Is 4k the new 3D?

Despite gargantuan efforts in the broadcast equipment industry - and some subscription broadcasters who hoped there was a premium to charged -  the 3D home TV fairy's light is all but extinguished. And no amount of wishing by the likes of LG, Sony and Sky has been able to save it. But without pausing to try and understand why, the equipment business is ploughing straight into something that is even more costly and demanding to deliver.

TV set makers have had a pretty good run as we all migrated from VHF 405 to UHF 625 line displays; then adopted colour; then adopted widescreen. And then HD - although most of these adoptions have been painless because Moores law of the decreasing cost of tech advances, has meant the next generation tech costs little or nothing more than the old generation. The end of analogue broadcasting in the UK was a pretty big incentive to trade up at the same time that HD broadcasting was being promoted.

625 line standard definition TV is inescapably fuzzy when compared to 1080 line HD in the average living room on a 30-40" screen. But the analogue transmission format (and analogue video recorder formats like VHS) result in "pixel jitter" that exacerbates the lack of crisp definition. A digital 625 line picture (had one been available) would look considerably sharper than the analogue version.

The bad news for set makers is that modern TV sets last upwards of 10 years, where back in the days of valves (up to the 80s) , it was very rare for a set to go 3 years without a major breakdown. When LCD displays first appeared, no one really knew how long they would last. 3-5 years was a rough guess by the pioneers, but 10 years was easily achieved.

The 2014 NAB event in Las Vegas went all-out to try and promote the 4K or "Ultra HD"... since it's the only hope for the core technology providers to get a big boost in re-equipment sales. Regular HD equipment is now at commodity prices - and a £150 consumer Panasonic camera produces perfectly good results in most applications. Professional TV crews mostly avoid them for reasons of client credibility - not technical shortcomings; you simply can't continue to charge £5k to shoot a corporate promotional video on a £150 camera.




So I have to say I am suffering from 3D deja vu, and wonder if the industry has still not learned that longevity is all about the content, not the pixels. Good enough has got YouTube where it is today. 4k means 15-20Mbit of (dedicated) IP bandwidth, and it's not just the line speed to punters to consider, it's the exchange pileups where the aggregate amount required becomes humongous for probably not a lot of commercial return since only a very few will see the difference between HD and 4k.

Do we really need it? Content is king, and a duck on a skateboard still gets a gazillion YouTube views at 240x360 on a phone camera. Yes, the $250m blockbusters probably obliged to use the medium - but the rest of us?

News is only news once...

...  not when the same story is repeated 360 times a day. 

I am weary of seeing the same pieces repeated endlessly on all TV news channels.

So here's a radical idea: only allow the main news radio and TV "channels" to broadcast the same story once.

Yes, we know.....

If there is a breaking story then the broadcaster can now easily spawn another "red button" channel to deal with that specific topic.

I appreciate that the ability of one story to dominate the news is "the way it's always been", but there has been a sea change in technology at both ends of the link.

Broadcasters have massive technical resources that can deliver live video from just about anywhere on the planet in real time, and consumers have devices in their pockets capable of displaying it.

We need to force lazy traditional broadcasters to address the development of better online solutions. Just because there is a problem in one country like the Ukraine, it does not mean that all activity has ceased in all other parts of the planet, does it?

Lord Clarkson of Top Gear

I love the BBC and have done for a very long time. But now it's very much a grand British institution that has lost its way under poor management - which is much like another struggling stalwart of the British way of life, Lloyd's Bank. The loyal troops on the ground (and the paying customers) are long suffering victims of some of their arrogant and "disconnected" bosses' incompetence.

We are still finding out more all the time about the rate and scale of that BBC incompetence. The "far too easy come" money that went (just as easily) on greasing the various exits of already well over-paid executives is simply astonishing. It ought to be a resigning or dismissal (with no compensation) matter for any high level executive involved in the decision.

But we can at least commend the present leadership for not trying another logo change, and sticking with the one above since 1997. At the time the change of "corporate branding" to the simple thing above, from something not a different was as an ego trip for the DG, and costed estimated to have cost £1m, then £1.7m a year over three years of implementation. At 1997 prices!

We can all envisage the meetings of sincere and intense arty types to discuss and insist on this crucial landmark in our cultural history. I'm terribly sorry, I would have been beastly and taken all but £500 of that out of the main board's salaries.

It is a particular mark of the curious and profound relationship that the BBC has with the licence payers that its own "Logo history" page has been obliged to use content from one of those die-hard nerd sites (sorry, no other words conveys as much in so little) who has being doing the BBC's job for it.

The BBC has also relied on other TV aficionados to turn up long lost recordings of old shows that the BBC management in its wisdom had deleted or otherwise misplaced.

Could anyone have known back in the 70s that the internet would come along and give an extended lease of (commercial) life to just about every recording of anything ever made? The BBC hierarchy has not shown conspicuous prescience in matters of the future at any time since the very early days when it actively engineered that future with its own resources for the benefit of the nation; and the founding visionaries, talent and engineers were replaced by paedophiles, journalists and accountants, who now seem to buy-in just about everything from foreign suppliers.

Clearly there are many at the core of the BBC would also wish that Jeremy Clarkson could have been dumped for his robust and non-PC approach to life,  and broadcasting - but the international sales footprint of Top Gear is simply astonishing. Much to the chagrin of many delicate BBC egos, Jezza & Co have given the entire WORRRRLD what it wants.

Never mind just a Knighthood, maybe Lord Clarkson should be put in charge of the whole thing?

Phoney wars: Are you listening, Vodafone?

Regulars will know I am not a fan of BT or Vodafone in particular - but just about every telco deserves a decent kicking and berating for dodgy practises and outrageous marketing that is designed to confuse and prevents customers from making simple choices and switches. Worryingly, they seem to go to great lengths to ensure that they are all as cynical and outrageous as each other. There appears to be a general agreement not to offer any sort of customer service beyond that which a trained monkey can provide.

News that the EU commission has now forced all EU telcos to stop reaming their hapless customers with cartel-rigged rates for data (now "only" a maximum of 37p a MByte!) is long overdue. And as ever with heavy handed political intervention in technology, it is too late and quite pointless - but perhaps the idea that the EU get involved is enough to cause these outrageous monopolies to think their tactics out more carefully in future.

Vodafone pre-empted the EU move with its Eurotraveller product last year. This is actually a very fair proposition indeed - but when I went to Majorca recently all the outbound calls dropped a second after connecting. Vodafone's effusive twitter "support" was less use than a rubber hammer, and I even managed to reduce them to terseness by rejecting their various hopeless suggestions for me to find my own fix.

The US may be even worse since it has a generally more primitive cellular scheme than Europe, as a result of a very slow start; but the way that some hapless travellers got home to huge bills (as much as $201k!) is legendary. There is even a vast Wikipedia entry on the topic of EU roaming charges.

The whole point of a phone network is that once the network is in place, the cost of providing services is marginal to negligible. There is barely even any more electricity used on the network when a call is made. Once the fixed costs (like the outrageous licence fees - a vast stealth tax on the users) are covered it's almost all profit. Maybe all the execs are too busy working out their offshore taxation plans to notice their general services are so patchy.

This is a typical Vodafone customer reaction:

I'd like to give Vodafone credit for leaving this online, but I think its just because they can't be arsed to manage the forums closely, hoping that their users will talk amongst themselves while Vodapeople do more important things - like devise specious and arcane marketing propositions to confuse customers.

3rd party reviews are just a brutal.

And the way google thoughtfully suggested search phrases tells another tale that Vodafone PR would be advised to note. To be fair, I also I tried to find evidence that  "Vodafone is terrific"... but this is all the suggestions Google gave me.

Overall, it doesn't seem terribly encouraging for Vodafone, does it? I expect that all networks are about the same (although Google (UK) gave Virgin Mobile an almost clear rating in the above tests), and they will argue that they have so many customers that statistically there are going to be a large number of dissatisfied customers whatever they do.

It's just that Vodafone spends so much time "in my face" telling me how great they are, occupying costly shops in otherwise empty high streets, and spending £gazillions of F1 sponsorship, that I feel obliged to remind them that their own view of their wonderfulness is one that not widely shared.

BT- the worst on-hold music ever.

BT - have you no shame?

You would have thought a company that likes to kid the world it is a technology leader and provider of advanced business communication systems could do better than this, but they cannot.

This is their current on-hold music to business customers:-

I am not sure I can actually add anything more to this, other than to say it seems emblematic of a company that sweats its assets until they are not merely "tired" but they are beyond the grave.

Ancient copper infrastructure is patched and patched and remains crackling and faulty for years before proper remedial action is undertaken - and customers are obliged pay the same for a dreadful services, as the lucky ones living in areas where the local thieves have stolen all the copper, and it has been replaced by fibre.

Only BT shareholders could be impressed by this news - the BT phone system hold music is clearly being played on a decrepit 1980s tape machine that was written of in the accounts 30 years ago.

As customer PR goes, would you buy a £5000 fancy phone service from these people?

Lord Sugar and The Donald set about it

Well, the twitter war between Donald Trump and Lord Sugar that kicked off over Trump's intervention in UK wind farm policy (of all things) is still way out of hand at the time of writing....


It may be unedifying, but it is hilarious, as "The Donald" remains as impervious as ever to the state of his image as his famous hair "style" suggests. You need a pretty thick hide to be able sport that type of barnet in public.

Many folks still refuse to believe that this spat is for real, but be assured that it is indeed for real, and neither one wants to back down.

One twitter follower was good enough to send a link to this image of Donald Trump and a statically charged balloon.

 Meantime Lord Sugar is giving no quarter and the war of tweets continues...

However, Lord S may be overlooking the reality that the US is far more forgiving of business failure than the UK. The fact that Trump had failures some time ago is not the end of his world, or following. The fact that he appears to be dripping in money today is all that matters.

The suggestion of settling this feud like gentlemen using a duel with an Apprentice Challenge, and $1m charity stake, seems like a nice way out.

A triumph of organisation; how did that happen?

What a thoroughly nice way to spend ~£10,000,000,000

One of the better legacies of London 2012 is the very obvious fact that the Great British Olympic Experience has been a stark contradiction of many of the features of British life that have charted our national decline in the past 50 years.

It's all over for another 4 years.

Firstly our lottery/celeb "get rich quick" ethos: with the exception of the opening and closing ceremonies, we barely saw or heard from a politician "on duty", and there was no easy political point scoring to be had from anything going on anyway. Once the medals started flowing, and the traffic stayed flowing, there was apparently no blame of any sort to apportion, and with no blame to hand out, most pygmy politicians are lost for a comment. Unless they happen to be French, of course.

Secondly, the games asserted that no one won anything by just getting lucky (other than the odd conniving aussie cyclist) or merely being famous; all the winners (including the famous ones) got there by relentless gruelling preparation. British success was founded on relentless selection, elitism, preparation and in most instances, sacrificial levels of family support. But for there to be winners, there must also be losers - the exact opposite of the dogmatic ideas of the past 50 years that have driven the disastrous British educational experiment. And so the race to try and spin attention away from that particularly inconvenient truth is well under way in the media of the social engineering classes. Does anyone dare say " Big Society", I wonder?

Darcey Bussell flies in on a rocket
powered phoenix; as you do...

GB won big in sitting-down events requiring huge preparation, complex technical support and costly facilities; a few of our ruffians beat-up a few of their ruffians; but it is again apparent that we need not bother in the mostly skill-free events that are selected from the global gene pool, unless we import the right genes.

The best show bit was when Freddie Mercury was briefly but very effectively resurrected - which reminded us what a lot of padding nonsense we had also been forced to watch - in much the same way that an indulgent feast of succulent rare fillet steak and chips is nutritionally engineered to seem somehow healthier with a couple of token veg, so the entertainment was socially engineered to be less purely an indulgence of Britain's rock and pop excellence, and more spiritually nutritious with a side portion of yoof cabbage rap and multicultural bangla broccoli.

Never forget that the opening and closing ceremonies were carrying the embers of the torch of the New Labour vision that steered the event design from 2005-2010 to embody a very New Labour vision of a random, confused, classless and mostly aimless multicultural Britain. Remember the Millennium Dome?

But you had better like this - or else be declared negative, beastly and reactionary. Possibly  even worse. People have already been arrested for not smiling sufficiently.