Digital TV Blog

Fangs four the reminder

Channel 4 are showing their teeth this Saturday, with a pointy pair of modern vampire flicks. First up on the mortician's slab is comic book sequel Blade II, which bucks the usual superhero movie sequel trend by a) being good and b) not requiring the viewer to have seen the first one.

This 2002 outing was directed by one Guillermo del Toro, who would later find fame as the chap who created the weird and wonderful Pan's Labyrinth, and visually is darker than the first film, and features a stunning turn by Luke Goss, former frontman for late eighties boy band Bros, as a vampire lord with a double-jointed mandible.

Vampires, or to be pedantic John Carpenter's Vampires, is an altogether slightly less enjoyable affair, but worthy of checking out because it stars James Freakin' Woods as a gun totin' vampire killer for hire.

Also we've just discovered that the sequel to this film was made – Vampires : Los Muertos – and it stars none other than Bon Jovi himself as the lead character. Unbelievably, this release went straight to video. Anyone who can find us a copy and send it in wins a prize.

Play games, watch Blur-Ray movies, and digital TV

Sony has confirmed that the PlayStation 3's PlayTV digital video recorder add-on will be available in four months' time. PlayTV will ship to Europe in September for €100, which equates to about £80ish over here, but you can bet your bottom penny that stores will find a way of rounding that up to a nice square £100.

The PlayTV device connects to a PS3, effectively turning the big black monolith into a sexed-up Freeview box and features two tuners, allowing you to watch one programme, whilst recording another, with all the recorded programmes stored on the PS3 hard drive.

PlayTV also ties in neatly with the Sony-Sky Go!View partnership; recorded content can be sent out across the internet to a PSP for viewing on the move. Result!

The PS3 initially sold poorly, but sales of the super-powerful machine have recently picked up, due to a cut in the cost of hardware and the fact that the massively popular Grand Theft Auto IV has just been released on the platform. The fourth installment of Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear Solid series is also due to make its exclusive debut on the console this autumn.

Human Interest or Human Freakshow?

Sometimes, watching TV here amid the comforts of the 21st Century makes me feel like we've somehow slipped back in time to an age of Victorian values if recent late evening viewing is anything to go by. Producers in telly land have seemingly tapped into a hitherto uncharted audience demographic – freakshow and body horror enthusiasts.

The year zero of this televisual fixation can probably be traced to Channel 4's Bodyshock series, which began in 2003 and has being going strong ever since; this year the series brought us The Girl with Eight Limbs: Goddess, about Lakshmi Tatama from India who was actually a one of a pair of conjoined twins, and I am the Elephant Man concerning Huang Chuncai from China, who had a 20 kilogram tumour growing out of his face.

Next was Bizarre ER on BBC Three, a documentary filmed on location in the A&E ward of Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, which showcased a series of wince-inducing testicle related injuries and golf ball attacks to the mouth. The tone was generally less sympathetic to those who were born with deformities, complete with ha-ha animated diagrams of the three most common types of testicular injury.

Channel 4 later struck back with a documentary called Living Doll: My Fake Baby, about women who keep ultra-realistic dolls in lieu of actually having real children. Perhaps sensing that it was being outdone in the bad taste stakes, last night Five waded in with Strangelove, a shocker which detailed the obsession of a pair of self-described "mechaphiles," men who love their cars perhaps a bit too much.

What would Mary Whitehouse say? Filth: The Mary Whitehouse Story (BBC Two) was a 90-minute piece on the self-appointed guardian of taste and decency, which took a look at her apparent humourous side, and portrayed her as a David versus the BBC's Goliath - Maybe that was the joke. Chances are she would have denounced all of the above without having watched any of them beforehand.

BB9 promises to be nastier than ever

Summertime heralds some prime sports viewing – county cricket, and either the World Cup/European Football Championship every two years, and the Olympic Games. However in recent years, we've seen the rise of a perhaps unorthodox form of spectator sport – Big Brother.

It's getting close to the date again where water cooler chat will be dominated by antics of what people only known by their given first names got up to in the house last night. Channel 4 have just begun running teaser shots of the Eye of Sauron-style logo in between ad breaks; the new shiny Big Brother logo is the familiar emblem made up from fragments of broken glass.

According to shouty presentress Davina McCall, who, contrary to rumour, will be returning for this series, Big Brother is going to be much tougher on contestants than it has been in the past:

"Big Brother is no longer going to be lenient in any way, shape or form. If there's any kind of rule breaking, they're going to come down on them like a ton of bricks.

"They're basically gonna make housemates suffer a bit more, which will be a good thing, I think."

We couldn't agree more. After the spectacularly bad Shilpa Shetty palaver was followed up by the epic fail of Peaches Geldof clone Emily Parr last year, it's about time Big Brother started dishing out serious whup ass for infractions.

The show could be livened up by the producers spiking the water supply with caffeine so that no-one gets any sleep, and then releasing funnel-web spiders into the house in the dead of night. Ninja assassins could stealthily descend from the ceiling when contestants are asleep to administer wet willies and sock beatings before slinking off into the shadows.

Maybe that's a bit too much. Or is it? What would you like to see happen to any of the 16 housemates who err on the rules this summer?

Brilliant TV for everyone?

Apparently, Freesat has been unable to keep up with orders for its HD equipment, and has issued a warning of a shortage "due to very high demand".

In the May Update message on its site, Freesat say that; "there is a shortage of Freesat HD boxes in the shops at the moment. We are working with Freesat retailers and manufacturers to increase supplies as soon as possible.

"In the meantime some Freesat retailers will allow you to reserve HD boxes for collection when stock comes in. The Freesat website will continue to give you updates." Of the HD Ready Freesat boxes on offer, there are/were four models available from Bush, Goodmans, Grundig and Humax, all priced between £120 and £170 each.

Freesat, the new subscription-free satellite service developed by the BBC and ITV, was formally launched last week, and looks pretty sweet all in all, with the traditional Freeview channels – BBC's One to Four, More 4, etc – plus HD options from BBC HD and ITV HD, with presumably 4 HD, currently available on Sky, to follow.

Picnic basket shut until next year

Sky's Picnic pay-TV service on Freeview will be launched until this time next year, if at all, after Ofcom announced that the ongoing inquiry into whether the service will be damaging to competition within the digital TV market.

Sky wants to replace its Sky Three channel on Freeview with a range of other entertainment, news and sports channels, allowing DTT customers to get access to selection of Sky's premier content, presumably, Sky One, Sky News and some of the Sky Sports channels.

Ofcom has now said that is has to consider the bigger picture with regard to the Picnic proposals and how it will affect the pay-TV market as a whole, and not just Freeview customers. Factors influencing this will be the result of the Sky and Virgin Missing Channels saga, and a separate investigation launched concerning Sky's dominant position in the marketplace.

The regulator said that: "Ofcom [has] recognised that there are issues raised by the Sky proposal that will inform the [wider] market investigation and vice versa."

Sky proposed Picnic over a year ago - this further delay will be very frustrating for the satcaster, who see the provision of their sports content on Freeview as not being any different to Setanta selling their Setanta Sports pack to terrestrial viewers.

Mike Darcey, Sky's chief operating officer, said: "Ofcom has already recognised that Picnic would deliver increased choice, and it is disappointing that customers will be denied these benefits by an extended regulatory process. More than a year has passed since our initial application, with no definitive conclusion in sight."

Project Kangaroo given the hop

The highly anticipated video-on-demand and catch-up service being jointly-developed by the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 is apparently going to launch under the name 'SeeSaw', according to a recently leaked report.

The service, known so far as Project Kangaroo, due to the fact that it would allow viewers to 'hop' from channel to channel has been provisionally renamed SeeSaw, possibly for phonetic reasons, almost certainly because it rolls off the tongue a lot better than Project Kangaroo did.

The trans-channel VoD platform is said to launch sometime next year. BBC Worldwide has yet to seek approval from the BBC Trust, while the project is also being investigated by the Office of Fair Trading.

Currently the project exists in name only - there are no details on how the service would work, whether it would follow the iPlayer/4oD format of offering a 7-day online catch-up service, an archive facility or a combination of the two.

It has been suggested that newly launched Freesat platform will eventually allow customers to stream or view downloaded content from the BBC iPlayer on their living room screens, echoing the recent BBC and Virgin Media agreement.

Gladiators Ready?

Last night we got our first taster of the new, improved Gladiators, on Sky One. So how was it?

Difficult to say at this stage; at Digital TV towers we were looking forwards to this with an unnerving degree of anticipation, to the point that we were beginning to invent Gladiator names for each other (Inhaler, the Slanket and Ampersand).

So we're quite sad to report that the inaugural showing was something of a misfire. The new theme tune is forgettable to say the least - no squealing guitars, no 80's drum fills, no horn section - sounding as it does like one of the tracks left on the cutting room floor from Nine Inch Nails' ambient glum-hop Ghosts I-IV album.

Worryingly the audience was noticeably smaller, there was no sea of big foam hands, and where was 'Another One Bites the Dust?' Britney Spears' 'Hit Me Baby One More Time' isn't a worthy replacement.

New Gladiators include Oblivion, a lairy 'did you spill my pint?' type with a neckline like a flying buttress who fancies himself as the new Wolf, mouthing off to contestants and generally being an arse. Thing is, Wolf was a badass by virtue of the fact that he was a man of few words and he had a mullet. Enigma also has a pretty stupid nom de guerre - the only real enigma being why the producers decided to roll with such as crap name.

The show was saved (only just) by the knowingly camp Spartan, the ancient Greek-type warrior ponce who loved it up for the cameras with some frankly baffling poses, and some awesome pratfalls courtesy of the contenders falling arse over tit into the giant swingballs on the Hit & Run event.

The pugil-tastic Duel matches lasted a mere handful of seconds each, with the Gladiators sending the mere mortal contenders into the drink below. Oh yeah, we forgot to mention: instead of the huge inflatable red mats, all the events involving a big fall now take place over huge swimming pools, and so a more satisfying splash follows those unlucky combatants who take a tumble.

Hopefully the series will pick up - we want to see more of Inferno, Spartan, and Anderson please. And bring back the old theme! The new one sucks!

The Players Championship at Sawgrass has teed off on Setanta Sports, with Sergio Garcia currently leading the way, with a total of -6, two points above joint second placers Kenny Perry and Paul Goydos, with defending champion Phil 'Lefty' Mickelson currently languishing somewhere outside the top ten; it seems as though the TPC jinx is in effect, for the time being at least.

The tournament, unofficially considered to be the 'Fifth Major' still draws a huge amount of attention, probably due to the infamous nature of the Stadium Course at Sawgrass - an epic, undulating monstrosity at the centre of which is the dreaded 17^th hole, the Island Green - a tiny hole set on a peninsula which juts out into an circular lake in which hundreds of balls get lost every year.

The Island Green is considered by pgatour.com to be 'Golf's most intimidating hole' and in the US, sports channel ESPN dedicates an entire channel to coverage from the hole during the Players Championship - it is here, across 78 feet of fairway surrounded by water and punctuated by a strategically placed sand trap where PGA world leaders are humbled.

It's still not too late to get in on the action; for more information on singing up for the Setanta Sports pack, click here.

Even more talks

It turns out that TV rivals Sky and Virgin Media have been having more talks concerning the return of the missing channels to the cable platform. Virgin Chief Executive Neil Berkett told Reuters that administrative changes played a part in the discussions; "It's fair to say that with a change at the top of both organizations, there is a dialogue and there's no sort of emotional legacy that would hold us back," he said yesterday.

Last year, Neil Berkett stepped into the shoes of Steve Burch, and James Murdoch stepped down from the top spot, allowing Jeremy Darroch to take the reins.

Virgin Media have another reason to be cheerful - churn has fallen significantly in the last quarter, with the rate falling to 1.2 per cent during the first three months of 2008 - in Q2 of last year, this rate peaked at around 1.8 per cent.

Virgin Media also added a net figure of 4,900 new cable customers - its third successive quarter of customer growth despite the seasonally-quieter post-Christmas period.