Dining Room Table Reviews – The Apple iPad
Tuesday, August 10th, 2010Here it is, a bit late, and with a new show opening.
And here’s the trailer for the next product review to be released in September.
Archive for the ‘Programming’ Category
Channel Progress Report
Tuesday, May 25th, 2010So where do we stand today in our attempt to launch Canada’s first national public access television channel?
Slowly but surely, it’s moving forward!
A partnership is in the works, finding the first cable company to carry the channel is ongoing, development of the Automated Broadcast System is continuing, new Canadian programming is being found and put on the air…
But the best news is that the latest Linux distribution upgrade to our broadcast servers appears to have resolved the frequent synchronization issues we were having with the live Internet broadcast. Under the old system, the Internet streams would frequently go out of sync by as much as a second. But since the latest updates were applied, we’ve yet to find a single show go out of sync.
The only issue we’ve encountered is with the MPEG4/H.264 encoded test stream, which crashed while attempting to stream a movie that had caused us problems in the past (it worked perfectly on all the other test streams). So we’ve decided to drop the MPEG4/H.264 format altogether. The test stream would have never gone into production anyway since it’s encumbered with too many software patents whose excessively high licensing fees could have reached the tens of thousands of dollars per year.
And with Google announcing the development of a new competing open source streaming audio/video format called WebM or VP8, very soon there won’t be any reason to consider patent encumbered audio/video formats at all.
Because of all of these improvements, this corporation will soon begin offering consultation services for organizations wishing to implement their own Internet and cable based television channel infrastructure at a fraction of the cost of traditional television channels.
Yes, it’s a new era for broadcast television, one that is no longer encumbered by legacy equipment or software licensing fees, allowing all of us to concentrate on what’s most important: the content.
The Trade Show Show – Salon Son et Image 2010
Sunday, May 16th, 2010The video of the 2010 edition of the Salon Son et Image is now available on YouTube. Enjoy!
Seven Minutes of Complete Lunacy
Monday, April 19th, 2010Just switch off your brain and enjoy this episode of excusememamwhereisthebathroom by Burkhard Reike.
Salon Son et Image 2010
Thursday, March 25th, 2010Just a reminder that the 2010 edition of the Salon Son et Image, which is open to the public from March 26 to March 28, has moved to the Bonaventure Hilton.
Here’s the video of last year’s Salon.
Here’s a brief sample clip of what this year’s Salon should sound like in the final video with the help of a new stereo microphone. Hopefully, this will solve the issues I’ve had while trying to record multichannel sound rooms during the last two shows.
In the meantime, enjoy this raw video of an Edison cylinder gramophone demonstration. My apologies for missing the beginning.
I hope you’ve all enjoyed the show!
Show Idea – O Canada
Monday, December 7th, 2009Yes, this is what’s played when the service signs on or off the air, so it’s not really what one would call a proper television show. But why use the same, stuffy O Canada segment normally provided by the federal government? Why not allow Canadians themselves to produce their own rendition of our national anthem?
The only drawback with this concept is that anyone leaving their television set operating overnight may be in for a rude awakening when the service signs on in the morning and the O Canada happens to be performed by a Heavy Metal band.
All submissions will be considered and properly credited if accepted.
Live Broadcast Now Available
Tuesday, December 1st, 2009You can now view the channel’s live broadcast on-line. Simply click on the “Watch Live!” menu option just above.
This feature will only work on Web browsers supporting the HTML5 video tag feature. The latest versions of Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome should properly support this feature. Microsoft Internet Explorer and Apple Safari however do not currently support the HTML5 video tag. And it might take a while before either browser manufacturer decides to provide full support considering both Microsoft and Apple already offer proprietary video streaming solutions specifically designed for their respective platforms.
You may also watch the broadcast with the VLC Media Player. Simply open a network stream to the address http://38.104.152.86.
A note to cable television distributors. A high bandwidth, broadcast quality version of this stream is now available upon request. The proposed codecs are Theora video with Vorbis audio, packaged in an Ogg container. All of these formats may be used in any application of your choice completely royalty-free.
Coming Close to an Official Launch Date
Friday, August 21st, 2009We’re almost there.
The official launch date is now tentatively set for October 13, 2009.
So what has happened recently?
We’ve managed to gather a set of software components that will allow us to launch a minimum service, including the possibility of a regularly scheduled television show. We’ve also found at least two separate computer equipment suppliers who can satisfy the channel’s initial hardware requirements. Even the choice of a datacenter and Internet service provider are very close to be finalized.
It’s not certain at this time if this launch will include the live television broadcast component, but it will definitely include the live Internet streaming component which will be satisfactory as a proof of concept.
Stay tuned!
Les Lye, 1924-2009
Monday, July 27th, 2009
Les Lye, Ottawa area actor and comedian, died on July 21, 2009 at the age of 84. Many of you may have never heard of him, but for those who have, he will be fondly remembered.
Born in Toronto as Leslie Earnest Lye in 1924, Les was an actor and comedian whose performances have successfully reached an international audience despite working almost exclusively in the Ottawa area. He worked in both radio and television since 1948, starting out with Frank Ryan’s team on Ottawa radio station CFRA.
In 1961, he moved on to television when he joined the new Ottawa television station CJOH-TV as a freelance writer and performer where he met Bill Luxton. Five years later, the two were asked to produce a replacement children show, and the long running show Uncle Willy & Floyd was born.
In 1979, Les Lye began working on You Can’t Do That on Television, a children’s(?) television show that was way ahead of its time, and which is fondly remembered by many Ottawa area children who are now between 30 and 50 years of age.
Les played alongside Abby Hagyard as one of the two only adult cast members in a show predominantly populated by children (a hundred of them during the show’s entire run), playing all of the adult male roles such as Barth the cook, the Dad, Mr. Schidtler the teacher, Nasti the Executioner, and Ross the stage director just to name a few. His ability to change acting styles to suit each character was pretty remarkable.
The show reached international acclaim when in 1981, the newly launched US cable channel Nickelodeon picked up the show for national broadcast. From there, Les’ characters became household names for children across the North American continent.
YCDTOT is one of the shows that made me believe that it was still possible for Canadians to produce Canadian made content that not only reflected our values and beliefs, but which also could make us laugh out loud at some of the craziest antics ever seen on television, on a children’s show no less! And while this may not have been Les’ favourite show in his career, it was definitely a favourite for many children of the time who discovered that children’s television didn’t have to be the dull and bland landscape that it was back in the late seventies and early eighties.
Les, thank you so much for making us happy even if it was only for half an hour at a time.
Show Idea – Get ‘er Done!
Friday, June 5th, 2009Reality shows. Often perceived as the scourge of prime time television.
The primary goal of the vast majority of these shows is to humiliate and demolish the self esteem of the participants. It is the complete opposite of the mandate of traditional game shows where the participants are strongly encouraged to do their best. And while it’s okay to have a few of these shows on the air (they’re still great for a few laughs and some shock value), there’s something seriously wrong with the television landscape when it seems as if half of the shows are humiliating inducing reality shows.
That’s where “Get ‘er Done!” comes in. Instead of finding the worst in a person, the show will try to bring out the best out of them. An example of an episode would be a team of part-time handy-people with limited skills being taught advanced carpentry techniques while working on a needy family’s home or even a town’s community centre. Both the participants and the viewing audience will learn simple skills that can make all the difference in any home improvement project.
An important note. This channel will not accept any television show littered with a ton of product placements, transforming the entire show into one long infomercial. This is too often the case with most fishing, wilderness and car shows. However, nothing prevents the show from being underwritten by a major corporation who gets mentioned prominently in the opening and closing credits, or during a key moment in the show. This is what I would have preferred in this season’s Discovery Channel Canada show “Canada’s Worst Handyman” where the teams went shopping at Canadian Tire, but the name of the store was never actually pronounced on the air. If the producers had taken the time to properly disclose the sponsorship of the show during the narrative, it wouldn’t have appeared as an incredibly huge product placement scheme.
What I want is full disclosure of the show’s sponsors. Don’t hide them in the background.
