Freeview

I have just bout a Miglia TV Mini device for my Mac. This is a great device that enables me to get digital terrestrial tv on my Mac. It comes complete with EyeTV software which is great software for watching tv, recording tv and has a built in program guide so you can choose what to watch. The device is nice and small, no bigger than a USB memory stick, and has an input for a standard coxial ariel cable so an ariel can be plugged in to it. The box also has a remote control so you can control the EyeTV software and also an ariel, although this does not provide a good enough signal to the device unless you are in a very good signal area.

Freeview, which is the UK’s digital terrestrial tv service is good, and provides all the standard features you need when using it, such as a now and next bar on the channels etc. However the major complaint I have with Freeview is with some of the channels they show. I personally do not think that they should be showing 4 shopping channels, or plus 1 channels when there is limited bandwidth. Freeview gives you the following channels :- BBC1, 2, 3, 4, News 24, Parliament, CBBC & CBeebies
ITV 1, 2, 3, 4, Citv & Play,
Channel 4, E4, E4+1, More 4, Film 4, Film 4+1,
Five, Five Life & Five US,
Sky Three, Sky News, Sky Sports News,
uktv History & Bright Ideas,
Ftn Full On Television, abc1, Smile tv,
The Hits, TMF The Music Factory, Community Channel,
teachers tv, Ideal World, QVC, price-drop tv and bid tv

There is also a subscription service available on Freeview called Top-Up TV, costing £9.99 a month, once you have bought a new Freeview Box for £180 and paid a £30 connnection fee. offering premium channels, and an overnight recording service, downloading the best programs of your choice from a range of channels, for you to watch the next day. They also plan to start showing Setanta Sports from the summer for an additional fee. For more info see www.topuptv.com

In order to make Freeview better, here is what I think the Government should do, to make Freeview better for everyone:

Firstly I would make it illegal for Freeview to show +1 channels, due to limited bandwidth available, thus removing E4+1, and Film 4+1 from Freeview.

Secondly I would make it illegal for Freeview to show more than 1 shopping channel, thus I would remove Ideal World, price-drop tv and bid tv from the lineup.

Thirdly I would remove Top-Up TV.

Once this is done, I think the following channel changes should be implemented:
1) abc1 should have its broadcast hours increased to 24hrs a day in line with cable and satellite, using the space given up by E4+1.

2) The program hours used by Film 4+1 should be given over to Discovery, so they can make a Freeview channel showing the best of their programming from their cable/satellite channels.

3) New channels should be created by uktv - uktv 1 showing programs from uktv Gold, G2 & Drama, replacing Ideal World. uktv 2 showing programs from uktv History, People and Documentary, replacing uktv History and uktv 3 showing programs from uktv Food, Style and Style Gardens, replacing uktv Bright Ideas, and itv Play

4) Having removed Top-Up TV, I would use the channel bandwidth to make a new pay tv service, perhaps called Freeview + whereby viewers whose set-top box can take a viewing card, can pay additional fee for sports and movies, probably £7.50 a month for Setanta Sports, £7.50 a month for a film service such as Picture Box from Universal, showing the latest blockbuster movies (like Sky Movies) and maybe a fee £12.00 for both packages.

All in all Freeview is a good service, and if the changes mentioned above were implemented it would be a fantastic service.

Russian MP3 Download Services

I have discovered on the internet some new online MP3 download stores. These are based in Russia and are very cheap for tracks and cd’s - about $0.20 a track and $2 an album, and have a wide ranging catalogue containing releases from most major recording artist. The site also contains hard to find releases from some artists along with bootlegs. You can also download from this site most of their files in the file format of your choice, such as MP3, MP4, WMA etc.

Many of the record industry bodies are saying this site is illegal, yet apparently under Russian law it is perfectly legal as long as the owners pay a percentage of the profit made per track / album to the Russian copyright federation (ROMS). I suspect that the record industry bodies don’t like the fact that a) the prices are cheap per track and b) that the record labels / artists are not making any money out of the site

I myself have not yet used this site, as I am unsure whether as a British Citizen I am able to do so legally under British law. Once I have an answer to this, and the answer says I am allowed to then I will start using this site to buy music online, and I will post my findings on my blog.

This site I hope will shake up music download services as I feel if they can charge $0.20 a track, then why do services such as iTunes have to charge £0.79 a track? I guess they are trying to make as much money as possible.

Music Pirates

I read an interesting article recently, where according to the CEO of Universal Music Group (UMG), the iPod and Zune music players are repositories for stolen music. UMG have recently brokered a deal with Microsoft so that for every Zune sold, Microsoft will pay UMG $1 as compensation (this was the only way Microsoft could get UMG’s catalogue on the Zune store) for all the music that UMG believes Zune users will steal. It is claimed by UMG that 50% of the money will go directly to the artist. Interesting idea, but what about artists signed to labels other than UMG, do they get a cut? I would suspect not, since I see this as UMG feathering their own nest trying to make money wherever they can, and ensuring that the MP3 hardware makers are under their control.

What I do not like about this deal is that UMG does not care if you bought all your music legitimately you still owe them money, as they believe if you own an MP3 player then you download illegal music, and are labeled by them a thief, as you are denying them of money. I believe this deal amounts to theft, because it is not right to penalise someone who has bought all their music legitimately. One of the reasons I think UMG is doing this, is to try and persuade people to purchase it’s CD’s rather than download MP3’s as they makes money for them that way. Paying 79p to download a track from iTunes I suspect doesn’t make a lot of money for the artist, or record label, once the cost of providing the download is taken off.

I hope that when Microsoft starts to sell the Zune in Europe it does not broker a deal with UMG or any other music label, as it is not right. People have the right to purchase the music they want to, be that MP3, CD etc, and listen to it either on a CD player or MP3 player.

Apparently this is not the first time that Universal have tried to make things go their way, apparently in 1984 they sued Sony because they felt the Betamax video player infringed their copyright (it didn’t and they lost). Also in 1999 they got fined £91 million after being accused of CD price fixing.

There is a campaign on the internet at http://boycottumg.com/ suggesting that people boycott purchasing music by a UMG artist, to make UMG aware that not all MP3 player owners are thief's / pirates.