We’ve just learnt that Panasonic has decided to drop Freesat recorders from their new product range coming next month.

Panasonic has frustrated Freesat PVR owners in the past by being slow to release firmware updates, leaving users still awaiting the release of promised support for iPlayer. It looks like that is now unlikely to change.

The range of PVR’s from Panasonic has been a little disappointing in the past. They weren’t bad boxes, but they were overcomplex and very expensive. Mainly as they also included a blu-ray player in the same box – which proved just too much integration for most people as very few bought one.

Get ready to see some big price drops on the old Panasonic PVR range. But hold on to your wallet as you may find it’s worth paying a little more to enjoy a product with ongoing support…

Coverage will be on the BBC HD channel, and will include the opening ceremony, the closing ceremony and the highlights at the end of each day. Oh, and for some reason the 100m men’s final.

Director of ‘London 2012′ (aka The Olympics) for the BBC, Roger Mosey, said the ‘less than olympic’ 3D coverage was to minimise disruption to the HD broadcasting of the game.

So you’ll be able to watch the games on BBC1 in SD, with a simultaneous broadcast in HD and occasional 3D coverage on BBC HD.

We’re not sure yet how much of the opening and closing ceremonies will be viewable in 3D, it’s quite likely to won’t be all of it.

The 24 hour UMP Movies channel will be broadcasting Hindi language movies round the clock, a real treat for Bollywood fans. Movies will also be shown with english subtitles.

The CEO of broadcasting for the channel, M.K. Anand, said he was really pleased at the deal which now allows the channel to reach an additional 2 million homes in the UK.

With 400+ movies available for broadcast already, Bollywood fans are not going to be running out of new titles anytime soon.

This will add another 5 million people to iPlayers reach – and will of course be at no extra charge for Sky users. This deal will mark completion of iPlayer being available on all major UK broadcasting platforms.

Getting their content out to all people equally is apparently a ‘core value’ of the BBC. Which is why they have refused this deal until Sky agreed iPlayer would be made available to all Sky users, and not just those who had Sky broadband.

The launch date has yet to be set, but is currently slated as ‘later this year’.

BBC iPlayer reached it’s 4th birthday in December 2011. It’s been a true pioneer in bringing on-demand TV services into our homes.

We’ve had some Wimbledon tennis in 3D, and the final of Strictly Come Dancing for example.

But what you may not have noticed is that pretty much every time they broadcast in 3D, they are also broadcasting in 2D on another channel. So you choose 2D or 3D by selecting channel.

Which is not really ideal for a broadcaster – taking up two channel slots with the same programme.

So the BBC have also been trialling making a 2D compatible 3D broadcast. Or to put it another way – a 3D broadcast that doesn’t look out of focus or plain rubbish for people without 3D TV’s.

It’s an interesting article, as it does show that the BBC do still see a 3D future at least in part.

But so far results haven’t been especially promising. If this had been part of the specifications of Freesat (and Freeview) boxes from the early days then it would be a simple matter of sending the right signals and letting the decoder exract whatever part of the signal it wanted for that channel – 2D or 3D.

The BBC have found not all boxes in their trials have coped well with this approach.

So the most promising solution so far has been through the old Red Button. Essentially press the Red Button to watch 3D in 2D. Or vice versa.

And this was actually trialled live on New Years Day when Streetdance 3D was broadcast on BBC HD.

The 2D option is achieved by splitting out one of the 3D ‘channels’ (i.e. left or right ‘eye’) and stretching that image to fill the screen. Obviously this gives a picture that is no longer HD, but the according to the BBC it is still superior to old standard definition.

Trialls will continue, so look out for more 3D broadcasts on HD without the ‘simulcast’ on another BBC channel.

What do you think of 3D TV? Are you a 3D fan, or are you already bored of the ‘gimmick’? Add you comment below.

If you want the cheapest option, then Freeview is still marginally cheaper. After all, you can buy a pretty poor Freeview box for just £20 these days, or maybe £40 if you want HD. (Although I suspect if £20 is your budget then you’ve probably not even heard of HD!)

But most of us have at least some quality and usability desire beyond just ‘cheap’. Which makes the price argument mostly redundant now.

Freesat requires a satellite dish obviously, but dish installation is pretty cheap even if you don’t DIY. And if you’ve never tried plugging a Freeview decoder into your existing TV aerial, you won’t know for certain that you don’t need a new aerial anyway. Or if you really can get a Freeview signal at all, despite what the postcode checker tells you!

The HD issue is no longer an issue. Freesat actually has one more HD channel than Freeview at the moment.

So Why Get Freesat When I Can Get Freeview?

OK, here’s four reasons:-

1. You’ve already got a sky dish on your roof. Which means zero aerial cost, and you can pretty much know you will get good Freesat reception.
2. Maybe you’ve already got Freeview but the signal quality is marginal and you keep getting picture or sound break up. Even more so in poor weather, or in Summer when nearby tall trees are in full leaf, or even when cars drive past your house… Freesat will most likely give you a stronger and more reliable signal.
3. You’re a Sky subscriber who is fed up of paying top rate for a large amount of channels you simply don’t ever watch.
4. Freesat has more capacity. That means the future is likely to hold more channels, and more in HD. Freeview has a limited capacity – the only way they can cram in more channels is to reduce the broadcast quality (which they keep doing!).

So those are the reasons to get Freesat, in my opinion.

The fact is, any new TV you buy from now on will have a digital decoder of some kind in it. Some even include both Freesat and Freeview decoders.

But for the best experience with either you really need to think separate boxes anyway. Then you can buy a TV that does that job well, and a Freesat box that does it’s own job well.

A  decoder built-in to the TV can be a little easier to operate, but sadly not often enough! And they rarely provide any facility to record anyway.

The best Freesat recorder / PVR’s however give you so much more than a basic decoder without being complicated. And recording is very much an integral part of the way we watch TV.

If you’ve never used a PVR, get a Humax Foxsat HDR and you’ll be amazed at how easy things have got.

The brief announcement didn’t explain why, or what is coming next. But there are indications from their sister channel that something else is coming in it’s place.

You can see the short announcement from NME TV on Facebook, although it has only managed to drum up 4 comments in response so far.

NME TV will now close on 5th January 2012.

The new channels are Channel 5+1 which obviously gives you standard Channel 5 programming 1 hour later.

But they are also adding 5 USA and 5 USA+1 which not surprisingly will carry loads of US shows. There is also 5* and 5*+1 (anyone now thinking of a certain white suited Jackson 5 style pop group from the 80′s is showing their age) which will show some films, drama, soaps and documentaries.

You should find the channels are already there on your EPG.

The first appearance is scheduled for 21st November and will appear during “I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here”. You’ll be bored of it before long, but if you do want to get a sneak preview and see it before everyone else… here you go:-

It’s set aboard Freesat 1 – the Freesat space station which of course we’ve seen before. You’ll soon be wanting an Octopen 5000 – it’s just so much more than a pen, it writes, it draws, it’s er, good for scratching your ears… ink not included though

But don’t despair, the fix is now here.

The problem started when Freesat updated the EPG information to include more data. This triggered lock-up problems for some when trying to set recordings before the EPG have finished downloading data.

So Humax issued a fix to make sure that the EPG had finished downloading before allowing recordings to be set.

For some this meant waiting anywhere between 30 seconds to over a minute, unless you used the cached version of the EPG (Schedule Button then Red Button).

Humax Please Wait Fix

The new Humax software update will be available over the air from 14th October, so you should get the update automatically overnight (assuming you haven’t turned off auto-upate).

If you can’t wait that long, you can download and install the new v1.00.17 software manually. You can find the software update here.

Humax Release Notes:

V1.00.17. When accessing the EPG (Electronic Programme Guide) you are now able to set reservations without having to wait for the EPG to fully download. After the reservation is scheduled the EPG download will commence again. To fully populate the EPG please allow for 45-60 seconds.

So in practice after the update has installed, you will still see “receiving program information”, but when you can select a listing the current channel appears in the background and you can schedule program. Once scheduled the box then goes back to receiving EPG info.