All posts by MikeB
Below are all of MikeB's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
Joanne: I suspect that the average 13 year old (if they are anything like my kids) is far more adept at technology than most adults..
Obviously I'd love you to purchase from JL, but I'm more than happy to recommend Richer Sounds - find your local branch and go from there. Although rivals, they are known for their knowledge and customer service - in fact I got my twelve year old DVD player from them.
Basically, a cheap TV from a decent brand like LG will be fine. Your not going to get an HD tuner for £150, but thats the way it goes. Where you score is that the same kind of decent menus, EPG and remote will be common to all the TV's by that manufacturer - so your getting a decent remote, easy to use TV and a quality panel for about the same amount (or not much more) as a no brand TV.
Installation costs? Ours are £55 for a 32in and above, and Richer also do them (see 'Installation' on their website), but I dont know how much. You could argue thats not cheap, but judging by some of the anguished questions that appear on this site, possibly money well spent.
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mark owen: If you put in your postcode to the site, it will tell you about the transmitter
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shivinder : You really cant, at least not in a way which makes sense for you. If your Freeview box had hdmi, you can get a convertor for DVI to HDMI, and use the left/right audio outputs to speakers, but VGA to scart is a bit of a nightmare - it can be done, but dont bother. If both had HDMI, then life would be easy.
Frankly, you have three choices:
1) Use the PC to stream
2) Buy a TV tuner card/usb thingy - a little over a tenner in theory.
3) Buy a proper TV. When customers ask me if they can use a monitor as a TV and visa versa, I point out that we dont sit 10 feet from our PC, or that we word-process on our TV.
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Andrew Healy: Looking back on you previous posts, you've bought all sorts of filters, including 4G. So if its was 4G, then the filter should have sorted it. Since Crystal Palace is on RF Channel 23, so shouldn't really have a problem with 4G anyway.
Your only 23km from CP, and even with a loft aerial, have you checked whether your signal is just too high for some channels? You mentioned an annenuator before, but thats what possibly needed. For less than a fiver, its worth a go. But check your signal strength first.
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Dr. S. Day: Great - sometimes it is the small things in life which work...
Frankly, Belkin isn't a brand I think of immediately when someone asks for a top quality connection, and the gold plating is something of a waste of time, although its difficult finding a lead which isn't gold plated these days. Sat. cable has to be of good quality, and hopefully decently shielded, which is what your after. Glad everything now works.
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I think the first thought that comes to mind is 'why'?
The BBC does make programmes for other broadcasters abroad, and plenty of other companies make programmes for it. However, is there any actual need for the BBC to make 'all of the BBC's output open to competitive tender from commercial companies'? I can understand that many independents would like to make more programmes for the BBC, but would they do it better or cheaper? And why does everything have to go out for tender? This sounds like an attempt to answer ideological questions about the role of the BBC, rather than practical ones which benefit viewers.
The Independent says 'Lord Hall is anxious that the BBC is seen as a modern media organisation that is not afraid of subjecting its creative output to the open market and is able to create further revenue streams beyond the licence fee. Proper competition and entrepreneurialism requires a level playing-field. We should have regulation in the TV supply market only where it's needed so that we can let creativity and innovation flourish,
Frankly, thats blather. A translation would be that various governments, special interests and free-market thinktanks have moved the Overton Window to the point where the BBC is seen as Stalinist by certain parts of the political scene. We will head that off (and the chance of being privatised and reduced to British PBS by Lord Coe) by sacrificing our production arm in the name of the free market. Will we get screwed over - probably. But we hope to buy off Murdoch & Co for a bit, and set ourselves up so when they kill the licence fee we will have some cash coming in.
Its all rather desperate, and rather sad. Someone on the Guardian website commented the other day something along the lines of ' Labour would rather please people who will never vote for it, than support those who will'. The BBC is so desperate to appear 'with it' that they will try anything to please people who actually dogmatically disapprove of their very existence.
Now if the BBC wanted to pitch for other work, then as an independent producer, I'd be worried. They have a track record of good programming, and have a cadre of skilled and talented people able to attract other talented people. However, almost certainly they will be prevented from using licence fee monies as capital, and ham strung every step of the way.
Instead, if BBC Production does survive, it will be assaulted at every turn by the sort of low ball bidding we've seen from every other public service opened to private operators. Shine, etc will offer very attractive deals, until, as Brianist points out, BBC Production is spun off, and then the BBC will have to buy from a much concentrated set of suppliers.
It wasn't the Royal Mail I first thought of (although as an example of selling off an asset cheaply, its a good one). I though of the outsourcing of the Tube upgrades, the outsourcing out of hours GP care in Corwall, the disaster of the security contract for the Olympics, the cost and disruption of the outsourcing of NHS services, the failure of the private operators of the East Coast line, the need to bail out the nuclear industry, the failure of the privisation of NATS, the scandal of A4E and of course Atos, private prisons and the tagging of prisoners, school and nursing home inspections, etc. This is only a partial list, but a flavour of what just one comapny has done is featured here : Serco: the company that is running Britain | Business | The Guardian
This is a stupid, pointless and amazingly gutless idea. Tony Hall seemed to talk the talk when it came to the BBC - public broadcasting is good, and is a good was his cry. But it seems that he would rather buy off an enemy that cannot be bought, only fought. The one good thing is that the changes needed are so big that the 2015 election might derail them, and that many outside the BBC might actually think about what these changes might mean.
They could start with the idea that considering the number of TV production crew that have been trained by the BBC in one way or another, what will happen when there really is no more BBC production? Oh.
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Nedbod: Although its annoying that the BBC no longer support the Iplayer Radio app for TV's and certain other products, I can understand why. The number of people who use their TV's to listen to DAB is relatively low, and the number of people who actually use the Iplayer Radio app on TV's much lower still (the BBC would have a pretty good idea by looking at the number of downloads via the app). Since this app does take resources to be developed and maintained, the BBC perhaps sensibly decided to use the resources better elsewhere. Remember that the vast majority of people use the app on a tablet, or phone, or use the player via a PC.
And to be fair to the BBC, the Humax and the TV were not purchased by you for just listening via this app - you've just used them in this way (and HDMI's, ethernet and opitcal cables are not very expensive, or are at least shouldn't need to be). However, you have plenty of options, and potentially for a relatively small outlay (and possibly free), you might great improve your current listening.
I dont know the how old or the make/model of your TV, but if its smart, its likely to have a web-browser, so why not use that, in exactly the same way that you would sitting at your PC? Not all browsers might work (Panasonic's previous Opera based one didn't like the ITV straming site), but give it a go. And since smart TV's all have DNLA, you should be able to stream from your PC if its networked.
As far as recording BBC programmes and burning them onto CD's for the car (via Audacity?), there are simpler ways. BBC podcasts are already in MP3, and of course so generally are recordings you might have made. Just put them on a cheap MP3 player, and then use a 3.5mm jack to plug them into your car radio (this is what I do with my Ipod touch). You can buy a generic MP3 player on Amazon for less than a tenner (although since they use the picture of an Ipod Nano, goodness knows what it looks like or what its actual quality). My daughter has just bought (with her birthday money) an Ipod shuffle for less than £40. Only 2GB, but very useful, if only for continually playing the soundtrack from 'Frozen'..
Even better from your point of view is to use a cheap tablet, old smartphone etc to stream the Iplayer Radio app via wifi. You can carry it around the house, and connect it via bluetooth (or via 3.5mm jack if your old school/cheap like me) to some sort of speakers. If you have a soundbar, there is an excellent chance that it has bluetooth as standard, but if not there are plenty of ways to make a sound system bluetooth compatible, for less than £15.
The great advantage of a tablet etc is not only can you stream using various apps, such as TuneIn, you can also use it as an MP3 device, and plug it in the car, etc. You can buy a second hand 7in 8GB Samsung Galaxy Tab on Amazon for about £50, and I'm sure there are others. A basic Android smartphone might be even cheaper second-hand (I found an LG for about £35 on Amazon), and of course there is no need to use a sim . As long as it will run the apps you need, and has enough memory for your MP3's (which you can often add via a cheap micro SD card), your fine.
All my music (3000 plus tracks plus video) is on my Ipod, and I tend to use it more like a mini mini Ipad, so I can stream, email, shop and surf the net. True, its not a phone, but its fine for what I want, and great for car journeys, since I get my music, etc. You might even get an old phone for free, and off you go.
I agree that people who leech off the BBC by simply using Iplayer should be charged (and hopefully this will happen soon), but remember that the vast majority of people have a TV, buy a licence, and access BBC service (as well as many others) in a whole number of ways. Not everyone has Iplayer, etc, so repeats are often welcome, and of course dead air actually saves really very little money. The cost is in the programming, so putting The World Service on the R4 FM feed at night is a good way of filling those hours, at least for those without DAB!
Encryption for online radio? Think of the amount of engineering and cost of equipment needed to do so...there is a reason why we dont have Radio licences any longer.
michael: is there really an iPlayer option squeeze? They have simply stopped a seldom used app, which is likely to be accessed in many other ways on devices which most people already own, including possibly via the TV itself. DAB probably will soon equal FM coverage, but I agree with you about quality. But the the perfect is the enemy of the good enough!
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Mary: MikeP is quite right that you'll need a decent speed broadband to stream from the net, but for many thats perfectly fine. As for the actual services (Discovery, Disney & National Geographic), you can download, but it will cost you, and you will still have to pay Rupert Murdoch some money.. The Now TV service is an ondemand service from Sky (although strangely the Disney Channel seems to be live streaming only, rather than on demand), and can be accessed in a variety of ways. If you have an LG TV or Bluray which is smart and connected to the web, then the app is included for the past year or two. If not, then you can buy a Now TV box Now TV review . Basically its a streamer box, just like AppleTV or Roku (its actually a cut-down Roku). Its sold as a loss leader for the Now TV service, and can be had in stores from £14.99 (Sky will do it directly for a tenner, apparently). You tend to have to buy one as part of a package - £14.99 for a one day Sports Pass, etc. The Entertainment package is £34.99 for six months NOW TV Bundles | NOW TV and then £4.99 a month, depending on what deal you get. You can get them from all sorts of places, including supermarkets, at the same price. I had to get the box, since it was the cheapest and pretty much the only way of making my old CRT smartish. You now get all four channels on demand, and you get an HDMI cable as part of it. You need wifi, and you must give Now TV your card details so they can charge you for any extra services you want to use (frankly, I have no intention of using the one day pass, but thats life). It works pretty well, although there is not that much free content apart from the four channels. For you, it might be a useful solution. Your not paying a large amount of money, you just add it to your existing TV (and if your TV isn't smart, its very handy) and its pretty easy to use. The downside? If you've got an Ipad, then Apple TV would possibly make more sense, but it wouldn't have these apps. Its a cutdown Roku, so its relatively limited. You have to give the Murdoch empire your card details, and its the Murdoch empire (although you could argue that the £14.99 box is costing them money). And its temptation for Sky. Hope this helps.
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Francis Owen: If the postcode you gave is you uncles, your really close to Crystal Palace, but slightly closer to Woolwich or Ally Pally, which has far fewer channels.
It could be that the TV is finding those channels first, or that he's using an indoor aerial, which tend to not be very good. Click on the 'DigitalUk tradeview' link next to your question, and you'll find out what direction his aerial should be, and what frequency Crystal Palace should be on. You might need to manually tune it, but hopefully it should work.
john murphy: Although DigitalUk is a bit iffy about your reception, since you said it used to be fine, thats OK. You've said the signal has now gone totally, which makes its sound like you've got a fault in your system. Check back from the aerial lead into the TV, but its probably a break or bad connection which has just given way.
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Thursday 10 July 2014 12:56PM
Joanne: Horrible though I was to supermarket TV's, if you do want a better TV for not much more money, then try Richer Sounds - Toshiba 22D1333B | 22 inch LED TV with DVD Player 1080p HD Ready Freeview | Richer Sounds this might do nicely. OK, there's no Freeview HD, and its not smart (but at less than £150, your not going to get HD), but it will be better than the Celcus. They've got some decent LG's as well for about the same price - again basic with no HD tuner, but not bad at all. I'd go for the LG540 if I could All TVs | LCD TVs | Plasma TVs | Televisions | Richer Sounds - £199 for Freeview HD in a 32in. Not smart, but the N575 had a fantastic panel, so I assume this one has the same.