Coming Soon to Virgin TV (2011) Vol. II.

[Doz007]

Originally Posted by DJ Dave

http://hcc.techradar.com/blogs/team+...stage+09+06+09

that is the one i think

Wow, I've never seen that before. Do you have anymore links related to it's development, I love reading into stuff like this.

[batchain]

Originally Posted by Doz007

Wow, I've never seen that before. Do you have anymore links related to it's development, I love reading into stuff like this.

http://www.pushbutton.tv/work/interactive-tv-developers

[Doz007]

Originally Posted by batchain

http://www.pushbutton.tv/work/interactive-tv-developers

Thanks for that, looks like a really clean UI. I wonder why VM chose not to take this EPG any further?

[pauldavies83]

Originally Posted by BenMcr

Yes but I believe that would involve Sky paying the BBC for it to be written

Or Sky dropping some sort of Flash player/HTML renderer into their code to access the existing publicly available apps.

[GODLY]

Fujitsu unveils plans to bring fibre to 5 million homes and businesses in rural Britain


London, 13th April 2011 — Fujitsu, one of the world’s largest technology and communications companies, today announced plans to work in collaboration with Virgin Media, TalkTalk and Cisco to deliver next generation internet services to 5 million homes in rural Britain.

http://www.fujitsu.com/uk/news/pr/fs_20110413.html


I know the press release only talks about Broadband but with Virgin Media's collaboration, does this mean that they will also use this for TV services?

Good if they do!

[TheDon]

Originally Posted by pauldavies83

Or Sky dropping some sort of Flash player/HTML renderer into their code to access the existing publicly available apps.

It's not as simple as that.
The boxes have to have a chipset that is capable of running said player.

It's not like a PC where you have the processing grunt to do whatever you feel like, these are specialist chipsets with highly specialised instruction sets that do a limited amount of tasks extremely well, and that's about it. Everything they do is hardware accelerated, whereas a PC you can just do it in software.

If the chipset the boxes run don't support flash then no amount of code dropping will bring them flash support.

---------- Post added at 12:54 ---------- Previous post was at 12:47 ----------

Originally Posted by GODLY

Fujitsu unveils plans to bring fibre to 5 million homes and businesses in rural Britain


London, 13th April 2011 — Fujitsu, one of the world’s largest technology and communications companies, today announced plans to work in collaboration with Virgin Media, TalkTalk and Cisco to deliver next generation internet services to 5 million homes in rural Britain.

http://www.fujitsu.com/uk/news/pr/fs_20110413.html


I know the press release only talks about Broadband but with Virgin Media's collaboration, does this mean that they will also use this for TV services?

Good if they do!

You know schemes like this actually annoy me.

Why the hell does rural Britain need FTTH, and why the hell should rural Britain end up with subsidised internet access that is FAR greater than what city dwellers will get?

Sure bring them decent access in line with what most cities can get, but FTTH capable of 1gbps? Give me a break.

I doubt most urban areas will see FTTH for a long long time. Hey maybe when the countryside has it the government can throw some money at catching the cities up with the rural areas!

[foxtrot_yankee]

Originally Posted by TheDon

...these are specialist chipsets with highly specialised instruction sets that do a limited amount of tasks extremely well, and that's about it.

I wouldn't say my Cisco STB does anything extremely well.

[pauldavies83]

Originally Posted by TheDon

It's not as simple as that.
The boxes have to have a chipset that is capable of running said player.

It's not like a PC where you have the processing grunt to do whatever you feel like, these are specialist chipsets with highly specialised instruction sets that do a limited amount of tasks extremely well, and that's about it. Everything they do is hardware accelerated, whereas a PC you can just do it in software.

If the chipset the boxes run don't support flash then no amount of code dropping will bring them flash support.[COLOR="Silver"]

I'm aware of that, but do you know what exactly is inside the Sky+HD box?

The original TiVo took everyone by surprise by what it was capable of doing.

And they wouldn't necessarily need Flash support. There is already a BigScreen implementation of iPlayer that doesn't use Flash - the interface is HTML and the video is h.264 - that could easily distribute one of the many formats the BBC have on the backend in storage for each video asset - I'd suspect the box will have the decoder to play one of them.

[clinteastman]

Originally Posted by TheDon

It's not as simple as that.
The boxes have to have a chipset that is capable of running said player.

It's not like a PC where you have the processing grunt to do whatever you feel like, these are specialist chipsets with highly specialised instruction sets that do a limited amount of tasks extremely well, and that's about it. Everything they do is hardware accelerated, whereas a PC you can just do it in software.

If the chipset the boxes run don't support flash then no amount of code dropping will bring them flash support!

Getting HTML on there is almost as bad too, the thing with modern HTML interpreters/engines is that an amazing amount of work goes into them just to make them run at a decent speed with full compatibility on decent hardware. Something like a STB is going to have a hard time hitting what we have come to see as the norm without a lot of work and investment. To see my point give the PS3 browser a go.

[BenMcr]

Originally Posted by pauldavies83

The original TiVo took everyone by surprise by what it was capable of doing.

I thought the original TiVo was basically a low powered PC running Linux?

[carlwaring]

It was. Still doesn't mean people weren't surprised by the functionality. The OS was Linux, the Tivo software was, and still is, proprietory.

[BenMcr]

Originally Posted by carlwaring

It was. Still doesn't mean people weren't surprised by the functionality. The OS was Linux, the Tivo software was, and still is, proprietory.

What I was getting at is that the TiVo boxes were (and still are) pretty powerful and could be changed to add functionality because the hardware could support it

Quite unlike a normal STB where the hardware is designed to do a specific job, so adding new functions requires a new box.

[clinteastman]

Originally Posted by BenMcr

What I was getting at is that the TiVo boxes were (and still are) pretty powerful and could be changed to add functionality because the hardware could support it

Quite unlike a normal STB where the hardware is designed to do a specific job, so adding new functions requires a new box.

Yeah there is no point specing out a box with a powerful chipset if you don't need it, it just runs up costs (and as far as Sky goes) cuts into the profits you make from the box sale.

[TheDon]

Plus you have to bear in mind there's multiple versions of the Sky HD box out there, all with different chipsets. Whilst some may be able to support it there's no guarantee all will.

[denphone]

Any more news on more channel launches in the future.