Reading TV Viewers aren’t thrilled with 2nd screen synchronised content on Variety.com. Well,you don’t say! Only 13% said it made the programme more enjoyable. Let me take a guess. The 2nd screen is usually mobile/tablet, a device that is by it#s nature far more personal than the TV. They’re second screening to connect with their friends/network, it’s for their content, not the brand/Tv studio. So instead of imposing synchronised content, think about how you can make it easier for them to connect around your programme? That is, don’t get in the way Wearables, the 3rd wave of computing. By Ben…
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Don’t you just love it when error messages are so helpful! No idea what I did wrong, but the Heroes NBC page will not let me sign up.
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Over the last two weeks I’ve taken a look at some of the new TV shows that will appear in the ‘Fall’ season. These are the free ones that are available on iTunes or Amazon. Here’s what I think. Bionic Woman. Loved it, even with Michelle with a US accent. Set up the premise well (conspiracy theories aside) and well put together. Something I’m going to watch. Chuck. This was surprisingly fun. Great characters, fun story. (even if similar to Jake2.0) Interested to see if it keeps up. Journeyman. Premise has been done before as well – time jumping to…
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Last week I got a sneak preview of Veoh’s new service, veoh.tv, but got asked not to blog about it. The news has now broken and there’s a few detailed write ups around. Erick Schonfeld has a great overview, VeohTV is an application that you download to your PC. It lets you watch any video, not just on Veoh, but anywhere on the Web—whether it’s on NBC.com, CNN.com, YouTube, or AskANinja.com (but not Joost, which does not show videos on its Website). It turns the hodgepodge of video on the Web into something that looks remarkably like TV by gathering…
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I like Dave Winer’s idea for how TV news may evolve, allowing you to choose what you want to watch. He’s made a mock up here. Let me choose what stories I want to here and, more importantly, when I want to stop hearing about stuff. There comes a point when there is no new information, just new opinion to fill the airtime. Those are the times that it’s useless to me – but may not be for others who like this stuff. Let us choose which bits we want.
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I spent a fair bit of last night (when I wasn’t travelling back to work because I’d left my keys there) watching live video streams. The first was from Chris Pirillo; tuning into Chris I found him talking to Kosso, whom I mentioned in an earlier post. Sharing the broadcast with Chris was Eric Rice and he was later joined by Ben Metcalfe. With 2 laptops set up, I could have the video in one place and the chat and other browsers open in the other so I could multitask and it came closer to tv type entertainment, in the…
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I don’t really watch the Simpsons, never really got into it. So imagine my surprise with I got over half the questions right on this short BBC quiz put together to ‘celebrate’ their 20 years on the air. The programme is obviously far more insidious than I realised.
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Read the press release. The content companies are joining up with AOL, MSN, MySpace And Yahoo! to provide premuim video content – does this mean DRMd and subscription? “This is a game changer for Internet video,” said Peter Chernin, President and Chief Operating Officer of News Corporation. “We’ll have access to just about the entire U.S. Internet audience at launch. And for the first time, consumers will get what they want — professionally produced video delivered on the sites where they live. We’re excited about the potential for this alliance and we’re looking forward to working with any content provider…
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I’ve just seen this, one of the clips from Friday’s Comic Relief show. I just can’t quite imagine George Bush doing this. Watch..and donate!
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You can find clips from BBC shows on YouTube, fans putting them up to share the love. And now the BBC has done a deal with Google/YouTube to create three new channels dedicated to the corporation’s output. BBC – showing added value programming, ie the behind the scenes stuff that goes on the websites. This is advertising free BBC Worldwide – clips from programmes, carrying advertising in which the BBC will have a revenue share. This is the same model for the rest of the BBC worldwide programmes, which are not funded from the licence fee and carry ads. However,…
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Ian just posted his video from Future of Web Apps programme, where Michael Arrington suggested the BBC should be dissolved. I did some back of envelope calculations about the worth of the BBC. Let’s say that I watch 2 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year. In the US, programme are around 42 minutes long, so 18 minutes of commercials (but let’s say 15 for promos etc). That means I’d watch around 182 hours of ads with that viewing habit. At UK minimum wage, that’s around 1000 GBP worth of my time. I see getting that…
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Over the last few days I’ve been working my way through all the back episodes of Jericho from CBS. As I usually do, I turn to Wikipedia to see if there any additional pieces of information to add to my enjoyment of the show (I’m a trivai freak at times). The show has a loyal base of online fans, as the wiki episode guides are pretty complete, which is not always the case; if you take a look at the CSI listings there’s very little info there which I find surprising for one of the biggest programmes on TV. BUT…
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I got told that I had to watch Sunday’s Top Gear. If this clip is indicative of the whole programme I think I’m going to have to. Typical piss-taking from the presenters getting them in some real trouble. Too late…looks like they pulled it. Thanks to Keiron who points towards another copy. How long before this one goes…
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Sci Fi is running at 23 yo movie called The Day After, about the impact of an all out nuclear war between the USA and the USSR. The apartment i was in before this one still had the fallout shelter stickers in the basement, as a place the building residents would have to shelter, whilst waiting for the fallout to reduce. If anything actually survived the direct strike I’m sure New York was targeted for. However, with my shopping habits I’d unlikely to have the food or drink to survive, Right… I think it’s time to find something more cheerful…
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Sky is bar far the largest purveyor of DVR/time shifting services in the UK. A review of their service released last week shows that they have over 2 million boxes out there, with around 5million people using it – that’s around 8% of the UK population. As a long time user of TiVo, where the programme information is provided by Sky since TiVo left the UK market, I’m a big fan of time- (and place-) shifting when it comes to my entertainment. The time shifting numbers are show what areas are most popular – and there’s no surprise for me…
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I’ve just had two technicians round to connect up the cable system for TV and phone. Whilst here, we got to discussing the BBC. The whole concept of TV/radio without advertisements seemed to astound them and there were a lot of questions about how it worked, how you paid the licence fee, how did they know you had a TV. Using HBO as a reference point, we got over the astonishment and then discussed whether it would work here – would you pay a higher subscription not to have ads, could you have a choice of ad-supported or ad-free. As…
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I’m trying to find some way to plug the various entertainment bits and pieces I have together without spending a fortune on replacing everything. But so far no luck. I have a PC with a VGA output but a TV with a choice of HDMI, SVideo, combination or composite inputs. And I have a UK PS2 which has a power upstepper but still needs to do PAL to NTSC conversion. And if I can’t get neither of those to work I’m going to have to get a multi-regional DVD player. Which does not seem to exist in the US as…
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User Generated Content, Citizen media, particpatory content. Whatever you call it, it’s not going away and the number of advertisers jumping on the bandwagon with various degrees of success increases everyday. The BBC has been there for a while and now we have two stories demonstrating various successes. In the first, BBC News 24 has started a programme made up of news stories sent in by the public, to “reflect the stories catching our audience’s eye and talking to them directly about the issues they feel really matter.” In the second, the editor of Newsnight is suggesting that UGC has…
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Due to my lack of electronic goods, my TV watching has been restricted to waht I can find and play on the laptop. Now, yes, downloads would give me copies to keep, but sometimes the instant gratification is what I need so I turned to the networks and their forays into online programming to see how good they are. I’m going to run through the majors to give you a taste of how easy, or hard, it is to watch. I’m using TimeWarner cable which is currently running at 4.5Mb down (although previous speeds have clocked in around 2 Mbps)…
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On a good week I only watch maybe 4-5 hours of TV. It’s not to say that the TV is not turned on more than that, but the programmes on are usually not something I make an effort to watch but is often just background, (in fact, the film Zulu is on at the moment, which is a still enjoyble despite the large number of times I’ve seen it.) A couple of TV polls caught my eye this week. The first is Time’s best of TV for 2005. Being an American list, I’ve only heard of the first 2 items…