Technology

An archive of blog entries about media gadgets and technology.

Question of the week: do you watch downloads?

27 January 2010 Rob Buckley 15 Comments

Not so fast. It’s not what you think. I’m not asking if you might use sneaky illegal means to watch TV programmes. I want to know if you watch network TV programmes legally on the Internet, whether it’s on the iPlayer, 4oD, Hulu, the good old Apple iTunes store or some other service. if you do, how do you do it – on a computer or some other device? Do you ever buy the content or do you stick to free only? And do you splurge for high-def if it’s available?

And if you don’t watch downloads, why not?

FYI, I use both my Nintendo Wii and my iPhone to access the iPlayer and I use my Apple TV, iTunes and iPhone to purchase TV content, preferably in high def. But how about you?

As always, leave a comment with your answer or a link to your answer on your own blog.

Technology reviews

Turbo.264 starting to annoy me now

10 November 2009 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Elgato Turbo H.264

So I have this thing called an Elgato Turbo.264 that plugs into my Mac. It’s designed to speed up video conversion, which it does more or less: anything I’ve recorded on my EyeTV gets exported to my iPhone or AppleTV a whole lot quicker than without it, other things not so less. Still, it integrates nicely with Video Drive, which has been giving me problems of late with regular old QuickTime, so it’s hard to do without.

Trouble is, it’s having problems with other videos now, particularly AVIs.

Continue reading “Turbo.264 starting to annoy me now”

Technology

Elgato EyeTV Sat: the missing Freesat settings

24 July 2009 Rob Buckley 13 Comments

Elgato EyeTV Sat

For a big chunk of this week, I’ve been fighting to the death with an Elgato EyeTV Sat box. This is a nifty little gadget that lets you get Freesat on your Mac, including BBC HD in full high def quality, provided you

  1. Live in the UK
  2. Have a satellite dish and a spare lead from it somewhere
  3. Have £180 or so

The full review is going to be in MacFormat issue 212, so you’ll have to wait until then for my full review of it. However, one of the issues I had was actually tuning it to receive all the Freesat channels, since the auto-tune failed to pick up big chunks of them (including Channel 4, More4, E4, Film4, BBC3, BBC4, ITV2, ITV3 and ITV4 as well as their time-shifted siblings). Elgato swear this shouldn’t be a problem, but it was.

Fortunately, after a bit of liaising with Elgato over the settings, I was able to get all the channels. Since Elgato doesn’t seem to want to publish them on its web site according to my exchanges with them – and since MacFormat simply won’t have the space to print all this – after the jump, all the settings an EyeTV Sat owner might need to get his or her box working properly.

I suspect I might get as many as 10 or even 20 hits on this page, but I figured it might be useful to some people. The rest of you? As you were.

Continue reading “Elgato EyeTV Sat: the missing Freesat settings”

Wednesday’s Micro Live news

1 July 2009 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Happy Canada Day everyone!

Film

  • Jason Lee and Michelle Trachtenberg join A Couple of Dicks
  • Trailer for Soderbergh’s The Informant, starring Matt Damon and Scott Bakula
  • Bill Nighy to appear in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
  • Trailer for Inglourious Basterds

Web TV

British TV

US TV

UK TV

Playing catch up: iPlayer on the Wii

16 April 2009 Rob Buckley 6 Comments

I’ve only had a Wii for five months* and the option’s been there for a year, apparently, but it’s news to me that you can watch the BBC’s iPlayer on the Wii, so I thought I’d belatedly pass the word.

I haven’t tested it yet, and it’s not as good quality as you can get on a PC, since the Wii has an old version of Flash, but all the same, much better to be able to watch it on your TV than huddled round a computer.

* Bought at my wife’s insistence, I would point out, since games consoles and working from home don’t mix unless you’re a games journalist/professional games player