News

High-definition (HD) is coming to Freeview in the UK during 2010. London should get HD in March 2010 (see the Freeview HD page for more information). See the Freeview HD rollout map for more information.

You'll need new digiboxes to pick up the new signals, and new recorders to record them (a bonanza for manufacturers). During 2010 BBC HD, ITV HD and Channel 4 HD will be launched (and possibly a Five HD channel). The main draw will be the World Cup in HD.

See the BBC HD schedule, Channel 4 HD (the standard channel with some programmes in HD) and ITV HD to see if there's anything that takes your fancy right now.

It's exciting that 4 channels of terrestrial Freeview HD should arrive in parts of Britain next year. London is on the roadmap for 2009:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/22/london_high_def/

Unfortunately new players will be needed to receive the HD signal as it's encoded differently. Buyers of older equipment will be left out in the HD cold. I don't know whether it would be technically possible for manufacturers to update older equipment with software updates.

The channels will only be in the lower 720p HD resolution (HD comes in two resolutions - 720p and 1080p/1080i): http://www.avforums.com/forums/home-cinema-tech-news/737341-freeview-hd-plan.html
In comparison,  standard definition TV is 576p (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/576p) and also narrower.

There is limited capacity for HD channels on Terrestrial TV as the bandwidth available is limited. Satellite (Freesat and Sky) and cable have more bandwidth available and will continue to be able to broadcast more HD channels.

A while ago I wrote about how youtube was catching myspace and facebook.  Well, according to Google's trends it has overtaken them.  But what is still surprising to me is how strongly Facebook is still growing (as mentioned in this BBC article called Facebook over? Only in Islington).  Facebook doesn't look to have "saturated" any of its markets, whereas Myspace looks to have saturated the US according to the Trends graphs.  Bebo, on the other hand has yet to get off the ground in Canada or the US.

Google's trends tools give you the ability to peer inside Google's saerch logs - seeing the relative popularity of search terms such as:

• How well the PS 3 is doing versus the Wii and Xbox 360 (the PS3 is gaining on the Wii globally with the Xbox 360 drifting lower)
• Trends also cover web sites, so you can compare how Kelkoo is doing versus pricerunner and other price comparison engines

All in all a very pretty tool.  You can freely compare your traffic to your competitors'.  This service appears to be an improvement on Compare.com and Alexa.com. The ability to look at the country of origin of traffic is very interesting.

When comparing websites, the "Also visited" part of the results seems to include unlikely sites, suggesting that this section is less accurate than the traffic numbers.

Adblock Plus (Firefox only) blocks most adverts, speeding browsing, and reducing the visual clutter on many sites - banner adverts, adsense etc..  Some website owners object to its use, anticipating reduced revenues.  There doesn't appear to be much downside from the user's perspective.

If it is widely used, it may prompt a conflict between those trying to display advertising and those trying to block it.  With the default settings it doesn't manage to block ads on Google, for example.  It's another technological arms race waiting to happen, where people trying to catch our attention vie with people helping us filter what we see (email spam and comment spam).