Starting in early 2012, when Netflix is set to make its debut in the UK and Ireland, registered members will be able to instantly stream available content on their television sets, tablets, game consoles, computers and mobile phones.
In the beginning of November, the video streaming giant signed up MGM as its first content provider for the regions, and this morning Netflix announced a new digital licensing agreement that will add a host of BBC series. → Read More
While not everyone would agree, I’m firmly of the belief that news (and most everything) sounds much better delivered in a British accent.
The BBC’s new global iPlayer app, which has launched in more than 11 western European countries, offers up much more than just your daily news, but is chock-full of fun words like “arse,” “blimey,” and one of my personal favorites, “daft.” If you’re into that kinda thing (like myself), you likely want to know that the BBC will launch its iPlayer app here in the States on Thursday, in the form of an iOS (iPhone, iPod) app. → Read More
The BBC did an hour-long special on Facebook, including interviews with Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, as well as cameos by Ron Conway, David Kirkpatrick, and others. The entire video is now on Youtube. Update: Well, that was fast. One version’s been pulled down, but more are popping up.
It’s kind of funny to watch. “Even the Queen is on Facebook,” the British reporter marvels. The show goes over well-worn territory, but is worth saving for an evening’s viewing. → Read More
Top Gear fans? Remember the episode from a few years back where the crew tried to flog the Tesla Roadster? Yeah, it didn’t end so well for the Tesla after Clarkson started off praising the little electric supercar. The entire segment is embedded for your viewing enjoyment after the jump, but the skinny is that the Top Gear testers sort of died prematurely — a few times. The first car’s battery’s ran out only after 55 miles. Then another car’s motor overheated. When they went back to the original car, something was up with the brakes. So yeah, one of the most watched TV programs in the entire world didn’t exactly portray the Tesla Roadster favorably. Enter the libel lawsuit. → Read More
Let the speculation begin. The BBC is holding an event next week, on the same day and exactly the same time that iPad 2 is to be announced. The Apple event starts at 10am PST and the BBC event starts at 6pm GMT (which are exactly the same). If true, it looks like there could be some video chatting between the two companies from across the pond. → Read More
We heard about the BBC’s new iPad app for the iPlayer service yesterday (Android users, be patient, it’s coming), but the player itself escaped description. Today brings a hands-on from Pocket-Lint, who pronounce the app very strong, though the lack of offline viewing, they say, is troublesome. → Read More
We first heard about the BBC’s iPlayer a few years ago and for awhile it wasn’t doing too well. Then more and more people started catching on to the whole ‘watch TV on your own time’ thing, and iPlayer got really popular. I blame part of that on great shows like the UK Office and Top Gear UK — too bad the US counterparts aren’t as desirable. To keep momentum moving, the BBC is planning on taking the browser-based iPlayer to mobile devices. → Read More
The much anticipated Top Gear USA debuts this fall on the History Channel, and until now, has lacked one important item: The Stig. That is until a new rumor has mention that there will be a Stig and the Stig will drive. → Read More
The Beeb: not a fan of 3D TV. Well, not a fan of the confusion surrounding its deployment. The BBC, in a recent interview, said that it’s not sure which direction 3D TV is heading, so it cannot commit to anything, much less a full deployment, any time soon. → Read More
The BBC’s video on demand service, iPlayer is introducing social networking features which should further boost the uptale of Twitter and Facebook in the UK – as if they needed any boosting. The new iPlayer Beta is set to go live officially at the end of June.
Twitter, Facebook and Windows Live Messenger will be linked to a user’s “BBC ID” which they get when they register on BBC.co.uk. Users will be able to share what they’re watching over social networks (queue lots of “Watching Britains Got Talent” updates) while Windows Messenger will show in real-time how many minutes a user is in to a program on iPlayer and allow them to sync viewing with friends and chat about the show in realtime. The features will also work for BBC radio stations. → Read More
One great thing about the internet is the number of people offering advice. Of course, sometimes you need to take that advice with a grain of salt, but photography advice is usually safe. Case in point; BBC’s Wildlife Magazine published a series of Photo Masterclasses in 2006/2007. The information still holds true now (theory rarely changes) and is definitely worth a read. → Read More
Wee Scott Campbell of Aberdeen, Scotland is 13 years old and sent us an email last week asking if he could write for us. What he lacks in physical age he makes up for in chutzpah. And so, much to my surprise, I wake up this morning to discover young Campbell on BBC comparing an iPod to a Walkman with his mum and generally impressing the heck out of us.
The bairn writes:
My dad had told me it was the iPod of its day.
He had told me it was big, but I hadn’t realised he meant THAT big. It was the size of a small book.
When I saw it for the first time, its colour also struck me. Nowadays gadgets come in a rainbow of colours but this was only one shade – a bland grey.
So it’s not exactly the most aesthetically pleasing choice of music player. If I was browsing in a shop maybe I would have chosen something else.
From a practical point of view, the Walkman is rather cumbersome, and it is certainly not pocket-sized, unless you have large pockets. It comes with a handy belt clip screwed on to the back, yet the weight of the unit is enough to haul down a low-slung pair of combats.
The somewhat depressing and controversial possibility of a newspaper bailout turned into a stone-cold reality in the past few months as politicians, including Sen. John Kerry, Sen. Ben Cardin and President Obama, have hinted at giving the newspaper industry a life vest to save a sinking industry.
Kerry, in his dire remarks at the Senate hearing on “Future of Journalism” a few weeks ago, made a call to action to save newspapers and prevent future harm to democracy. Regardless of where direction of this policy is headed, the idea of a government bailout of the news industry, which is supposed to be the “watchdog” of the government, raises a few ethical flags. → Read More
So the BBC has an upcoming six-part series dubbed South Pacific and to help create some hype for the show they released this footage of Dylan Longbottom in “a 12 foot monster barrel wave.” Before I spout off about why that statement is ridiculous I’ll get through the rest of the nitty gritty.
Aussie cameraman Bali Strickland was in the water filming Longbottom with a specially outfitted TyphoonHD4. Before this shoot, the camera had never been used in this manner. German camera/technician specialist Rudi Diesel is responsible for making this all happen. The following are specs for the $100,000 camera: → Read More
The BBC has released this helpful infographic to let everyone out there know that DRM isn’t just simple — it’s fun! Of course, you’d have to be a goddamn PhD of doublespeak to make any sense of it, but who isn’t these days? → Read More
“Broadcast 2.0″: a swanky new term for the convergence of Internet video and social media. BBC is working on integrating this idea into their iPlayer, launched a year ago in December 2007. Anthony Rose, head of the iPlayer online broadcasting project for the BBC, is working towards a social networking player where your friends are going to choose what you watch. Upcoming iPlayer features include ratings and discussions that will be restricted to networks of friends, rather than the public (..like Facebook?). The new version will be rolled out in 2009, but whether these new features will increase its popularity is doubtful. → Read More
Want to show off your fancy new HDTV and Blu-ray player? Yes, you do! This summer will see the release of “The BBC High-Definition Natural History Collection,” a collection of some of the best high-def nature programming money can buy. The collection has a few episodes from series like “Planet Earth” (which is amazing, by the way), “Galapagos” and “Wild China,” which has nothing to do with the former WWE wrestler, thank God. There’s a total of eight discs in the collection, and it’ll retail for about $180 when it goes on sale on July 22. I’ve either downloaded or seen on TV most of the included shows, but owning them on Blu-ray (or getting a nice, x264 rip) would be swell, too. → Read More
The BBC has been testing a new service called SoundIndex, which lists the top 1,000 artists based on discussions crawled from Bebo, Last.fm, Google Groups, iTunes, MySpace and YouTube. The top five bands according to SoundIndex right now are Coldplay, Rihanna, The Ting Tings, Duffy and Mariah Carey , but the index is refreshed every six hours. This is somewhat similar to Songkick’s “Battle Of The Bands,” which we covered in March. Songkick uses different data – MySpace, Amazon and blogs – to determine rankings, and the results are completely different. SoundIndex also lets users sort by popular tracks, search by artist, or create customized charts based on music preferences or filters by age range, sex or location. Results can also be limited to just one data source (such as Last.fm). SoundIndex was created in partnership with IBM (IBM’s Semantic Super Computing is used to crawl and analyze sites), and the UK’s NovaRising produces the site. The project is coming out of BBC Switch, BBC’s new teen service delivering content to 12 to 17-year-olds across multiple platforms, TV, Radio 1 and online. Thanks to Tyler McNally for the tip. CrunchBase Information SoundIndex Songkick Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
