Just…. wow!

As well as being a seriously amazing piece of camera work, a stunningly beautiful footage and as Engadget readers put it … Camera Porn - this is an epic leap in natural world film making by the BBC.

To get the full effect of the video above … wait until the BBC HD broadcast - but failing that click on HD and the full screen it.

It was filmed on a shockingly beautiful new customised camera build in a water tight casing. The camera is the $100,000 TyphoonHD4 camera.

It’s capable of filming in super slow motion and high def at 20 times the speed of a normal HD camera.

It can shoot at 1280 x 1024 resolution at 1000fps which was what allowed the camera man to shoot this amazing footage of surfer Dylan Longbottom inside a 12 foot monster barrel. This is a first of its kind.

Here is a longer version of that very same barell wave clip in the BBC EMP.

It was filmed for the new BBC Documentary series - South Pacific which is on BBC Two on Tuesday nights and also on BBC HD at the same time.

In fact lets make this our iPlayer pick as well.

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Using Beeb data to buy stuff

I’m a big fan of the various BBC data services and the way they all integrate with each other. Both the services themselves and the standard identifier codes they use.

What this basically means is that, when these services roll out more widely across the BBC site (remembering that the BBC site is a lot more than one big website - it is a collection of fiefdoms, held tightly and with a passion by a number of different teams and departments.

The data sites like /programmes, /music, /iplayer (although that is really based around /programmes and in future /events basically allow for persistent and constant content in a human and machine readable way.

For example a BBC programme will have a unique idetifies such as, we’ll use mine for this example: p001d7vp.

If you follow the link underneath that code it will take you to the /programmes page for my show ‘BBC Jersey Introducing’. The show does have its own section of the BBC Jersey website and you could argue that, as it is part of the Introducing family - it could do with being in the Introducing look and feel - but as it is broadcast on BBC Radio Jersey - that’s how it looks.

However, what /programmes and this seperate of data, design and structure provides is the flexibility to use the data contained underneath p001d7vp in a number of different ways.

For example it could be tied into /music (and probably will in the future) so that I can publish my playlist, you can click on the bands I played, find out who else has played them, listen to that show, find out more about the band and their other songs - see where they are being played.

This could also then in future tie into /events and show you when they’re playing on BBC Shows or when they HAVE played on BBC Shows which in turn could be tied into the new /buyersguide (currently Archers only) to show where you can buy tracks from those sessions on the internet.

Which actually brings me on to the point of this blog post - the newly launched BBC Buyers Guide. Something that seems so logical, and would be logical if it wasn’t for the way the BBC is funded.

Basically it uses the standard PIP identifier for a show to tell you where you can buy audio/video/book content associated with that particular programme - although right now its only The Archers.

But don’t worry the BBC gets no kick backs from the companies they list. Mark Friend wrote on the BBC Internet Blog: “And just to reassure you suppliers do not make any payments to the BBC, either for listing as part of this service or for any click-throughs.”

Mark went on to say that: “We hope that the ‘Buyer’s Guide’ will go some way to providing users with the opportunity to find out more about their favourite BBC content.”

I’m guessing the plan is that I’ll be able to go to the /programmes page for say Top Gear and then from there I’ll see a Buyers Guide link where I can find out all the sites online selling downloads, books, dvd’s, music etc associated with that programme.

It’s basically a BBC only version of Kelkoo but without ANY recommendations - it is a list of all the places you can get the product online - at least all the places that meet a set of strict, pre-published criteria for listing.

These include purchasing security, data protection and customer support.

In fact there is more information on why this is a justified new area for the BBC to go into on the Buyer’s Guide about page.

The BBC’s Public Purposes state that “the BBC is a trusted guide to the digital world for the inexperienced or unsure, a safe place to be for the young, a reliable and accurate on-air and online source for the information seeker, and a challenging and involving partner for the more advanced user.”

Research conducted on behalf of the BBC revealed that buying and consuming media online can be a confusing and daunting experience for new users, particularly those with concerns around security and legality.

Those of us that are familiar with and regular users of sites like Audible or the iTunes store might find that a little odd but there are people, more than not, who aren’t comfortable buying things online or even necessarily know you CAN buy BBC programmes online.

My only concern is that it might bring the ‘why should I pay again for BBC content that I’ve paid for with my licence fee‘ lot out of the woodwork.

The response to that of course is that the BBC pays a fee for a limited number of plays of the content using the licence fee and has to pay again to do other things with it.

That money goes to writers, directors, musicians, songwriters, actors etc…

So if the Beeb wanted to make something (there are some exceptions to this - non scripted content, wholly BBC owned content - but not many) available to download for ever so you could do what you like with it, or wanted to replay it online for ever - they would have to pay again.

That isn’t really a great use of the licence fee - it would be much better to play it within the agreed limits (e.g. two airings and seven day catchup) and then make it available at a reasonable price for people that want it outside that window and to keep for everl.

As the /buyersguide site expands, and as all the other data sites expand - there’s going to be some interesting pieces of digital content coming out - show pages that pull in details of the number of plays a track has received and where, links to places you can buy a copy of live bands performing on the BBC and where else on the BBC they have or will be playing in the future.

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BBC iPlayer goes HD

I like new toys, new things to play with and enjoy - especially when they’re shiny. And they don’t come much shinier than 720p 3mb+ video streaming over the internet.

OK so it isn’t as good as the 16mb+ and 384k audio you get with BBC HD over satellite - but it is still impressive for the web.

Unfortunately I live in Jersey where the maximum broadband speed is still 2mb - I pay for business broadband at home so I get no caps, 512kb up (instead of 256kb) and a 20:1 contention ratio - but that doesn’t help me with BBC iPlayer HD streaming.

To effectively stream the HD content from the iPlayer I would need a connection that regularly ran in at 3.5mb/s - not the 1.7mb/s I currently get.

It doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy the HD content though, I can still download it all through the iPlayer Desktop Adobe Air app and it looks seriously impressive.

Here are a couple of screen shots for you to enjoy and then underneath it one with a disolve. The first is Tonight’s The Night (what can I say - I like John Barrowman and dodgy TV talent shows) with John Barrowman in SD - this is from the download so will be the highest resolution SD version (came in at 660mb).

[ COMING SOON ]

And now for the HD version (came in at 1.2gb) of the same show - also from the download version.

As you can see there is a very clear difference between the two versions. Now the streaming versions - first you’ll see the low end 512kbs version, then the high 1500kbs version and then the high def 3500kbs version.

The mid range video stream, just below high def is encoded at 1500kbps and is sized 832×468 - High Def on other video websites.

On top of that the standard video quality has been pushed up as well - now coming in at 800kbps - all encoded in H.264.

However, for those of us on much lower speed connections the new adaptive bitrate technology will automatically reduce the quality of the stream to whatever you can cope with.

Anthony Rose said on the BBC Internet Blog they are: “Using H.264 and an encoding bitrate of 3Mbps or greater (we actually settled on 3.2Mbps as our preferred HD bitrate). However, since many people won’t have an internet connection that can stream 3.2Mbps reliably, we wanted to make HD available for download as well.

“Trouble is, a year ago our download manager was Windows-only, and we were determined to only release HD when we had a solution that allowed our Mac and Linux users to download them as well. ”

The HD version of iPlayer has been a year in the making, mainly because they wanted to wait until they could offer it to Mac and Linux users and wouldn’t require a flash upgrade from most users.

Anthony Rose explained thaT: “The good news is that as of today the various pieces are in place for going live with HD: Our new cross-platform download manager allows Windows, Mac and Linux users to download HD, everyone has a version of Flash that can stream HD, and our HD channel now has more content available.”

But there is another major development associated with this release of the iPlayer and that is that it is the release marking the end of the iPlayer P2P relationship - it’s going all AIR.

iPlayer head honcho, Anthony Rose said in a blog post: “Finally, we’re taking our cross-platform iPlayer Desktop download application out of Labs and ending our use of peer-to-peer technology.”

There is also a new diagnostics page that basically runs a stream and download speed test on your connection then lets you know which of the iPlayer streams/services you’ll be able to comfortably run - remembering download will work regardless - it will just take longer on a slow connection.

Anthony Rose said: “Our new diagnostics page - http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/diagnostics - looks at first glance similar to others you may have seen at speedtest.net and elsewhere, but it’s significantly more sophisticated than other speed test sites we’ve seen.”

This is because it needs to test streaming, whereas most speed tests look at download speeds - a big difference between the two.

Anthony Rose said: “our diagnostics page performs a total of four tests: The first tests the download speed from our BBC web site servers, the next three tests measure the Flash RTMP streaming speed from each of three major content distribution networks (Akamai, Level3, Limelight), giving us excellent visibility into overall network throughput and allowing us to shape future design decisions accordingly.”

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Resisting the world

You know when you have a dream that is so vivid, when you wake up you have to do a double take and for a split second wonder if it was actually real or not?

Well I had one of those last night and it was a wierd one. One day I’ll try and write the whole thing into a short story but for now here is the summary.

A new element is discovered in Jersey - this is something incredibly rare and 1mg of it has the power to both destroy a planet and power a whole country forever - assuming it’s mixed properly.

But it turns out after much searching, debate, discussion and bartering that Jersey is the only place in our solar system it can be found.

So France who believe they have a medieval claim to the island, China who need the power, England who believe they own the island through the Crown and Imperial Stormtroopers (told you it was weird) decided to invade.

This then turns the tiny island that’s just 9 miles by 5 into an international battle ground.

In my dream I was leader a resistance movement of people that were living in the island before the element was discovered, I work with a team to convert the Puddle Ducks (google Puddle Duck Jersey) into escape ships that can take hundreds to mainland UK to escape the fighting in Jersey.

All the while dodging the Stormtroopers, Chineese forces and French soldiers eating cheese (don’t ask).

One scene saw me walking down towards Victoria Avenue as a squadron of Stormtroopers marched along the Avenue - I avoided them by joining a marching band who - for some reason where in fancy dress and hiding between them.

All the while I have an irritating buzzing feeling in my left shoulder.

That’s when I woke up to find my 14 month old baby poking me in the shoulder.

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Hiya guys - I get to do a lot of different things as part of my job but reviewing cars isn’t usually one of them - mainly because I can’t drive - otherwise that would probably be included as well.

However, today I got to go out in a Smart ED (electric version of the Smart fourtwo) with a colleague driving - we filmed the whole experience.

He is writing a review as he drove the car and I’m writing a more generic feature about electric cars.

But I did knock a quick review together - my first car review written in about 10 minutes (as I know it won’t get published elsewhere) so thought I’d share it with you.

Not exactly the most exciting car in the world, in fact it being in it made me feel like I was sitting on top of an oversize rollerskate that someone had attached a small electric motor to.

Mercedes have produced around 100 Smart EDs - it’s basically a smart fourtwo with an electric motor instead of an engine.

They’re being made available to company’s and local councils across the UK as part of a four year trial to work out the kinks before a commercial release - which (despite the four year trial) they hope will be in 2011.

Inside it is pretty much the same as a standard Smart car, feels pretty much the same when driving and the only difference on the dash is the fuel gage being replaced with a power monitor.

It will apparently do 70 miles on a single charge although after a bit of pushing I got confirmation that that is the total limit if no other electrics are used.

So it WILL go 70 miles if you drive during the day on a warm but not hot day, and never touch the windows.

It will actually do an average of 50 miles on a single charge. A full charge takes about 12 hours and is charged from a standard British 13 Amp 3-pin plug.

Apparently it will do 70+ mph but is electronically limited to 60 - I tested it in Jersey with an island wide speed limit of 40mph - so not much of a problem.

At the moment you have to give it a full charge every night but they’re hoping that won’t be necessary, that you’ll only have to charge it as you need to when it is released.

It is very quiet - you can barely hear it bar the tyre noise from outside the car and inside it is almost silent - except for the VERY annoying whine.

Although at times that whine, which when accelerating sounds like a jet starting up - can feel a bit boys own knightrider-ish.

All in all it wasn’t bad, it’s certainly better than something like the G-Whiz and if you’re already happy with a standard Smart car then the Smart ED, when released to the public properly - won’t really cause you any real concern.

It feels, drives (apparently), looks and has the same safety rating as a Smart FourTwo - just with an electric motor instead of an engine.

What you will notice is the cost difference - forget global warming, climate change, environmental impact, pollution etc - lets talk about money.

Even in an exceptionally expensive electricity market like Jersey - a full charge (so 50 miles of driving) on a Smart ED costs just £1.20 - that works out at roughly 1.5p/mile - compared to around 6.7p/mile for the petrol version.

What are your thoughts on electric cars?

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Testing the electrics

I’ve been working on a feature about electric cars for about two weeks now - the basic idea behind being ’should Jersey look at having all electric hire and pool cars’.

Up until today I hadn’t really gotten anywhere, the closest thing to usable electric pool cars I’ve found is the Toyota Prius and that just felt a little predictable.

Then I get a press release today saying that Jersey Electricity are going to be testing out five of the new Smart ED cars.

Smart ED is basically the all electric version of the two door Smart car - 100 of them are being produced on a trial basis across the UK for corporations to test out.

They’ll apparently do 70 miles on a single charge with that single charge costing around £1.20. They also charge from a standard 13 Amp, three pin plug.

So in a place like Jersey that gets all its electricity from French Nuclear Power, is only 45 square miles and where most people rarely do more than 30-40 miles in a day and regularly do much less - electric cars have a potential home.

It would basically mean that instead of costing something like 6.4p/mile at the current petrol prices it would cost around 1.7p/mile in the electric smart car - less as battery power improves and electricity prices reduce.

Well tomorrow I’m going to test drive one of the new Smart EDs - actually when I say test drive, what I really mean is sit in the passenger seat while a colleague drives it as I don’t have a licence.

But we will be going out in it together to get a feel for driving it, what it sounds like, what it drives like - apparently it has a limited top speed of 60mph - with an island wide speed limit of 40 I can’t imagine we’ll reach the top.

While going around the island in the car I’m going to put a camera on the dashboard to record our thoughts and reactions as well as take photos along the way - but what should I be looking out for, what things would you think necessary in a car pool car?

I’ll post the video, audio, photos and my thoughts up here as well as on bbc.co.uk/jersey tomorrow afternoon.

Not sure how big the cup holder is yet or whether it has an iPod dock.

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They’re changing Gear

Actually that should be that they’re changing Top Gear - but the headline didn’t really work if I added the word Top before the Gear.

Basically the point of the post is that there will very soon be a new look TopGear.com - not sure if the public service site will be getting a make-over but the commercial one certainly is.

It looks pretty good - from the looks of the beta we’re in for wood panelling backgrounds, glassy effects and very web 2.0ey fonts and colours.

See another picture of the homepage at the bottom of this post v

They seem to be taking the social media thing a lot more seriously as well - they’re splitting the blogs up into: Horsepower, Transmission, The Foreman, The Cupholder, Fast and Dangerous and Sunday Afternoon Club (F1 blog that looks like it may be tied to the BBC F1 coverage somehow).

Playing around with the beta for a while it looks like the blogs are Wordpress hosted - which is an interesting departure for the BBC which uses MovableType for its public service blogs.

Interesting that the BBC public service blogs are hosted on a closed commercial platform and the BBC commercial blogs seem to be hosted on an open source free platform! Hmmm

As well as the very good looking, branded blogs - which will see James May and Richard Hammond join Jeremy Clarkson and Andy Willman as TG.com contributors - there’s a new media player.

It isn’t exactly the same as the EMP (BBC Embedded Media Player) used on bbc.co.uk/topgear (for a start the volume only reaches 10) but it is flash based AND unlike the /topgear player - it actually lets you embed the video.

Or at least that’s what the press release says: “nearly 300 new videos in a bright, big player that allows you to share or take away and out them on your own site.”

Although I haven’t actually been able to find the embed code yet - just a series of links to let you put the video on your social networking platform of choice. I’ll keep looking though.

You can of course just view the source code around the video player to get the embed code.

Episode Guide

There’s also something TopGear has needed for a while - something I started building myself (but got bored/lost interest/got to busy), something available in a very plane way on Wikipedia and something the good folks over at FinalGear are doing.

The most interesting feature of the Episode Guide on the new TopGear.com is the ‘The One With…’ feature - this makes it a lot easier for the more casual fan to find out about an episode.

There isn’t really much more to say about the Episode Guide - it primarily focuses on giving you video clips of that episode (which is what it’s all about really) and has a few little snippets of episode information.

For example: “The one where… Stig outruns a speed camera” and “This is also the one with… Clarkson reviews the Citroen Berlingo (and likes it) and Das Mazda6: Richard finds out if the Mazda6 can take on the Germans”.

Actually - quiz for you - without looking at the site can you tell me which episode this applies to: “The one with… all the poo”.

So back to the blogs

Instead of having the odd article (from the magazine) by Jeremy and James as an article under news and then the odd article by them in the blogs - they’ve now created a blog specifically for pieces by the ‘presenters’.

There is an outline of what each blog will do in the TopGear.com article about the new look site - due to launch on Thursday (although I’m sure it said Wednesday a week ago).

One of the blogs will be called ‘Horsepower’ and will include contributions from Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond. There’s also the suggestion that they will respond to comments. Apparently “if what you write is interesting enough, they’ll respond to you.”

‘Transmission’ is all about TopGear the show and will be written by Executive Producer Andy Wilman - in much the same vain the existing TopGear Blog is written I imagine.

Then you have the blogs by the magazine team. ‘The Foreman’ is apparently going to be full of inside information and will tell you “everything the car makers would rather you didn’t know.”

‘The Cupholder’ is the oppose and will be full of “is pure trivia, videos, links and general trivia from all over the world and all over the world wide web.”

And then there is the non F1 racing stuff with ‘Fast and Dangerous’ and the F1 blog in the form of the ‘Sunday Afternoon Club’.

Speaking of the F1 Blog - apparently they “have big plans for that when the BBC takes over the F1 coverage next year.”

/topgear

Then there’s the BBC and the issue of what will happen to /topgear with the launch of the new look and fully interactive topgear.com.

On the FinalGear Forum - controlspecimen asked the question of the public service Top Gear site “So.. is bbc.co.uk/topgear defunct now?”

That’s an interesting question - the problem is that bbc.co.uk/topgear isn’t allowed to link to topgear.com for a lot of political reasons.

So there is a bit of a requirement/expectation that the BBC has at least some kind of public service site for one of its most popular shows.

I wonder whether they will just move it towards /programmes instead - a number of programmes just have their own branded /programmes site now. Seems to make more sense than building their own site.

But there might also be an expectation that /topgear is kept and includes advert free versions of all the videos on topgear.com for a UK audience.

More still

There’s also all the usual games, car news, car stuff and a car chooser.

Actually the car chooser is pretty cool - in stage one you tick a few boxes for what you want in a car, stage two you move a slider to show how much you want to spend.

And in stage three you refine your choices.

It then orders the cars and you can add as many as you like (I think) to your ‘car bar’ that you can then use to compare your shortlist and read a mass of technical details, see photos and read the TopGear review.

It’s all very impressive and I can’t wait until its finished and live. It’s going to be great to have another place to regularly read the writings of Misters May, Clarkson and Hammond.

Oh and it looks like TopGear will be back on TV around 2 November - I’ll try and do a piece soon on what’s going to be in the upcoming series.

Speaking of which - there will also be a schedule that shows when TopGear is on TV - although most of the time it will just be repeating the word Dave over and over and over again.

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What I need from a TV site

I want you to take a minute and think about something for me. It’s a simple question ‘what do you want from a TV channel website?’.

I’m not including children’s channels or news channel’s in this question - but specifically the general entertainment channels like BBC One, ITV 2, E4 and FOX.

I’m also not talking about the websites for a television SHOW - I’m talking specifically about the network portals.

I know there is an argument that suggests the concept of a ‘network’ is a bit of a waste of time online - as much as linear programming is - but you also need to look at the fact that multiple millions of people actually watch these networks and associate shows with them.

So that out of the way - what you’d want from a television network portal.

Here are a few of the things I’d have on my list: A list of shows on the network, the ability to watch the network live, the ability to watch the shows listed in my own time and a schedule of what’s on.

That is pretty much exactly what the team behind BBC /tv and all the separate TV network sites have achieved with their new re-launch.

All the new TV network pages are designed to a standard template (yes including BBC THREE) and have /programmes at their heart.

Every one has the ability to find out what’s on, it tells you what’s on right now and gives you quick links to watch what you’ve missed on the iPlayer.

BBC THREE and BBC FOUR both go one step further and give you the ability to watch the channel right there - live and according to the BBC Internet blog post - this is coming to BBC One and BBC Two soon.

The pages are exactly what you want from a TV network homepage - they don’t contain to much information, they let you watch the shows they have on the network and are easy to find your way around.

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Kryten Kryten Kryten Kryten

I was going to write a post about one of my new favourite shows and it was going to be called ‘Love the Show - Hate the Player’. That isn’t the name of the show, just the name of the post.

The show is called Top Trumps - it basically does what it says on the tin and sees two grown men playing real life Top Trumps.

One of those men is Robert Llewellyn (Red Dwarf, Scrap Heap Challenge, Various uber geek web projects) and the other is Ashley Hames (Sin Cities).

The idea is a simple one, in fact as simple as the game that inspired it. Robert goes in one direction looking for something (first episode was a boat, second was a plane) and Ashley goes and looks for something else of the same thing.

They test their things out, see what they can do and gather facts. They then meet at the end to swap notes and gather scores - and as with Top Trumps the winner is the one with the most high scores (the best card).

It’s a simple format for a show but one that works so well that I’m shocked it hasn’t been made before to be honest.

The series started on the 8th September but I didn’t hear about it until after that - actually through a Tweet by Robert Llewellyn himself.

This is where the crap player bit of my title comes in - it has nothing to do with the game and everything to do with the fact the Five insists (as does 4 and ITV) on using that craphole piece of arse - Windows Media Player - as its platform of choice.

But I don’t want to talk about any of that. Not the brilliant new series, not five’s arse end of a donkey’s nutsack of a player - no I want to talk about Red Dwarf.

The actual bit that the title refers to

You see I’ve been so busy with work recently that I missed a story that would normally have had me heading for Wordpress within seconds - Red Dwarf is coming back.

Now I’ve already admitted to being a member of the fan club as a teenager - I own all the DVDs twice (box set for saving, vanillas for watching), have brought the books and the Audiobook versions of those books.

Image via Wikipedia I’m now trying to get my five year old son into it - he likes the slapstick but, and quite rightly, most of it goes well over his head.

Anyway back to the point. Red Dwarf is coming back. Let me say that again: RED DWARF IS COMING BACK!!!

After what is approaching a ten year break - Robert Llewellyn has let on (at a convention and on MacBreak Weekly with Leo Laporte) that there will be some kind of special episode or mini series.

I don’t know anything else about it and I’m guessing you all knew about this long before me (the video at the top of the page was originally posted last week and the MacBreak Weekly was also from last week (I’m seriously behind on my podcast - I’ve got about 40 to listen to if I want to catch up - and I do) and I think the originally story was like two weeks ago.

So I think, with all that in mind - the only thing left to be said is: RED DWARF IS COMING BACK!!!

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