RTÉ’s six new digital radio services went live today. The new stations include Ireland’s first dedicated childrens’ radio service, RTÉ Junior, and the speech-based RTÉ Choice. The other stations available are RTÉ Gold, RTÉ Pulse, RTÉ 2XM and RTÉ Chill. Listeners in the greater Dublin area, Cork and Limerick cities can hear the stations on DAB digital radio sets available from retailers in those areas. The services are also available online at www.rte.ie/digitalradio
I was reading an article on The Guardian about the possibility that Microsoft will be rebranding Live Search as Kumo.com. A quick whois search confirms that Microsoft Corporation is indeed the owner of Kumo.com. Apparently the reason for this rebranding is that the brand Live isnt doing as well as Microsoft had hoped. The consensus on the web seems to be that Kumo.com wont be doing any better, it doesnt exactly roll off the tongue.
New personal video service Freesat+ is to launch on Saturday (November 22). Boxes will be available to buy for £299 from selected John Lewis, Comet, Argos and Dixons stores and some selected independent retailers. No doubt there will be a couple of these coming south from stores in Northern Ireland.
The first Freesat+ model (Humax’s Foxsat-HDR) has a 320GB hard drive, allowing viewers to record up to 80 hours of HD programming or 200 hours of SD content. Freesat+ also includes many familiar PVR functions such as live pause and series link.
Customers with a satellite dish already installed should be able to ‘plug and play’ their new box, negating the need for a professional installer.
It’s enough to make you cry. If physical disc formats really do have some shelf life, then Royal Digital Media’s new optical disc format may have some worth, but if it’s at the expense of Blu-ray, it’s going to play havoc with the consumer.
Technical part first: Royal Digital Media has developed a 100GB-capacity disc which can handle four hours’ worth of 1920p HD video — “the next generation of high definition” according to the company. The killer part of the equation is that the cost of the discs and players is expected to equal those of traditional DVDs, therefore undercutting Blu-ray.
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Freesat has announced that it has hit 100,000 sales since its launch on 6th May this year. with high definition content over the summer playing a key role in moving HD set-top boxes.
Emma Scott, MD of Freesat commented, “There’s no denying how much people enjoy watching in high definition once they see it for themselves and the success of Freesat proves that. Unfortunately there are still a lot of people out there who think they’re already watching in HD because they have an HD ready TV - but they aren’t.”
“We want to help everyone understand that HD Ready is not the same thing as HD now. Without an HD digital receiver connected to an HD Ready TV or an integrated TV with Freesat HD built in you can’t watch an HD TV programme. It needn’t be complicated or costly. For those people that already have a satellite dish installed, they may simply be able to take their Freesat digital box or integrated TV home and plug it straight in.”
While Freesat remains a fairly niche player in the broadcasting space at present, behind the likes of Sky and standard Freeview, its initial sales are fairly encouraging, particularly given a minimal amount of marketing.
Going forward through autumn and into 2009, Freesat plans to launch its Freesat+ service, offering a DTR similar to Sky+ and Freeview+, in November, to increase the number of manufacturers and retailers supplying Freesat equipment, and to continue to launch new channels and services each month
Google Chrome Browser is here and available for download at: http://www.google.com/chrome. This is Google’s latest battleground with Microsoft who produce the almost ubiquitous Internet Explorer. Personally, I would like to see Google produce a mail client.
See also here
Enn.ie also have a good post on this here
This is quite a big step up from the Apple Remote application, which allowed you to control your iTunes and which speakers it played through. I thought that was cool, how I would love to have this setup in my house:
Two home automation control apps for the iPhone were announced today allowing people to access and control their home automation systems while on the go. My House UI for Control 4 and Crestron Control App are very similar but bring the characteristic traits of their respective systems to the forefront.
According to the press release, My House UI for Control4 was developed by Control UI and Control4 and makes it so you can access your home system on your iPhone. All you have to do is download the app from the App Store, download some software onto the Control4 system and you’ll be good to go. There is also a dock called the Control4 Dock for iPod that lets you share your iPod’s contents with the Control4 home system.
The Crestron Control App for iPhone is a similar piece of software that’s free to download and is “fully integrated with Crestron programming software including SystemBuilder™, VT Pro-e and SIMPL™,” according to the press release. After the simple download and a few set up procedures, you can control your home and office with just a few taps on your iPhone.
Apple’s iPhone 3G will soon be available to Irish consumers on a pay-as-you-go basis, with O2 Ireland confirming the plan is to be introduced here soon. “O2 in Ireland is currently working on making the iPhone 3G available to prepay customers and we hope to be in a position to give more details in the coming weeks,” a spokesman for O2 Ireland told ENN. While there is no details on when it will launch in Irish stores, in the UK O2 has announced the pay-as-you-go iPhone 3G will be rolled out on 16 September. From then, an 8GB pay-as-you-go iPhone 3G will be available for STG349.99 and the 16GB version for STG399.99.
Prices of the Xbox360 video game are to be slashed in Japan as its makers Microsoft fight back against rivals. The cheapest of three models, Xbox 360 Arcade, will cost around €123 from next week. Nintendo’s Wii costs €150 and Sony’s PlayStation 3 model sold in Japan, which has a 40-gigabyte hard drive, is about €235. “We have set the prices with hopes more people will be able to enjoy Xbox 360,” said a Microsoft spokesman.
Microsoft will not say how many of the 20 million Xbox 360 machines sold worldwide were in Japan, but it is widely viewed to be fewer than numbers sold elsewhere. The Wii console has been popular, selling 29.6 million worldwide so far. PS3 sales have lagged at fewer than half of the Wii at 14.4 million.
Read the full story on blog.twitter.com. twitter have stopped sending SMS updates. Well that renders my Sandy account useless. Whats the point in setting reminders if you have to remember to logon and check your twitter/mail??
twitter, please reconsidder or least offer a premium service to continue to allow users receive their tweets
