In simple words, Online Television is that service which brings in live streaming content to your PC, which can be routed to the television too. Using the power of satellite broadcasting, it has provided a huge array of television content to the masses, and has thus proved to be very successful.
The popularity of the technology [...]
Nothing could be more convincing than an actual first-hand experience. The new TV which we had just bought last week is living example. It’s the latest model on the LCD series of a branded Japanese make. Along with all the advanced features, it can be connected to various external devices, including PCs. That made me [...]
Reality TV already established itself as one of the most effective media formats today and it is because of this reason that reality TV news online is taking a huge part regarding internet media domination. With the help of the internet technology, it is pretty simple how online news is being spread very fast and [...]
Television on the net is allowing the average person to kiss their cable bills goodbye. Are you frustrated with the high cost of everything? It seems as though every time you turn around all people are talking about is how the price of this and that is continuing to rise. So what can you do [...]
The internet is filled with very interesting TV content that any type of individual will definitely love, thus people are using all means to record online TV. The videos ranging from TV shows, full length movies, short video clips and other visual media are the targets of some people for recording. They want to record [...]
In 2001, a website briefly attracted attention by publishing Britney
Spears’ Guide to Semiconductor Physics. It was, said Scientific
American, “one of the stranger approaches to teaching science that
we’ve seen lately”. For me, however, it was a sign of changing times.
Originally one part of the internet (a network of networks) was SPAN,
the Space Physics Analysis Network, and the web was invented at Cern,
Europe’s atom-smashing centre, to help make scientific papers more
readily available. Today, it’s used to track the orbits of Britney
Spears, Paris Hilton and other “stars” unknown to space physics.
Perez Hilton, Pink is the New Blog, PopSugar, Just Jared, E! Online,
TMZ … There are dozens of them, all much the same, albeit some are
snarkier than others. They all focus on celebrity indiscretions and
wardrobe malfunctions, heavily illustrated with paparazzi photos and
snatched videos.
The thing is, nowadays not even high court judges can get away with
not knowing who Paris Hilton is (assuming it’s possible not to know),
or Madonna or Amy Winehouse, but the lesser lights are harder to
track. Something like TMZ is one way to keep in touch. And if TMZ
misses anything, it has a terrific blogroll on its front page, with
links to a vast array of sites from Absolute Punk to Young, Black and
Fabulous. (Sorry, I wish it went from Aargh! to Yeeeah!)
TMZ stands for the Thirty-Mile Zone around Hollywood, beyond which
stars were “on location”. In sum, it’s the centre of the celebrity
universe. However, at least one other city is known to exist – Las
Vegas – mainly because H-Wood celebs go there to party or, sometimes
accidentally, get married. But TMZ also has plenty of political
coverage, at least during elections. Recent examples include
Unprotected Sex Has Its Perks, and McCain’s VP – Beaver Roundup.
TMZ’s blog-style home page has little news and even less to read,
though stories are sometimes picked up by mainstream media. But casual visitors are more likely to be attracted by the photo and video
galleries, or by the celebrity listings section. This shows Britney
Spears (1,408 stories) streaking ahead of Paris Hilton (893) and
Lindsay Lohan (598). Other significant figures include Nicole Richie
(196), Brad & Angelina (148), Madonna (137) and Pamela Anderson (120). However, any “naughty bits” are obscured by little stars.
TMZ loves collecting groups of photos around a common theme, such as celebrity tattoos, or celebrity yachts. For the Olympics, it did
Olympic butts. Some are presented as quizzes: can you guess the star
from the six-pack? (No, I can’t.)
While some celebrity sites are done by amateurs for fun, TMZ is a
serious business. It was launched in 2005 by AOL and Warner Brothers’
Telepictures Productions, both of which are owned by the mighty Time
Warner. In 2007, it followed up its web success with TMZ on TV, a
programme syndicated on Fox and other local stations across America.
At least for now, it seems there’s plenty of cash in trash.
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Building Britain’s next generation of super-fast broadband network, which can download music in seconds and movies in minutes, will cost between £5.1bn and £28.8bn, according to the government’s independent advisory group.
The estimate from the Broadband Stakeholder Group, published today, comes before reports on next-generation access networks by government-appointed adviser and former Cable & Wireless boss Francesco Caio and regulator Ofcom next week.
BT will spend £1.5bn rolling out the sort of fibre-optic network needed to achieve the speeds common in Korea and Japan to 10m homes over the next four years.
Virgin Media, meanwhile, is installing technology that provides broadband at more than twice the speed possible on BT’s best broadband line. But it will only ever reach about half the country.
The BSG report reckons that the technology that BT plans to deploy in cities - which only connects cabinets at the end of streets to the new network - will cost £5.1bn. Stretching the fibre networks all the way into every home in the country could cost £28.8bn.
Anthony Walker, chief executive of the BSG, said the main cost of the project is digging up the nation’s roads to bury fibre, and the economic case for such deployment - based on take-up of about 30% of potential homes - can relatively easily be made for about 70% of the country.
It is highly unlikely that the government will provide any financial help to plug the digital divide that looks set to appear between urban and rural areas.
In a recent interview with Television, the monthly magazine of the Royal Television Society, Caio, who was asked by the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform to investigate next-generation networks, said he was minded to advise the government that it leaves the job to the market rather than recommend state intervention.
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Over the years, the TV industry has gone from strength to strength. It is now not only a favorite pastime but also a key functional communication medium in modern societies. There are now different forms of TV transmission. Conventional broadcast still heads the pack. Cable and satellite programming have proven viable but limited only to [...]
Are you tired of paying those high monthly bills; and every time you turn around it seems as though your cable company is raising the prices on their services again? Well you do not have to take it anymore and this article is going to explain how to watch television online with PC satellite TV.
That [...]
If you’re planning to see a movie, rent a DVD, buy a CD or - most importantly - a video game, then Metacritic is the place to go. It reads the reviews so you don’t have to, then adds up the ratings to provide a single metascore out of 100. It’s a consensus view, and it carries weight.
Of course, you could argue for days about whether Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (which scores 93) is a better movie than Raging Bull (92), but that’s not the point. What you can instantly see from Metacritic is that The Dark Knight gets a green light (82), Mamma Mia! is on amber (scoring 51, with mixed reviews) and Space Chimps is at red (35). Job done.
Metacritic has some powerful rivals in the movie business. IMDb, for example, provides the most amazing detail, while Rotten Tomatoes adds news and features to its metascoring. Where Metacritic wins is in covering DVDs, TV series, audio CDs, books and video games, as well as new movies.
Metacritic’s scores are particularly important in the games business, as the site’s co-founder and games editor Marc Doyle explained to The Guardian’s games blog. A moviegoer spends $10 and two hours on a movie, whereas a gamer can spend $60 on a title expected to last 30 to 50 hours. Buying a game is a bigger commitment, so there is more incentive to find the best.
Metascores are compiled from a highly select group of (mostly American) sources such as daily newspapers, weekly magazines and prominent websites. The emphasis is on quality, not quantity. Each review is converted into a numeric score, but again, not all reviews are equal: the big names carry more weight, as decided by Metacritic’s section editor. Metascores change as more reviews appear, but quickly settle down. For those who care, the site has a long explanation: How We Calculate Our Scores.
One drawback with Metacritic is that it doesn’t go very far back. The site was launched in January 2001 by three “former attorneys who were happy to find a more constructive (but less profitable) use of their time”, and was acquired by CNet Networks in 2005. It generally doesn’t cover titles launched in the 1980s and 1990s, though it is adding classics “as time and resources permit”.
Also, Metacritic doesn’t cover everything. It doesn’t attempt to cover all the new CDs and books that appear every year - there are too many - or “straight to video” movies. If titles are not being reviewed in The New York Times, The Guardian, Newsweek, Empire and similar publications, or websites such as Pitchfork, Salon and Slate, then there won’t be any scores for Metacritic to tally.
And if you want more depth in support of a metascore, Metacritic provides brief quotations and links to the original reviews (if they are on the web). Just as a way to find from three to 33 good reviews of a recent title, Metacritic is worth knowing.
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