March 14th, 2009 by RocketMBA

3DTV is the futuristic new kid on the block when it comes to cutting edge television technologies, and new 3D setups are appearing at tech shows around the world. Far from the red and blue glasses we wore back in the early ’80s, 3DTV promises realistic images and high definition resolution.

3DTV won’t be common in the home for at least a decade, and there is currently no set standard for what might be used to broadcast in 3D, but television nerds are already running tests with various technologies, one of which is currently live via satellite. 3DSwitch.tv are showing off their Sensio3D format broadcast on 9 east, 11747 H 27500. It’s a 4mb/s(!) MPEG4 stream at 1920×1088 and it’s available on both DVB-S and DVB-S2 receivers.

It’s one of the weirdest things you’ll ever see in your life, 3D or not.

(This is the raw sample - it won’t look 3D to you, but you can see how the 3D image is made up! Also available in 720p HD)

Using the Sensio3D format, both left eye and right eye images are transmitted in the same video frame, and the fancy Sensio3D chipset thingit turns them into an image that the 3D shutter glasses can understand, giving you a nice crisp image with a realistic depth. Phew.

But all of this is no good to you, unless you happen to have a 3DTV testing labratory around. Still, us here at SatScene love you, and have converted the Sensio3D format into the good ol’ red and blue glasses format, so that you can get an idea of what 3DTV in high resolutions has to offer with the below video. Don’t say we don’t love you!

(Unfortunately, an amount of depth is lost during the conversion, but you still get a good idea of what’s in store. Watch it in 720 HD, too!)

December 17th, 2008 by BGonaSTICK

So try clicking on these BBC HD images, why don’t you?

If you hold your mouse pointer over the right hand side of the first enlarged image in a post containing multiple images, you can view the whole lot sequentially as a ’set’. Logically, you should also be able to scroll backwards by hovering over the left hand side. And you can!

Do it!

Do it now!

December 7th, 2008 by BGonaSTICK

Now that we have all of the various flavours of Channel 4 free on satellite (and since November, FIVE too!) , just what is it that’s keeping you from ditching terrestrial telly completely?

With Digital Switchover coming our way (it’s already started don’t you know, up in the Scottish Borders) many folks will have to upgrade their rooftop aerial to receive terrestrial Freeview, and even then full reception is far from guaranteed. What’s more, you may be quite shocked at the sheer size of some of these modern terrestrial antennae!

Take a moment or two to actually think about how much more discrete a satellite minidish might be. Also, they often don’t have to be as high (and exposed to the wind) as a typical terrestrial aerial. Dishes do require a perfectly clear line of site into southern sky though, so that might be a deciding factor for you.

Satellite has had a pretty raw deal in the UK thus far. We tend to like our TV to be free and come with no strings attached, because we already pay for a TV license.

Sure, nearly ten million customers subscribe to Sky, because they want extra channels, like sports and movies, but satellite TV and Sky TV have become synonymous to many of us. With the advent of Freesat however, that perception will gradually change - and it’s long overdue.

So why not hang up your reservations and take a fresh look at satellite TV.

Below is a handy comparison of which channels can be had on terrestrial only, and which on satellite only.

It might not be totally accurate, and the picture does tend to change gradually over time of course, but it’s a pretty fair snapshot of the situation right now.

Don’t forget, the ‘free’ satellite package is called Freesat, and the free terrestrial package is Freeview.

November 27th, 2008 by BGonaSTICK

The news may just have passed you by when originally announced, but the good people at Freesat have always had it in mind to provide this terrific addition to the Freesat platform at some point, and amidst recent rumours that this may happen sooner rather than later, an official response has been forthcoming in response to a direct line of questioning by the joinfreesat team:

“As Freesat has previously confirmed, iPlayer will launch onto the service in 2009. A launch date will be confirmed in due course.”

And on the rather more hopeful query regarding the progress being made on signing up Channel 4’s HD channel (which is still encrypted in NDS and therefore unavailable to Freesat viewers) and the much troubled Kangaroo project:

“Whilst there are currently no specific plans to launch 4HD and Kangaroo at this stage, Freesat is in regular contact with a wide range of broadcasters and service providers across the industry about joining the platform in the future.”

OK. So that’s that straightened out then 

November 20th, 2008 by BGonaSTICK

LOL, those unlucky chaps at Premiere - the No.1 subscription satellite TV service in Germany - have gone and made themselves look stupid again.

Just days after proclaiming that they had put satellite hackers in their place with a hugely expensive encryption system upgrade, the team behind the Diablo CAM (Conditional Access Module) have released a new hack to open many of the channels in a different system - Conax.

This is hugely damaging - not to mention embarrassing - for the company which was recently taken over by News Corporation. It follows on from another recent scandal exposing the stated subscriber numbers as dramatically overstated.  It looks like the acquisition may not have been all that it seemed!

Here’s the regrettable press release from November 10th:

Premiere encryption system fully secure again

• Old signal switched off: New and fully secure encryption system from today onwards
• Modified digital receivers and illicit devices useless
• Premiere only available for Premiere subscribers

Munich, November 10, 2008. As of today, Premiere’s encryption system is fully secure again. Premiere has today switched off its former encryption signal. All smartcards for the new CA systems of Nagravision and NDS Videoguard have been swapped already. All modified digital receivers and illicit devices, which have been used to circumvent the old encryption system to watch Premiere illegally, have became useless for this purpose. From today onward, Premiere is only available for Premiere subscribers.

November 10th, 2008 by BGonaSTICK

Metronic’s new Freesat HD receiver - the snappily named ‘SAT HD 100′ - was announced a while back now, but here it is for pre-order on Maplin’s website for a predictable £149.99.

The early listing on Maplin’s online store gives us our first good look at the box which will surely add a bit of zip to Freesat’s pre-Christmas sales push.

Click the image here for a much larger version showing, well, a black box with some printing and a couple of buttons. Revolutionary in the cosmetic department it isn’t!

Based on previous announcements from Metronic, the unit is due to start shipping for real later this month, with a PVR version to follow ‘early 2009′.

Product Features:

• HD satellite receiver with superb Standard Definition (SD) and High Definition (HD) picture quality
• Official freesatHD receiver
• Receive over 130 free-to-air digital channels and HD broadcasts from the Astra 28.2E satellite
• HD upscaling for SD, improves picture quality through HDMI or component connections
• Simply type in your postcode to pre-load your regions local channels
• Multi-media function: supports USB 2.0 hard disk or USB 2.0 memory sticks
• Play video files, audio files (MP3) or view photo files (JPEG)
• RJ45 connection for upgrading software and future features
• HDMI and component (YPbPr) outputs
• Parental lock facility
• Multiple output resolutions: 1080i, 720p, 576p, 480p, 576i, 480i
• MPEG4/H.264 - 1080i (interlaced) and 720p (progressive) HDTV video format
• 2 year warranty

It’s good to see more and more new products being supplied with a two year warranty. That’s two good things to come from European union then! The other? Damn. I forget…

November 5th, 2008 by BGonaSTICK

How about this cheap puppy?

Kaon KSF 200 FTA Digital Satellite Receiver

- 9,000 channel memory
- 1x SCART socket
- Display
- HF Modulator
- Loop through
- RS 232
- USALS and DiSEqC 1.2
- EPG
- Sleep Timer
- Software Update via RS-232 port
- 25 OSD languages
- Video RCA
- Audio L/R RCA
- S/PDIF
- Dimensions 180 x 45 x 250mm
- Weight: 1.4kg

Sound good? Looks pretty good, no?

The price? Thought you’d never ask. £23.63 inc VAT (plus shipping from Germany). Don’t normally give commercial sites a free plug, but this is a tasty looking FTA box by a decent manufacturer for a stupid price.

Get it at www.satplace.de. Well done to them!

October 30th, 2008 by BGonaSTICK

There are free music TV channels on ‘Sky’ I know.

In fact, they’re not actually ‘on Sky’ at all. They’re FTA (Free To Air) which means they’re free to be received by anyone with a suitable satellite receiver - including the Sky digibox.

That means that they are also available on a Freesat box. They might not all be on either the Sky or Freesat EPG’s, but you can tune them manually regardless.

Bit boring though isn’t it?

Same old, same old.

Why not try for something a bit different?

Get yourself a motorised dish and you can sample the delights of many free music television channels, and also a mind-numbing number of free radio stations over satellite.

I’m going to try and give you a quick sample of the kind of things that can be picked up completely free, totally legally and very easily. Put simply, there is way more legit stuff out there than you can ever watch.

Let’s start off at the satellites located at 1° West. Swing your dish over there for 1 Music Channel. A good mix of modern popular music. Most flavours of UK and US stuff with a Romanian twist.

Get all the info and program listings etc. at their website at www.1music.ro. It’s a good looking website and it’s fairly easy to navigate the Romanian menus with a little imagination.

Next stop is Novy Channel on Sirius 4 at 5° East. A Ukrainian channel with more live music as opposed to just endless videos, and a lot more native content than many other networks which just pump out English-language music.

Novy Channel is definitely worth a look if you want to see something you wouldn’t normally come across, and is definitely worth checking out. OK, so some of it is crap, but we’re on a journey here.

Some interesting supporting footage and documentary-style filming from Ukraine gives you a very good feel of the country and its musical culture. It can be found by scanning transponder 11766 Horizontal with an SR of 27500 and a FEC of 3/4.

The web address should you want to have a look is www.novy.tv.

There’s a great Cuban channel on Hispasat 30° West - CubaVision. Whilst not strictly a full time music channel, many times when I’ve flipped over to have a watch of this one they have been showing either live music or something else to cause me to hover over the channel change button. Some great music on here. A lot of interesting South American content as you would expect, but the quality of the pictures can be pretty dire!

If you want to visit the website, then you can find it here: www.cubavision.cubaweb.cu

I sometimes have this on in the background when at the computer and it’s well worth having a look at.

Cubavisión International has its headquarters in Havana, and transmits daily to ‘the outside’ (that’s what it says on the website!) 24 hours a day and FTA. As well as music, it also covers the genres of “culture, sports, tradition, science and technical, tourism and geography, among others.”

Find it on 12092 Vertical at 30° West. Also to be found on ASTRA, INTELSAT and ASIASAT birds.

Moving on to 7° East and Eutelsat W3A there is Africable - again, not strictly a ‘music channel’, but has a high percentage of music-related content. Lots of recycled stuff from way back when, plus the latest promotional material of course. It also carries quite a bit of minor-league stuff which I really enjoy.

Maybe you need to pick your viewing times, but I often catch something of note here. I haven’t really worked out the program schedule yet. The website at www.africable.net has been down whenever I’ve tried it, so no help there.

Remember to have a look in on this one to enjoy the unusual mix of Senegalese-produced music.

Time for a brand new one. Can’t tell you much about this, as it only launched today! So get off your butt, and tune your tuning whatsit into 11804 Vertical on Turksat at 42° East. It looks OK to me, but time will tell if it’s any good. It’s called ‘Plus Muzik‘ and I’m going to hazard a wild guess that they’ll carry a fair bit of Turkish music.

Can’t even find a website for it yet it’s that new!

Next stop on the free music tour is MTV Arabia located at BADR4 - 26° East that is - 12169 Vertical 27500 3/4.

MTV Arabia is ‘a revolution in Music Television’. What it actually is, is the same thing as all the other MTV stations but with a new logo and the suffix ‘Arabia’.

It’s free though, so it’s in. Not that much Free to Air MTV around the satellite arc, so fill yer’ boots.

It’s exactly what you’d expect to be honest. Here’s a wonderful picture of the homies biggin’ up Margate in February.

MTV Arabia is in fact a joint venture between MTV Networks International and Arabian Television Network, and launched in November 2007. It does include some specialist content, with shows called HipHopna, Introducing, Baqabeeq, Banat, Rewes, Waslity, Amour, Cimena, MTV Weyakom and Na3na3.

That’ll do for now. Maybe I’ll do a few more another time, but it shouldn’t stop you getting a head start!

September 25th, 2008 by BGonaSTICK

Fortec Star Innovation

Here’s the manufacturer’s spiel:

“HDTV satellite receiver with PVR recording via USB HDD, plus in-built twin CI and 2 smartcard readers. Supports DiSEqC 1.2 and offers a 10,000 channel capacity”.

Would you have one under your telly? It’s not exactly an all-singing all-dancing machine, but it’s a pretty honest and moderately attractive looking slab of technology, no?

OK, so it’s not open source, and it maybe doesn’t have the latest looks (do people still want silver stuff?) but it does look like it will do a basic job of pulling some high definition TV into your home. It has all the slots at the front, the all-important HDMI port at the rear, PVR via USB HDD (this is becoming way more popular than internal HDDs, and with many good reasons) and a big fat memory.

Bored yet? Maybe you’ll think twice when you hear the price… a measly £175-odd.

Features

- High and Standard Definition satellite
- PVR recording via external USB HDD
- Favourite channel lists
- Plug ‘n Play installation
- HD upscaling
- DiSEqC 1.2
- 2 USB 2.0 ports (front and rear) for recording and software updates
- Plays MP3s from a USB memory stick
- Power Search and automatic channel updates in Standby mode
- HDMI and component (YPbPr) outputs
- Parental lock facility
- 2-CI slots and 2-embedded smartcard readers (Conax/X-Crypt)
- Multiple output resolutions: 1080i, 720p, 576p, 480p, 576i, 480i
- 10,000 channel memory

September 24th, 2008 by BGonaSTICK

Well this is a turn-up for the books… a satellite receiver that fits inside a SCART plug!

Very nice. Well it would be if it works well. No reason why it shouldn’t I suppose.

Wonder if it’s powered by the SCART socket itself, or if it has it’s own power brick? And how would the remote control work? Does it have one of those shitty IR-sensor on a wire thingamajigs?

Seems there are more questions than answers with this little box.

June 25th, 2008 by RocketMBA

Television viewers across the world missed out on a chunk of the second half of tonight’s Euro 2008 semi-final between Germany and Turkey due to lightning messing up the television signal.

Shockingly, this did not stop the two teams from playing, which was a bit selfish of them, really.

To make up for this, have a look at BBC HD’s error message. Oooh, flashy.

February 25th, 2008 by RocketMBA

Don’t you just know what it’s like to have a load of old crisp packets lying around the house? I know I do, so I decided to make use of them the only way I know how: irresponsibly.

The goal of this experiment was to answer the question “Does a crisp packet increase satellite dish gain?”.

The tools I used were a computer fitted with a SkyStar 2 card, an 80cm satellite dish with a cheap Korean LNB on the end, and an old crisp packet.

The crisp packet (ASDA Smartprice, Ready Salted) was placed over the whole of the LNB face and most of the LNB body.

Now for the readings. The dish was aligned to 1w, and tuned to transponder 11325 H 24500.

Before crisp packet:

After crisp packet:

As you can see, placing the crisp packet over the LNB has no effect upon the signal strength recieved. As such, the crisp packet cannot be recommended as an item to increase satellite dish gain, but it does look quite snazzy and may make a short-term alternative to LNB joint sealant.

Further things to try: different flavour crisps, foil-lined crisp packet, using tape to hold the crisp packet in place.

January 15th, 2008 by RocketMBA

Did you know that there’s a hidden test card, buried away inside the depths of BBCi? Here’s how you get it up…

1. Tune to the BBCi channel (currently ch. 105)
2. When the BBCi background appears, press Yellow (within 30 secs)
3. Tune away to a different channel
4. Tune back to the BBCi channel (currently ch. 105)
5. When the BBCi background appears, press Green (within 30 secs)
The word ‘Secret’ will appear in the top right hand corner
6. Wait until the status page appears
7. Enter 3, 3, 5, 8, 2, Red, Green, Yellow, Blue
8. Wait approximately 30 seconds

There’s also a load of nerdy technical stuff displayed, as well as the ability to change your BBCi region for the Freeview session. Nice!