91Èȱ¬

There's still some team members away on holiday at the moment, but things certainly aren't standing still. A number of new and exciting projects are appearing on the radar, and Chris G in particular is diligently shoving us all into darkened rooms to think hard about them and what we might do.

Chris B and Duncan spent the majority of the beginning of the week at an internal training course on iOS development. Sean has been working along with Tristan and myself on a detailed technical writeup of that we're aiming to publish very soon. He's also been working on changing the EPG data source for our digital programme guide prototype from a deprecated feed to MythTV's own off-air feed for greater resilience.

Read the rest of this entry

In the second part of our short series of films looking at the R&D North Lab, we're taking a look at the place rather than the work. We visit the current interim lab, and see the efforts that are made to ensure that the distance from the south lab doesn't stand in the way of collaboration.

We also gained access to the MediaCityUK site to film in the spaces where the R&D department's new, state of the art research facility will be housed.Ìý It's still early days for the development of the space, but hopefully this gives a good impression of the location that we're moving into.




We'll be returning to the North lab in the next few weeks to look in more detail at individual projects, and to check on progress with the MediaCity:UK development.

(This is a cross posting from the Backstage blog, featuring the work of our AHRC sponsored projects- Ant)

Like everyone else, we have been wondering what set top boxes connected to the internet will look like for the user. What kind of interfaces will work best when TV and the web become bedfellows?

We decided to mock up a prototype application to play around with some user interface ideas.

Read the rest of this entry

Quick heads up about the . This forthcoming cultural event in London runs from the 18th to the 26th of September as a counter point to the well established . 91Èȱ¬ R&D will be contributing to the event helping to create an advanced audio visual installation.Ìý From the festival blog:

"Charlesworth, Lewandowski and Mann are developing a performance installation in collaboration with the 91Èȱ¬'s R&D department exploring 3D sound and a live cut-up documentation technology. This dedicated space will also host nine evening performances curated by Cecilia Wee, who is one of the Late at the Tate producers, plus Jon Wozencroft of Touch Music, and featuring amongst others a sub-cosplay event presented by Emily OwusuMark Moore."

As the team here develop the installation in preparation for the show we'll be filming behind the scenes and we should be able to show the result of that work here in a month or so.Ìý In the mean time keep an eye on the pages of to see a write up of the project as it comes together.

Brief (and late - sorry!) weeknotes from me week - lots of people away, or, like me, just back so trawling through admin/ meetings. Very close to initiating lots of new projects, so this round-up will get more exciting again soon - but here's what we've been up to so far.

Read the rest of this entry

UPDATE:  We're adding links to this post through the week as other archive related posts and material comes online.Ìý Extra links wil go at the foot of the post. (Ant Miller, 91Èȱ¬ R&D Blog Host)

We all know the 91Èȱ¬ archive is important. Rolling out statistics about breadth and depth of coverage, kilometres of shelves, number of millions of items - is predictably impressive. Listing all the titles of landmark productions is a similarly worthy exercise - worthy, but still an exercise.

There's a Dr Who line: "I was a Time Lord.Ìý Now I am a traveller."  There are lords in the 91Èȱ¬, though really they are more sorcerer or magician: they make programmes. They wield the 'very expensive paintbox' and make the magic that absorbs us - as it educates, informs and entertains.

And then it disappears.Ìý Poof!  Magic down the airwaves for just minutes - then gone.Ìý All the planning, budget, technology, artistry and magic - just gone.Ìý All that remains is whatever makes its way into the archive.

The archive is the physical reality, the substance, of everything the 91Èȱ¬ broadcasts.Ìý We may not be Media Lords who make the programmes, but we can all be Travellers - who travel the archive.

A few evenings ago I was listening to Radio 7 - an archive channel, launched (as was Six Music) on the content that was brought back into use through archive digitisation.Ìý There was Humphrey Littleton, with Willie Rushton on fine form - and I was ageless, back with them, back with myself back with them.Ìý It's an 'out of time' rather than an 'out of body' experience - but equally abnormal and surprising.

The archive is enchanted: Sleeping Beauty awakes, a hundred years disappear.Ìý In the archive, experiencing the archive, we are enchanted; timeless.

Broadcasting is technological magic: produced with considerable expense and difficulty, by many kinds of specialist.Ìý The enchantment of the archive also relies on technology: to build, maintain and provide access.Ìý Just now maintenance is tricky, as analogue formats become outdated and the content - the precious sounds and images - has to be caught again like Peter Pan's shadow, and sewn up in a new, digital, technology.Ìý The trickery of maintaining an archive needs its own kind of sorcerer - experts on old formats, breathing their art into old equipment for the last time - for them and the equipment.Ìý It all costs money, and another kind of sorcery managed to extract ten years of funding from the 91Èȱ¬, back in 1999 - and now needs to cast that spell again also.

However thanks to technology, some developed in 91Èȱ¬ R&D () and some developed in partnership between R&D and other European broadcast archives (the Preservation Factory), the budget needed to digitise the second half of the archive will be reduced 50% (in money and time).Ìý That's an engineers magic, done with spreadsheets, circuits and (increasingly) software.

The next and biggest magic of all will be an 'appearing trick': projects that will give the license fee payers even more access to archive content than they already get on our collections site.Ìý This is the domain of Roly Keating, the 91Èȱ¬'s director of archive content - and Tony Ageh, his Controller, Archive Technology (because in the 91Èȱ¬ it's not seemly to use the title Magician).Ìý Roly gives an overview of these projects in a post on the About the 91Èȱ¬ blog.Ìý

The numbers game - the size of the archive and how we preserve it, and transform it from old to new technology, has been covered in another 91Èȱ¬ blog by Adrian Williams, whom I've worked with since 1994.Ìý He's now the 91Èȱ¬ Head of Preservation for the archive, and he's written a 91Èȱ¬ Internet Blog.

The 91Èȱ¬ does a lot to reach out and try to connect with people.Ìý Some connections that may surprise you are:
•    Facebook - we have an archive page which alerts audiences to new collections:
•    YouTube - .
•   We are always interested in your feedback and on Twitter we ask people to use as a hashtag (as a controlled-vocabulary indexing term, in library speak; librarians invented that particular kind of magic - indexing - a couple hundred years ago)

But all the above is talk about the archive:  if you want an intimation of what archive access actually means - and an intimation of your own immortality, just look here:  www.bbc.co.uk/archive

Finally, if you want to hear more from Roly, Adrian and myself we have been interviewed for the which is dedicated to the 91Èȱ¬ Archive this week.

As part of this weeks celebration of the 91Èȱ¬ archive the team have produced a which has been posted on the .  

We're cross posting from this blog to all the archives activity across the 91Èȱ¬'s blogs and web sites and external channels this week, so take a look at the posts from Roly Keating, Controller of Archive Development and Adrian Williams, the Digitisation Group Manager, around the 91Èȱ¬ blogs network today.

Thursday's addition to our archive blog activity is from Helen Papadopoulos Project Manager of 91Èȱ¬ Genome who talks through the project that will bring the broadcast history of the 91Èȱ¬ to life

Wouldn't normally do this, but we've just seen some outstanding work by looking at 91Èȱ¬ history data, and it's lovely.

The project takes some facinating and really rather important spacial data from history, and integrates it into rather natty modern maps to give you an idea of the impact of world historic events.Ìý It humanises them (at least for us map geeks!).

The outlining the work is a facinating read in it's own right.

Max Gandney, who commisioned this project from BERG, has a great post about the project over at the Internet Blog.  What's more, he's inviting fedback there.Ìý After all this is an experimental project, and we'd like to know how it can be improved upon.



We should stress, this isn't the R&D dept at all, but it is R&D and it is being done at the 91Èȱ¬, and we think it's very cool!

Read the rest of this entry

A few months ago we shared the process of creating and moving into our new South Lab.Ìý Today we're starting a similar film sequence charting a potentially even more radical transformation, as our North Lab team begin the process of moving into their new home at .

In this first film we'll take a look at the current set up of the lab, and the research work that's underway in their interim base on the 91Èȱ¬'s Oxford Road campus in Manchester.Ìý We caught up with the team during a series of demonstrations they were running for the Vision board, the senior managers planning the future of Vision.




We already have a sequel in the can which takes a look at the ways in which the North lab is trying some new technologies in order to stay connected to the work at the South Lab, and we take a quick tour of the new MediaCityUK development as it goes up.

This week, with a couple of people on holidays, the team is mainly concentrating on the Second Screen Springwatch work with a couple of projects in wrap-up.

Read the rest of this entry

Dr Nick Yeadon of the Digital Service Development team has written us this post giving a facinating overview to the recent development and deployment of a new feature on the Freeview platform:

A feature that all new Freeview+HD recorders are required to support is "Trailer Booking", also known as Green Button. This new feature allows broadcasters to send metadata about a trailer in-time with on-screen trailers. The metadata tells the recorder what is being trailed so the viewer can book a programme to be recorded when the green 'Book Me' icon pops-up. No need to go searching through the EPG for it.

The 91Èȱ¬ has been broadcasting this service on 91Èȱ¬1,2,3,4 and the HD channel since the end of May, although on 91Èȱ¬1 and 2 is only available in England at the moment. We are currently assessing the challenges of rolling it out on 91Èȱ¬ 1 and 2 in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

Read the rest of this entry