Digital TV Blog

Trouble in the Jackson family

Soap opera EastEnders will tackle the issue of child sex abuse in what could potentially be a controversial storyline, the BBC has announced.

The plot will involve Bianca Jackson’s 15 year old stepdaughter Whitney, played by Shona McGarty - pictured right - and her stepfather Tony who has not yet appeared on screen.

Full details of the storyline have not yet been released but commentators think that it will kick off when Tony is released from prison and appears in Albert Square.

A spokeswoman for EastEnders said the programme was working closely with the children’s charity the NSPCC to portray accurately the devastating effect of child abuse. “EastEnders is a contemporary drama which aims to tackle and reflect real life issues together with raising awareness of the sensitivities that sometimes accompany them,” she said. “EastEnders has successfully drawn attention in the past to a number of sensitive issues including domestic violence, rape and HIV.”

The NSPCC’s director of communications, John Grounds, said that programmes like EastEnders help raise awareness of the horrors of sexual abuse, which usually happens behind closed doors. “The NSPCC’s work with the BBC on the forthcoming EastEnders storyline is aimed at ensuring the portrayal of child abuse accurately reflects the damage it can do to the victim, their family and the wider community,” he said. “This is vital in persuading people to take action to stop it and encouraging children to speak out.”

The soap has been criticised in recent months by Ofcom for airing controversial storylines before the 9pm watershed. The regulator ruled that a story aired in February portraying a gang attack in the Queen Vic and a girl who went into premature labour, had shown “sustained violence, intimidation and menace”.

1080p for all, at last

Word on the street is that since the launch of Freesat a couple of months ago, take up of HD TV equipment has really started to take off. According to sales figures, there are approximately 10 million HD TV sets currently in use in British households, half a million of which are being used in conjunction with the Sky HD service, which, incidentally, is set to take a price tumble tomorrow.

Virgin, which has proudly boasted its own V+ HD digital TV service since inception, also commands a portion of this figure. However, it is thought until now, the majority of HD Ready TV sets have been purchases with the purposes of enjoying next-gen home entertainment in the form of Blu-Ray and HD DVD players, not to mention the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Yes, and the Wii, although we realise it’s technically not a next-gen console…

Anyway. Just as Freeview and Freeview Playback drove the increase in sales of switchover-ready Digital TV sets, Freesat looks all set to do the same for HD-compatible kit. Like Freeview, the main selling point of the Freesat package is the one-off install fee, no subscription deal which sees punters able to sign up for a whole bunch of HD channels all in one go.

If that wasn’t enough HD access to keep people happy, the BBC are reportedly trialling HD transmissions over Freeview, using the Guildford transmitter as a test bed, putting paid to rumours that HD on Freeview would never happen. The broadcast utilised the newfangled DVB-T2 spec, which apparently offers 30% more capacity than the standard DVB-T, on which the existing Freeview equipment runs.

Justin Mitchell, head of the DVB-T2 development team at the BBC, said: “This is a big step forward in enabling the introduction of full HD terrestrial on Freeview by the end of 2009.”

The DVB-T2 specification means that Freeview punters will almost certainly have to buy a new set-top box, which prompts the question why bother waiting when you could just shell out for Freesat now? Well, the problem with Freesat is that it requires a dish to be fitted to the side of a property, and for structural and contractual reasons, this isn’t an option.

2009 is also well in advance of the 2012 switchover and just in time for the Olympic Games, meaning that every British household ought to be able to see that high-watermark acheivement of graphic design that is the London 2012 Olympics logo in super-high 1080 progressive scan resolution.

More Prime Time Reality Family Fun

Amateur choir is to be given a prime-time face-lift on a new show hosted by Myleen Klass and Nick Knowles. Last Choir Standing, to be shown on BBC1, will scour the country for the choir with the most talent, passion and pizzazz. The two presenters will be joined by a panel of judges, X-factor style – the much-loved Tenor Russell Watson, Holby City actress and west-end singer Sharon D. Clarke, and seasoned choral conductor Suzi Digby OBE. The 27 choirs who make it onto the programme will gradually be whittled down to six, when the audience decide who to keep and who to boot.

The choirs couldn’t be more diverse, from a group of hip-hop street kids who struggle to follow the music or the conductor and the all-male Hertfordshire Police Choir to a group of handbag-wielding housewives singing Britney Spears.

Singing in choirs is apparently one of Britain’s favourite pastimes with over 25,000 registered choirs and at least half a million members. “It’s one of the things the UK truly excels at,” says Suzi. “More than any other country, we have an amazing amateur tradition. We are the only country with a 1,000-year unbroken tradition of cathedral choir schools. It is one of the things we really do well.”

Nonetheless, choirs have not always been seen as cool and many of us hold back from singing in public. “There was this idea that if you were going off to choir practice, you were a sad loser,” Suzi continues.

“People also get a psychological block about singing. Parents say their children can’t, siblings laugh – it doesn’t take much for it all to shut down.”

Still, the programme aims to raise the profile of choral Singing. Co-host Nick Knowles, better known as the host of DIY SOS and City Hospital, enthuses that “The public will be treated to some fantastic performances from all the choirs, and it will ultimately be up to them to decide who will be the Last Choir Standing. This will be entertainment television at its best – getting the whole country involved.”
Last Choir Standing will air on Saturday Nights on BBC1 next month.

Rock docs on the Beeb

BBC4 are tonight showing a trio of documentaries on British rock relics Pink Floyd, after initial runs proved successful in the ratings department.  First broadcast earlier this year to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the release of debut album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and shown again a couple of weeks ago, The Pink Floyd Story: Which One’s Pink? (BBC4, 9:30pm) traces the formative years of the band from their underground psychedelic roots to their laser-light display world-conquering tours.

The documentary features plenty of rare footage, with clips from the infamous Pompeii concert (which was released in British cinemas – when does that happen these days?) and interviews with the four surviving members – Roger Waters, Dave Gilmour, Nick Mason and Richard Wright. This is followed up by a Classic Albums doc (BBC4, 10:30pm), which takes a look at The Dark Side of the Moon, the bands most well-known and biggest selling record.

Much of the focus on the late Syd Barrett, the original frontman and chief songwriter of the band in its formative incarnation is reserved for the Omnibus documentary (BBC4, 11:20pm) shown later. The programme charts Barrett’s rise, how he transformed the band from a pop rock covers act into a powerful artistic force, and his eventual drug-fuelled decline, becoming a poster boy for rock casualties in the process.

After having played Keith Richards to perfection in Pirates of the Caribbean, Johnny Depp announced in an interview sometime last year that he’d be interested in playing Barrett in a film – this has sparked a heated online debate, with Petition Online playing host to two for and against petitions, which can be found here and here.

EDIT: we’re sorry to report that none of these programmes were shown last night; a cock-up on our office’s Freeview box was incorrectly displaying programmes from last week - we realised this when we saw that the same programmes were displayed on the EPG this morning. Technology eh?

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.

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.

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.

Digital satellite for the masses

Freesat, the UK’s latest package of free-to-air digital satellite TV channels, has now gone live, allowing viewers access to standard-definition and HD broadcasts for a single, one-off payment.

Freesat, whose logo (left) looks like a handful of colourful guitar plectrums, is the long-awaited result of the collaboration between terrestrial providers ITV and the BBC, which can offer free-to-air channels to regions of the country, such as Cornwall, which currently cannot receive Freeview.

It is rumoured that the BBC iPlayer, along with Project Kangaroo, will become available on Freesat within a year.

Punters fork out for a dish and a set-top box, of which there will be two versions available, SD-only and an HD compatible version. The SD-only kit is mooted to be around £49, with HD receivers reportedly costing around £120-£150. A series of integrated Freesat-compatible iDTV sets are also set to be released, presumably in both SD and HD incarnations.

There is also said to be a one-off installation fee of around £80, although this is said to be variable due to the physical constraints of the property in question, and where in the country the dish is being fitted.

Then there’s installation, which Freesat today said will in the region of £80, though the exact figure will depend on the nature of the property to which the dish will be connected and where in the country it’s located.

Regulator chooses to “take the money and run”.

As we welcome in the new year, its sad to see that the future of HD on the Freeview platform looks ever more doubtful. Ofcom’s Philip Rutman has been quoted as saying that “There is no compelling case for the spectrum to be set aside for specific purposes,” which can almost certainly be taken to be read as ’spectrum will not be set aside for terrestrial HD.’

The quote comes from electrical retail news website ERT Weekly, who accuse Ofcom of ‘taking the money’, by effectively allowing the majority of the broadcast spectrum to be bought up by the highest bidders, despite Channel 4 and the BBC already committed to broadcasting content in HD before 2012.

For HD fans, the only non-subscription solution available looks likely to be the forthcoming Freesat service jointly run by the BBC and ITV, which promises over 80 digital channels and the ability to upgrade to HD for an additional one-off cost.

But the problem with Freesat is that a satellite dish is required to receive the service – for structural or aesthetic reasons, not everybody can or will want to fix a dish to the side of their home, and so a Freeview version would be the ideal solution for people who either can’t have or don’t want Freesat.

The many manufactures, including Sony, Samsung and Toshiba, who are behind the HDforAll campaign also potentially stand to lose out on revenue from HD TV sets that would not necessarily be purchased is a high-definition terrestrial solution could not be worked out.