now made it possible to explore the world of film and television, on an international, cross-cultural scale. You have thirty two languages to choose from. Now you see why I didn’t list them all earlier.
Last night Netflix removed Young Sheldon from Netflix Switzerland so I was angry. I cancelled my subscription until I noticed the browse by language feature, and then Netflix became as rich and diverse as a film festival. By selecting Russian, Romanian, Telugu or another language you travel through space and time to other cultures, other values, and different ways of seeing the world.
I had skimmed over Netflix France and noticed that they had a lot of extreme sports content.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_86DhJsW2w
And Finally
Film and Television is a great way to discover new languages, new cultures, and new ways of seeing the world. By making Netflix more international they are helping to bring more people into contact with more cultures. This is good.
We had to listen to three hours of this subject today and discuss it. It’s amusing how the discussion focused on the iPhone, iPods, and what apple, in general, was doing.
Several years ago I was downloading music and copying it to minidisc in the days before the mp3 player and iTunes. It was a time when bandwidth constraints were greater therefore patient people would get the content they desired. Over the years bandwidth increased and BitTorrent and other software came which made the experience much faster.
I-tunes came along and gave one of the legal alternatives to access music. They also sold the player. Did they create a revolution or simply see that there was a market and take this as an opportunity to specialise in that? Now members of the older generations would say that Steve Jobs had a wonderful idea of providing this service and that he was innovative.
Others, such as myself, are more skeptical. I believe that the mp3 format made the sharing of music without too much loss in quality much easier and smoother than it had been before. As people had more and more music in this form they began to see the need for adapted players like the minidisc and earlier mp3 players. More efficient ways were found but it was the realm of early adopters, power users. Those for whom technology is as easy to use as the pen to calligraphy.
Apple did nothing more than realise there was a market and offer what people had been demanding.
In the US apple TV is a great product because you’ve got the content to purchase and view. In Europe, the market is still too far behind on this particular issue therefore the device is not interesting.
How soon will it be before Europeans can legally buy the most recent American shows? in two months or two years? With today’s media infrastructure we see everything that’s going on everywhere therefore the old way of dividing the world into media zones has to be rethought.
By the way, I’ve finally understood McLuhan after my lecture today. It took a while and since no one had explained it to me so clearly I had been under the wrong impression.
I’m almost done with uni but it’s so hard. I’ve been working on and off on three projects now for at least three weeks and I’ve spent so much time on these projects that today I finally met my saturation point so I left the computer behind and dropped down to the bar for a drink or two and for company.
There were only a few people watching a football match and no media students from my year. They don’t have the luxury I have, of being able to leave everything for an hour or two before coming back to it and I do.
I took one of the booths and sat there thinking of nothing and doing nothing. It was nice to do nothing but rest, the only sound was football and then some music.
When I went outside a very amusing conversation was to be listened to and I laughed, feeling the pressure decline at last and being more sedate once more. It’s so great to think that in a week I’m done, that I have complete freedom. I can’t wait and I could get it within three or four days if I work really hard.
I’m no longer worried about the calendar, no longer worried about the deadline, no longer unable to say dissertation without feeling a sudden excess of stress. Instead, I’m calm, relaxed and it’s really nice.
I just can’t get to writing anymore. I’m going to have to re-write my conclusion taking the main points from my analysis and making sure that it’s clear and concise, a paragraph per point, and a summary for the conclusion. That’s the results and conclusion that I’m talking about.
Long live the end, the end of my academic workload, and the beginning of adulthood once more. Three years in the making.
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.