Each time I see my phone bill, the cost of the calls is getting less and less. In the last month, I used the land line to make five calls - everything else was done via mobile or Skype.

Will there be a day when everyone (not just cable subscribers) can have just an internet service, and no phone line? Of the bill total, around 96% of the cost is “rental charges” and VAT.

Since setting up the indoor satellite dish, I’d been using a SkyStar 2 card to view and record satellite TV from Astra 1, 2 and Hotbird. This is alright, but quite uncomfortable and cumbersome - especially if you have a spare 10 minutes to flick through.

I’ve been thinking of a Technomate 1000D, or 6800HD, but without an exterior dish at the moment didn’t want to spend too much on something which might not be used. The Smart range of satellite receivers are all over eBay.de, or through eBay UK with “Available to UK” enabled on a search. It’s a basic, cheap satellite receiver with two USPs for me… a front display with the channel name and Component output for a HD TV. Total price new and delivered from Germany was £45.52.

An old analogue satellite receiver with front display. They don’t make them like they used to!

Unboxing was similar to most cheap DVB-S boxes; a small box made from thin cardboard, some packaging, cheap batteries and a black and white manual. Being from Germany, the plug is a two pin one, but whack it straight in a 3 pin converter (60p odd at Asda) and it’s ready to go. The manual is entirely in German, but it’s fairly straight forward to use, so this isn’t a problem.

Switching on for the first time was an acceptable experience. I’d wired up using Component and at first the TV (a Samsung 19″ TV / Monitor which does HD, but has no HDMI port, but was sold as HD Ready - another post for another day) didn’t find anything on the input. I pulled out the Scart lead from a Freeview box and got into the menu. This was fine, and allowed for the change through the menu to output “YUV” and change the menu language to English. I then plugged in the Component leads again and all was well.

Flicking through the channels proved a little strange, as the remote control appears to send commands to the Freeview box as well. The channel up button turns on the Freeview box (a £20 model from Asda), which the TV picks up and switches to the Scart input. To continue on I just unplugged the Freeview box from the wall.

There’s a few hundred channels already programmed in for satellites including Astra 1, Hotbird and Turksat. Das Erste is on channel 1, RTL on channel 4 and so on. They’re sort of grouped, with the MDR, ZDF, news and music channels together.

Day-to-day use is fairly good. There’s a rocker switch on the rear of the unit, as well as the standby mode. Changing channels is fairly easy through channel up/down, the EPG or favourite lists. The onscreen menu’s and EPG are about right for a receiver in this price range.

Connections are good - IF loopthrough, RF modulator, Scart, audio l-r, digital audio out, Component and Composite.

The EPG and channel browsing is very nice - and best demonstrated in this video on YouTube.

Picture quality is surprisingly good for a cheap receiver like this. Comparing the input via Scart and Component didn’t reveal any huge differences (the TV is pretty good - it never looks pixellated or grainy), but the Component input really shines on news and sport programmes. I’m yet to try it with a film, but expect it to be good too. Another observation to make is that the blacks are far, far cleaner than they are via Scart.

The pros definitely include the Composite output which looks phenomenal, and the quick response when changing channels. There’s a lot of neat features, and overall it’s a good satellite receiver. Another pro is the price - I’ve never seen a DVB-S box with HD output for under £50 in the UK.

The cons unfortunately include the front display and overall feel of the box. The picture on eBay, the literature on the Smart website and even the cardboard box indicate a front display like the one on the Pace box above. Unfortunately it’s more of a segment display, and this is unclear most of the time. The two large red and green LED’s let the front display down, which otherwise looks smart with the hidden buttons. The flap behind which those buttons sit is very difficult to open.

The front display in use at night

Overall this is a great little box for under £50. I’m a little underwhelmed, but channels like Das Erste and NRJ Hits look excellent through Component. I’m pleased I bought it and would look at spending a few quid (literally) more on the next model up from Smart.

More Photos: Smart Rapido 3 Photoset on Flickr

For most consumers, I think so.

To provide a little background, satellite signals are either encrypted (part of a pay TV package, or “Free to View” which requires a free, or low cost card to decrypt the signal) or unencrypted (or clear, or “Free to Air”). Applying this to Digital Terrestrial Television (commonly known as Freeview in the UK), you could split BBC ONE, The Hits and Sky News into “Free to Air”, and UK Gold into “Pay TV”.

A while ago all of the UK’s Public Service Broadcasters (PSBs) were “Free to View” on satellite. If you had a Sky subscription, you got them anyway, but if you had Sky equipment and no subscription, you could get a Solus card, which was largely paid for by the BBC. When they removed encryption and went “Free to Air”, they stopped supporting the scheme. Without getting into the whole saga, eventually you couldn’t get a legitimate Free to View card and the only way was to get a cancelled Sky card, or turn to eBay.

In October 2004, Sky introduced Freesat From Sky. The new package was £20 for a FTV card, or £150 for a box, card and installation. A year later, the BBC and ITV announced Freesat, and some time afterwards made their own channels FTA. In the meantime, tens of thousand (if not more) viewers in the UK have been watching FTA television on boxes supplied by neither Sky or Freesat, but manufacturers like Technomate and by using cheap kits from Aldi and Lidl.

There’s no doubt that Freesat is targeting consumers who want a service similar to Freeview, but without anything to do with Sky. There’s a few interesting points though;

• Channel 4 is now available FTA, but Channel 4 HD is still only available to Sky HD customers.
• five is not available on Freesat.
• ITV HD will be available on Freesat, but not Sky, and will only be available via the red button when watching ITV.
• Sky News isn’t on the EPG, even though it’s a Free to Air channel on satellite.
• The only radio stations on the EPG are all from the BBC. The three national licences - Classic FM, talkSport and Virgin Radio - are all missing.

The line-up is a little disappointing at the moment (although most of the channels, like Sky News or Planet Rock are on satellite, FTA), and it’s a little reminder of the days of 1998 when you keyed in 103 on your Sky Digibox and were told “Press ’tv’ and ‘3′ to view ITV”. Personally I’d hang on and see how it plays out, what the on-demand services are like, what channels are added and what firmware changes are made before ringing round to find a STB.

At the moment, I’m still drawn to the Technomate TM 6900 HDas my next satellite box, but once on demand, HD and more channels on the EPG filter through, it’ll be an excellent purchase for anyone without adequate Freeview coverage or simply wanting HD. I fully understand the reasons for using an independent programme information stream, but it would be nice if we could enjoy what we have with European TV stations (like RTL, or Das Erste) and get full, comprehensive EPG data on any DVB-S equipment we care to use.

Last night I saw The Digg Reel - a video from Revision3 which looks at the most popular videos on social news site, Digg.

The source of the videos is credited, but often just as YouTube.com or Break.com. I’ve noticed this in several places, especially TV news channels. Last year BBC News 24 showed the spoof iPhone advert from Late Night with Conan O’Brien (inexplicably removed from YouTube by NBC, despite the huge popularity of that skit) twice, yet only credited one showing, and that was “from YouTube.com”. You could even hear the audience laughter at the end of the video as it was shown on News 24.

Sky wouldn’t dream of waiting for someone to upload a BBC interview, and then download it and credit YouTube. Infact, when dealing in their own content the BBC and Sky clearly credit each other, down to the title of the show. Yet news outlets appear fairly happy to use and credit YouTube videos rather than the original source.

Radio 4’s PM is guilty of doing the same. Last year they used clips from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, again including the audience laughter, but removed Stewart and didn’t credit the show. It wouldn’t have been inconceivable for the BBC to get the same clips which the TDS crew did of Hillary Clinton…

April marks changes for the UK’s two main news channels; BBC News 24 and Sky News. Sky refreshed their graphics, and the BBC have been gradually introducing a new look to most of their outputs. I’ll cover those two (and CNN, France 24 et al) over the next week or so.

BBC World

In recent years the BBC’s international news channel, BBC World, has reflected the graphics and style of BBC News 24. Indeed, this week BBC News 24 has been using the BBC World set between 9.30pm and 10pm and I suspect most won’t have noticed the small differences in the neighbour studio (the background, the silver border on the large screens, a slightly smaller desk, etc).

BBC World: March 23rd, 2005

Whilst typically seen in hotels around the world, BBC World is also available in the UK via a Hotbird satellite. The typical Sky equipment is capable of displaying the channel (if the dish is aligned accordingly), and the kits often sold in Maplin and Aldi allow users to be watching the news channel within minutes, completely legitimately.

BBC World: April 30th, 2006

Some slight updates to the graphics here. The WORLD has become bigger (in terms of this logo, not in general) and the ticker is simply black and white. The headline also becomes thinner, as will be shown in an upcoming post on News 24.

BBC World: January 23rd, 2008

The current (for now) graphics for BBC World. It’s interesting to note that BBC World does not use a clock, yet the BBC World Service (and World Service English News) does mention the time (according to GMT) several times an hour.

Just a quick post… The battery in my Dell Inspiron is fried. It’s been my main computer for around 18 months now and the battery has given up - holding less and less charge every month. Now Vista says there’s no battery at all - quite a pain if you want to take it through to another room, or hibernate whilst you take it in to town.

In fairness, the laptop has been fantastic and has Vista, XP and Ubuntu installed. I have no urge at all to replace it or buy a desktop machine, and have been thinking about scrapping the XP partition having not booted into it for months.

Looking on Dell’s website, another battery the same is £184.90 inc postage and VAT. However, when I looked at an Eee PC over Christmas it was only £200 odd. The Inspiron is very nice, but quite heavy to carry around and not at all easy to use on the train. I can get by with eeeXubuntu just fine on the move, too. The only thing is whether to wait and see where the new 9″ screen model will be priced and how heavy it will be?

Any thoughts?

Something getting blanket coverage in the media today is last nights earthquake. Whilst it was really very small in terms of damage, and thankfully a minimal number of injuries, it’s a rare occurrence here in the UK and quite exciting.

At around three minutes to midnight I was listening to BBC Radio Suffolk in bed just before the switch into Up All Night on Five Live. I felt the shaking - and thought it might just be a HGV, although it was a little long for that, and very quiet outside. In the first minute of the programme, the host asked the others in the studio if they just felt the earth move. They hadn’t, but within minutes over 50 text messages had been sent and after the news it became very clear that it was some sort of earthquake or tremor.

The programme continued with normal stories and text messages about the quake, and by half past had interviewed someone from the US Geological Survey about the location, severity and other interesting details - the guest explained that it was felt as far north as Consett, about 20 miles north of here. It was a really interesting hour on the radio, and quite amusing to hear that the first thing many did was login to Facebook and update their status. (Yeah - ok - I did the same).

It seems that BBC News 24 were a little slow off the mark - however Five Live, just meters away, were covering it from 01:00, with guests from BBC Radio in Lincoln. Whether it was just an editorial decision or not having the information, I don’t know - if they did, and Five Live is still the first outlet to get breaking news stories and correspondents, it certainly showed.

The comments about the earthquake on The Guardian and Digg are especially amusing. There’s also some interesting stuff on various blogs, and an analysis of how much quicker Twitter was at breaking the news. I half agree with this - I’d class this more as information, rather than news - especially given the policies at various mainstream media outlets of reporting a breaking story.

It’s interesting reading the comments on Read Write Web - especially those which mention that Sky News broke the story after 15 minutes, and the BBC 10 minutes later. It was being reported/discussed on Five Live within a few minutes, which isn’t too bad - but no-one is really talking about radio coverage. Whilst the internet and social media might have beat television on this occasion, I feel radio was pretty quick off the mark too.

Tomorrow the BBC launches its new home page. It’s been available to look at for a little while though, and still is today at bbc.co.uk/home/beta.

I think it’s pretty good - it’s nice to be able to move things around, do away with some of the content that’s not so interesting to me and even choose a colour. However, the customisation could go a little further as develops further.

• Living in Durham, that’s the weather I’d like to have on the front page. But I’d like to add BBC Tees or BBC Radio Suffolk in the radio box (or ‘category’). The home page only gives the option of BBC Radio Newcastle - it’s not possible to edit the stations to either select additional locals, or remove nationals like Radio 1 or Radio 3.
• I can untick ‘Childrens’ content for the home page, but CBBC and CBeebies still appear in the TV box. It’d be nice to add and drop TV channels.
• The blogs box is great - allowing you to add in BBC Internet Blog, Ouch!, dot.life or anything else, but a featured post still appears from PM. Can we have a radio button to say if we’re middle class or not, and therefore get Five Live Drive instead?
• It also seems a little pointless without the featured blog post title - it simply tells me at the moment “We’re keen to hear if you have any experience in this area.” - what area? GMail has a pretty good feature in webclips where you can choose the content that’s displayed at the top of the inbox. I understand why they’re pushing that content, though.
• Why isn’t there a Jon Holmes box?
• Eventually, it would be great if this could be more local. There’s no content from BBC Look North or BBC Tees, the music box features Radio 1 and something from Radio Derby, but nothing from my local BBC Introducing programme.

Going further, it would be nice if all the BBC ‘blogs’ were in the format found on the BBC Internet Blog and national radio programmes. At the moment, local radio blogs appear to be just content pages - no RSS feed, no comments, no pingback, no archive, no categories etc.

Overall it’s a nice improvement and I’ll probably use the BBC home page more than before, but it would be nice to have just a little more control. And that Jon Holmes box.

A few weeks ago I wrote about the closure of some stations on DAB Digital Radio, and over the past week there’s been a lot of speculation on what GCap might do about their stake in Digital One, who operate a digital radio multiplex which carries stations like Planet Rock, theJazz, Virgin Radio and Birdsong. Fru Hazlitt (who I’ve stood next to - go me) has today announced that GCap will be closing Planet Rock and theJazz. She said;

“DAB with its current cost structure and slow consumer response is not an economically viable platform for the group.” - Fru Hazlitt

There’s plenty of analysis at Media Guardian, as well as comment from folk including James Cridland and Nick Piggot.

I know some people who bought digital radio just for Planet Rock, and I don’t imagine that they’ll be best pleased. On a personal level, DAB feels quite different to how it did back in 2004 when I bought my first set. It was a fairly heavy and robust thing bought after lots of saving up - really just to listen to Virgin Radio in the evenings where AM reception was poor and to get more choice during the day than FM offered.

Having moved to the North East, I can’t move for FM stations. There’s Alpha, Durham FM and Sun FM from TLRC alone, three BBC locals (Tees, Newcastle and York), Metro, Galaxy, TFM, Century and others - all on my cheap DAB/FM radio. But this isn’t the same everywhere and the loss of another two or three DAB stations will be noticable to real fans.

GCap also announced that they’re trying out streaming radio on the iPhone and iPod touch. This would be a “killer app” for me, especially having seen what my Reciva set can do with listen again content and podcasts. It’s not the first time that streaming radio has been done on the iPhone, but it does look good and easier for the consumer.

The BBC has revealed the new look of BBC Three, and the orange blobs are set to go.

Credit: BBC. But I captured it all on my own!

According to research carried out by the BBC, viewers think that they’re “cold and shouty”. Personally, whilst I never really warmed to them, they’re unique and interesting. I think the background is a little cold, but you couldn’t accuse the channel of not having a personality.

Credit: BBC Press Office

Being honest, I’m not keen on the new branding. All I’ll say is that the channel gets a really hard time from the DCMS select committee and this’ll do nothing to help. ;-)