Digital Switchover Is 'A Mystery'

27/6/2008

Courtesy of BBC News

Many people are still buying analogue TV sets unaware that they will soon need extra equipment to make them work, according to a report from MPs.

A parliamentary report claims that many viewers do not understand the implications of the digital switchover, despite a £200m campaign. It says the digital tick labelling scheme for digital TVs is a "mystery" to many sales staff and customers. Almost half of all TV sets sold in the first half of 2007 were analogue.

However, once the analogue signal is switched off completely those sets will not receive programmes without their owners paying for extra equipment. The report did find the switchover timetable, which is taking place region-by-region until 2012, was on track to complete on time.

The report also criticises the government for "not taking adequate safeguards to secure value for money" in the digital conversion scheme. It paid £803m of licence fee money to the BBC to deliver digital switchover, without ensuring proper accountability for the way the money is spent, the report said.

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Maidstone to Run Pioneer Trial of Mobile WiMax

27/6/2008

Courtesy of Times Online

Maidstone, Kent, is an unlikely spot to go surfing despite being on the Medway as it snakes north on its route to the Thames Estuary.

However, the home of the Liquorice Allsort could be reborn next month when the town will become the first place in Britain to trial mobile WiMax, the latest phase of next-generation on-the-go web surfing. The wireless broadband technology has been described as “wi-fi on steroids” and has a range of up to 25 miles, compared with the mere 100ft radius that wi-fi offers.

The Maidstone pilot, a collaboration between the Mobile WiMax Acceleration Group (MWAG) and Maidstone Borough Council, will test services such as internet tele-phony, real-time video streaming and live broadcast and experiment with running the council's CCTV over the network.

In consumer trials, 50 students will be given data cards, loaded with virtual cash, to let them connect their laptops to the WiMax network and allow them to buy music and other content online. Mr Kerl Haslam, chairman of MWAG, hopes to target consumers who want access to high-speed internet but cannot afford a monthly contract.

Dave Lindsay, Maidstone Borough Council's IT manager, said that routing its CCTV over WiMax could save the council a £40,000 annual bill for renting optical fibre from BT and will allow the cameras to be moved around the town. He said: “A pilot with Kent Fire Brigade and Kent Police will allow emergency services to video stream live footage of incidents back to their own networks over WiMax.”

Mobile WiMax is similar to using a mobile nework and differs from networks using earlier WiMax technology that is being rolled out in the UK by wireless internet provider Freedom4, which required users to be stationary.

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Spurned Wife-Turned-YouTube Star Defends Videos

27/6/2008

Courtesy of Yahoo News

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A British actress who found YouTube fame after posting monologues about her failed marriage to a Broadway theatre owner and producer defended her popular videos in a New York court on Thursday.

Tricia Walsh Smith, 49, is fighting a claim by her husband, Philip Smith, 74, president of the Shubert Organization, that she engaged in spousal abuse by making the YouTube videos, which she says have been viewed more than 4 million times.

During the first day of their divorce trial, Walsh Smith said she made the videos after her millionaire husband threatened to leave her penniless. Several of the videos, made in the couple's Manhattan apartment, were played in court.  In them Walsh Smith accuses her husband and his daughters of conspiring to evict her from the plush apartment, and says she discovered her husband hoarding the impotence drug Viagra even though they never had sex.

"We don't live in the Middle East. I don't have to walk three steps behind my husband. I'm entitled to get angry and have an opinion," said Smith, who wore black-rimmed glasses and a brown button-down dress. She said that she sent mass e-mails, including one with a link to one of the YouTube videos, to "everybody in the theatre world" to ensure that friends and business associates of her husband would see it.

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