Here's our fortnightly look at what's coming up under the red button...
Springwatch Unsprung
Picture the Springwatch team in the pubÂ… Relaxed presenters
chatting about the show just gone. Members of the audience showing each
other their spectacular photos and videos of spring, sharing tales of the
wonderful wildlife they've seen on their doorstep and asking the presenters
those animal questions they'd always wanted to know the answers to. This
is Springwatch Unsprung.
OK, it won't actually be coming from the pub, but for 15 minutes every night
immediately following the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Two show Springwatch will continue broadcasting
live from Pensthorpe in Norfolk. Only this time the audience will be the
stars not the creatures.
Monday 25th - Thursday 28th May & Monday 1st
- Thursday 4th June,
following the show (³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Two)
Sky, Virgin & Freeview
(not available on Freesat)
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Yesterday I posted a list of all the page numbers used on the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Red Button service - all 160 of them. They're used by many of our users to quickly jump to their favourite parts of the service, without having to spend time scrolling and selecting items from the menus.
Some people may find our numbering logic a bit odd - indeed it was one made on the Digital Spy forums that inspired me to write this post.
As one of the people who added page numbers to ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Red Button five years ago, I can tell you that there is a very sensible logic behind the numbers we assign. It just doesn't look like it!
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Back in 2003 my first project when I joined the team was to work on the launch of page numbers on what was then called ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳i.
When the service was first being built back in 1999 the people in charge decided that they wouldn't provide page numbers for the service, believing that people would prefer to use menus instead as they were easier to use.
Over the years, we've found that the majority of people do seem to prefer using the service in that way. However there is a sizable number of people who prefer the ability to just punch in a number and jump directly to what they want to view - be it News Headlines (101) or Lottery Numbers (555). Hence why we added them to the service.
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Here's our fortnightly look at what's coming up under the red button...
³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio 1's Big Weekend
³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio 1 is decamping to Swindon for this year's event. Throughout the weekend digital viewers can press the Red Button on any ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ channel from 4pm each day for full band sets, backstage interviews and gossip brought to you by Radio 1 DJs Greg James and Jo Whiley.
And ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Red Button will be keeping the festival flame alive from the following Monday with a week of highlights.
Weekend coverage: Saturday 9th & Sunday 10th May, 4pm - 2am
Highlights: Monday 11th - Friday 15th May, available around the clock
Sky, Virgin & Freeview
(not available on Freesat)
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So the roadmap for the next six months has arrived and we want to share it with you good readers of our blog.
It is a really critical time for ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Red Button, with large audiences still using our services but with many, many more competitors coming into the market. So with one face focussed on serving existing audience and the other facing to the future, we juggle the difficult job of keeping present platforms fresh but ensuring that we are at forefront of new developments.
This year will see more broadband connected TVs and set top boxes arrive on the market. With this potential technology change, a number of our team are concentrating on understanding what the creative, technical and user experience will be on these new devices and how this will shape ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Red Button in the future.
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³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Red Button is ten years old! Hang on,
Well it all depends when you count it from. The pilot service was launched in autumn 1998, and the service fully launched the following year.
Anyway, the Telegraph is celebrating by including Managing Editor John Denton and asks where the red button will be going next. Although we should gently point out to the Telegraph that we're not called ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳i any more!
Meanwhile in the Observer, when it came to the snooker and his ability to be his own scheduler.
Amongst his other thoughts was that...
...in a red-button world there is no limit to how much sport can be screened. All you need is a camera, and JV [John Virgo].
It's not quite as easy as that. After all, there's no shops which sell John Virgos...
And finally on Twitter, and are amongst those really enjoying the Ashes to Ashes red button 80s singalong which follows the main programme.
So if like me, you were out on Monday and couldn't press red, you might want to pop over to the music section on the Ashes to Ashes website and get dancing along to such classics as Stool Pigeon by Kid Creole, or maybe the classic that is The Lion Sleeps Tonight by Tight Fit.
As TDS_001 says, it's "soooooooooooooooooo funny".
Gideon Summerfield writes...
Fast on the heels of our launch of HD in ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ iPlayer on the Web we are now able to bring HD catch-up to the TV in the living room. Content from our channel is now available in ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ iPlayer on Virgin Media Digital cable and I think it's the best ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ iPlayer picture quality yet.
picture taken from mobile in front of a very sunny window
The continuing demand for large, flat screen HD TV sets flies in the face of the credit crunch but there is still not much high-quality HD content available. The ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ HD channel is, of course, at the forefront of making more available as far and wide as possible, but adding a catch-up element to this provides more opportunity to watch some of the best of it.
Read more and comment on the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Internet Blog
