All posts by J.Purkis
Below are all of J.Purkis's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
Well it seems Rubert got what he ultimately wanted, buy up the opposition then destroy it. It looks like freeview becomes even more limited in its service. Its a shame the licence for the freeview slots wasn't forfitted for this act. I thought freeview was a alternative to SKY but he is steadily worming his way into that as well and stopping quality free to air channels going on the freeview line up. David White, is this the same Channel One that I have just read on this home page that Rubert Murdoch will be closing. If so problem solved.
So where would the second HD channel from the BBC sit? My wife just told me that the old Virgin 1 channel was due to show the new series of V, any idea if SKY will show this on one of their other channels? On Newsbucket I cannot go to link 'Sky TV Branded A Rip-Off' is this unique to me or is there a problem Thx John
So doing a quick calc 3HD channels=24Mbps and a 4th HD channel=32Mbps, does this leave 8Mbps of free space? On the subject of picture ratio's Its quite frustrating that the options available have increased but also have made it worse. I have a wide screen LCD tv but if I buy a wide screen DVD or Blueray film sometimes the picture fills the whole screen and other times I will get a top and bottom black line. If I try to remove this the picture looks stretched. My TV also has aspects of 4.3, 16.9, zoom1, zoom2, zoom3, and auto. With zoom I loose a good portion of the original picture. Why are the DVD ratio sometimes in(2.35:1) and others in (1.85:1). You shouldn't pay good money for DVD's and only get to watch them on half the screen. I suppose somewhere it made business sense. I have just read the newsbucket article on BSkyB complaint to Ofcom about YouView. It seems to me that Murdoch is saying to the British public I don't mind you having access to new ideas in TV as long as I can charge you to do it and I certainly wont let a rival provide it for free. Its not what I call giving the public a choice. Brian, does this mean that all freesat channels had to have been first unencripted by SKY even the BBC ones in order for them to be viewed on a freesat box. Would this also mean that any company wishing to put a channel on the freesat format would effectively need SKY's blessing. Brian, So if say Discovey, National Geo or MTV wanted to put their channels on freesat then SKY would say fine but you can't also have them on SKY's subscription service. So they would have them removed or am I getting confused? Brian,
What a difference a photo makes, apart from the chin hair I wouldn't have recognised that your new photo is the same person. It makes you look 20 years younger. My impression of you has changed. Brian I wanted to read the link in Newsbucket about 25 Sky employees to be sacked for given away SKY packages but I can't find the article stated in the link. Is this a mistake? Thx John
Brian, Could you explain what 'guide plus' is and what I may be losing? We have SKY+ and use their EPG almost all the time but if I wanted to use freeview through my Panasonic TX-37LZD85 TV can I still view all available channels and update new channels and view channel details etc. Is Guideplus the actual EPG or just the EPG tweeked a little. Brian,
So my freeview decoder built into my TV will still display channel info etc in its current format but any features unique to GuidePlus+ might not work. I'm just trying to get it straight in my head what you get extra on Guideplus+ EPG. Is it more related to PVR devices to enable quick recording etc.
Brian,
Sorry to harp on, have both a Samsung and a Panasonic digital TV both display the same channel info but the graphics on the screen are different. I assume because all manufacturers choose seperate layouts for their EPG's. The article above suggests that the above equipment will not have any electronic programme guide at all. I assume this would not be the case. Brian,
Yes my Panasonic does have the Guideplus+ logo on it but I only use the freeview decoder ,inbuilt, rarely.I refer to my earlier post. The article above suggests that the above equipment will not have any electronic programme guide at all. I assume this would not be the case. Will I lose the programme guide (a frozen screen ) or will it still work but without the Guideplus+ features? Im not sure what Guideplus+ actually does. Do you mean buying another external decoder because I won't be able to use the inbuilt one. I already have five devices attached to my TV and don't really want to add another especially when one of the reasons I bought the TV was that it had freeview built in. Will all the above devices lose the capability of receiving and decoding freeview or just the Guideplus+ bit. This I feel wasn't clear in your original article. Sorry to be a pain. Hello brian, hope you had a great xmas and all the best for the new year,
After much looking into DAB and the benefits or not over freeview radio and not wanting much for christmas my wife surprised me and got me a PURE CHRONOS CD, well so far I am very impressed, the features over a normal clock radio are well worth the price. It does all I want it to and more. I can now listen to all my main stations without manually tuning. The biggest bonus is that it has Radio5SX so I can listen to the cricket without the need to turn on a freeview tv. A big thumbs up for DAB and PURE for a great package. My opinion of Richard Branson has diminished little. For surely after all that court action with SKY in the past he seems to have thrown in the towl a bit to easily. But I suppose business is business. He surely must of known that SKY wasn't interested in keeping these channels going. Are there any big players left that can challenge SKY or are we destined to only watch stuff on freeview if SKY wishes us to watch it? Well its almost checkmate for SKY. Ive just noticed that EurosportHD which used to be included on the SKYHD package has been removed unless I subscribe to SKY sports. Its good to know the package I signed up for has been altered if I want the same level of package I need to pay them more money. What is in store for the new year? Maybe SKY could remove all the shopping and religious channels from my package and give me the option whether I want to subscribe to these. Maybe they could charge me extra for viewing the movies currently on the BBC, ITV, C4, C5 etc. Its really unfair competition for SKY that I can currently watch them free. Think of something totally ridiculous that would never happen and by this time next year it probably will. I know what you mean Brian but they have sort of done it anyway with ITV2HD, ITV3HD, ITV4HD and CHANNEL5HD. I know it was a deal done between SKY ITV and CHANNEL5 and there was space issues as well on freeview/freesat but it restricts these channels to SKY subscribers and makes the other formats weaker. Drm+ what exactly is this and will you need New equipment to receive it? Surely the government should have made it legal that any channels that are free to air in this country should have free slots on any broadcasting format that has a significant audience market share. But for SKY to lose this small revenue source now would surely mean that the money would recuperated through another subscription increase. How many of these are just decoders bought as compared to decoders that are inbuilt into new TV's?
I don't think that freesat is a real challenger to SKY people are being forced to look for a cheaper way of watching TV in these harder times. SKY have been quite successful in keeping away any quality choice from freesat. It could have potentially been much more than it actually is.(there isn't the 200+ channels as promised at launch)
Compare the channel line up of freesat and freeview on this site, its mostly identical, both have the same big five channels as well as the extra digital ones. Both have an equal amount of poor quality shopping and foreign news channels.
Freesat should at least have more HD channels like ITV2HD etc and more variety in music, documentries and childrens TV. If some of the exclusive channels could be prised away from SKY like cartoonetwork, Discovery, Eurosport or MTV then that might cause SKY some concern. 
Hi Brian,
I've been looking into buying a dreambox but are struggling to find out what channels I can actualy receive from it and what it can do, most youtube videos etc are misleading.
Are you able to do an article on this subject and possibly a list of what channels are available as compared to freesat. I do appretiate that it may be a complex answer.
Thanks John P I don't wish to seem nosy but is Briantist away? Is jb38 filling in? jb38 Thankyou for your reply and keep up the good work. 
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