More 3D on BBC HD – Streetdance

If you thought that the final of Strictly Come Dancing in 3D was all you were going to get from the BBC over the holidays, you might have missed an unexpected treat on New Year’s Day, in the form of Streetdance 3D, on the BBC HD channel.

I watched this mostly because it features dance dreamboat Richard Winsor, whom I’ve seen several times at Sadler’s Wells, but also because I was a little curious about it being broadcast in 3D. It was only a few days ago I posted here that it would be inconceivable that 3D broadcasts wouldn’t, for the time being at least, be accompanied by a 2D simulcast for those without a 3D set. Yet the film was scheduled only on the BBC HD channel, so what was happening?

The clue, it turned out, was in the red button. Switching to the channel while the film was on showed the familiar double image of a side-by-side HD broadcast, where the picture is split down the middle, with an image for each eye on one side of the screen.

Repeated on each side was a red button icon labelled ‘Watch in 2D’, and pressing that switched to the 2D version. So far, nothing unusual there. And my first thought was that it was a simulcast, perhaps using one of the interactive streams that wasn’t needed for anything else.

Except that the 2D version looked better quality than standard definition, and I don’t think there’d be the capacity, even on a day when there’s no sports, to manage that. Another give-away was that there wasn’t any break in either picture or sound when switching between the two. Normally, if the box has to tune to another stream, there’ll be at least a momentary break in both.

Technical tricks

So, how was it done? My guess – I’m waiting for the BBC to confirm, but I’m 99% certain – is that it was all done with MHEG, the interactive ‘red button’ service. This was evident when the application was still available during the following programme.

Pressing Red simply turned on or off one of the useful features that MHEG provides, which is video scaling. Taking advantage of the side-by-side format, the application simply took the left side of the screen, and zoomed it to fill the whole screen; obviously there’s a small loss of horizontal resolution in doing that, compared to broadcasting a full screen HD picture, but it still looked better than SD, and meant there was no glitch on switching formats.

How do I know it was the left hand side? ‘A little Later’ was on after the film, and the application was still live for at least a part of that, with the icon appearing twice on screen. Pressing Red during that zoomed the left side of the screen, losing the right.

So, I’d say that on the evidence so far, it looks like it’s perfectly possible to provide a 2D/3D simulcast without using any extra bandwidth. The downsides are that resolution isn’t quite as high as for HD, and 2D viewers have to take a positive action to see the ‘normal’ version, unlike the Strictly simulcast, where they just tuned to a 2D version.

You probably wouldn’t want to use this for a BBC One programme, because it would end up on the standard def channel version of the channel (unless that can be fed separately from the HD version), and a lot of older set top boxes don’t have an up to date MHEG engine which can handle the video scaling, so wouldn’t be able to switch to 2D; all HD boxes should have the necessary software, as long as they are FreeviewHD certified.

Incompatible equipment

That means, incidentally, that users of the 3View box probably wouldn’t have been able to select 2D, as it doesn’t have MHEG built in, and the same would be true of people watching with a generic satellite receiver, rather than a Sky or Freesat branded one.

So, this is also potentially interesting from that point of view; whatever equipment you have, even a generic satellite or HD terrestrial tuner, you would have been able to watch in 3D. But only equipment compliant with one of the UK’s platforms – FreeviewHD, Freesat or Sky – would have given 2D viewers the opportunity to select that version of the broadcast.

This sort of thing is not going to happen very often, but nevertheless it raises interesting questions about exactly what equipment should be supported by the BBC, and might well be seen by some as pushing people towards platform-compliant equipment.

A year of WTF

One of the sites for which I do a lot of work these days is RegHardware, and some of the articles I’ve enjoyed doing the most for them are the ‘WTF… ‘ series, in which we try to explain a particular technology or issue. In 2011, I did several of these pieces, and for your delectation and delight, here are quick links to all of them.

• WTF is … wireless HDMI?
• WTF is … 3D printing?
• WTF is … 4K x 2K?
• WTF is … IPv6?
• WTF are … connected appliances?
• WTF is … HbbTV?
• WTF is … Bluetooth 4.0?

And, for the sake of completeness, some earlier WTFs, from 2010

• WTF is … up with e-book pricing?
• WTF is … Project Canvas?

My highlights of 2011

I thought, at the end of the year, it was worth picking out some of the things that I’ve found most interesting to write about here over the last twelve months. So here’s my top ten, in chronological order, with a few comments.

In January, I looked at the little things that make a PVR special. Once you’ve had these features, you start to rely on them – and it’s a shame many new models still don’t come up to the mark.

As in previous years, the publishing industry continues to confound people; the sales of eBook readers may be rising, but some of the big companies remain resolute in their analogue ways. In February, it was the turn of Harper-Collins to miss the point, with a suggestion that library copies of eBooks should wear out.

April was an important date for Freeview HD; it’s the date after which any new kit tested and launched on the market should support all the features needed for things such as iPlayer and the new IP TV services being launched on channel 110 and above. That’s when version 6.2.1 of the D-Book became mandatory.

Prompted by an impending holiday, in May I considered upgrading my camera – whether to go digital, and if so, how to do that, and take my existing lenses with me. My holiday was also the inspiration for another post in June, in which I looked at how to get cheap mobile data in Italy. If you’re travelling, I hope you’ll find it useful.

July saw lots of publicity given to an Ofcom map of broadband around the country. It might look pretty, but read my comments, and see if you agree that, for many purposes, it’s actually not very useful at all.

Back in 2010, I started the process of migrating all my phones from the old ISDN line that I had to a new VoIP system, running over my broadband connection, and powered by a software PBX running on a small Windows PC. In September, after I’d been using the new system for a year, I was able to answer the question – was it worth switching to VoIP?

Value for money was presumably on my mind that month, as I asked the same question of robot cleaners, too, after reviewing the latest Roomba model for RegHardware.

Another thing that’s been on my mind is changing my mobile phone, for one that is a bit better at web browsing than my current Nokia E72. But there are some things the old Nokia does very well – and very few more recent phones do. I think. The problem is that most phone reviews just don’t tell me what I need to know.

And finally, in November I was lucky enough to attend an open day at the BBC’s research labs in Salford. There’s a lot more going on there than just the Daleks!

Inside the den of the hot geeks

Last week I had the pleasure of a trip to Manchester, where I’ve not been since the tail end of the 20th century. I was invited by the BBC to look round their R&D North Lab, which is one of the three locations where the Corporation works on a range of research, from digital production to ways of enhancing the experience of the end users.

There’s a team of technologists (or hot geeks, as I prefer to think of them); mostly young men and a few women, ranging from those on placement as part of a course to others who have been with the BBC for many years.

A full report of my trip is over on RegHardware.

Additional information about the “dalek demo” has just been posted on the BBC R&D Blog

Checking file uploads in JavaScript

One of the problems many people face with their websites is handling file uploads from users – given the opportunity, people tend to just try uploading any old thing. On a site that I run, people can upload their own photos, which we then scale to a maximum of 600 pixels in each direction.

We ask them not to upload huge files, because it takes a long time, it’s a pain to have to resize them – especially in PHP, which can run into memory issues sometimes – and since they’re only viewed online, multi-megabyte images just aren’t needed.

Of course, that doesn’t stop people from just trying to upload 6MB image files, then complaining that it doesn’t work. Or from trying to upload a variety of formats when – for the sake of simplicity – we’d rather just stick with JPG.

Traditionally, you can’t check information about a file until it’s been uploaded, because JavaScript doesn’t have full access to the local hard disk, for security reasons. So, you have to allow someone to spend ages on a slow link uploading that massive file, so that your script can then say “Sorry, it was too big” or “Sorry, it was in the wrong format.”

It’s hardly a good user experience. The alternative is to use a Flash uploader, which can check the file before sending it; there are off the shelf applications that you can use to do that, including some from sites like DMXZone.com if you simply want something that can be dropped onto the page in DreamWeaver.

HTML5

Flash isn’t always convenient, of course, though it’s still very widely deployed. But there is an alternative, which is some extensions to Javascript that go along with HTML5 and are supported in many of the latest browsers. There are a few examples around the net using the new window.File attributes, which I drew on in coming up with the code here that I’ve used for photo uploads on one of my sites.

Essentially, I want to make sure that, where possible, I only allow people to upload a file that’s less than 800k, and is a JPG. The code here is a simplified version of what I’m using, which demonstrates the basics of how you can check a file’s size and type before allowing the user to submit the form.

How Firefox informs the user they've selected an inappropriate file

The files attribute of our upload form is a list of file names, so files[0] is the first file. Each one individually has properties including name, for the filename, type for the MIME type and size, for the size in bytes. Here’s the Javascript:
function validateFile() {
if ( window.File) {
thisFile = document.getElementById('photo1').files[0] ;
sizeError = false ; formatError = false ;
var status = 'Ready to upload' ;
if ( thisFile.size > 819200 ) {
sizeError = true ;
}
if ( thisFile.type != 'image/jpeg' ) {
formatError = true ;
}
if ( sizeError || formatError ) {
errorMsg = 'Sorry; ' + thisFile.name + ' cannot be uploaded.' ;
if ( sizeError ) {
errorMsg = errorMsg + ' File is more than 800k. Please resize and try again.' ;
}
if ( formatError ) {
errorMsg = errorMsg + ' File is not a JPG. Please convert to JPG format and try again.' ;
}
status = 'Cannot be uploaded' ;
alert(errorMsg) ;
}
statusInfo = document.getElementById('status1') ;
statusInfo.innerHTML = thisFile.name + ': ' + status
}
}


You’ll need to alter the form field definition, too, so that it looks something like this:

<input id="photo1" name="imageFile" type="file" /><span id="status1"> </span>

The span tag afterwards allows the name of the file and the status to remain on the page, after any alert has been dismissed; I use that because on some pages, people can upload multiple files, and a version of the script validates each one when it’s changed, and also adds a button to reset each of the file selections. Here are two grabs that show how that looks:

The script shows the name of the file and the status

This file is ready to upload

The full version also keeps track, via an array of Boolean variables, of which of the file fields on the page has an invalid file selected, and sets the ‘display’ style attribute of the page’s Submit button to ‘none’ so that the user can’t even submit the form when an invalid file has been chosen.

Apologies, by the way, for the awkward spacing.

Well, that was quick

The news about Amy Winehouse has been all over the net this afternoon, and it doesn’t seem to have taken long for scammers to cotton on to it. In my facebook feed, around 7.25pm London time, I saw someone posting this:

This is doing the rounds on Facebook - only a few hours after news of her death

I’ve removed the name of the person who posted this, for security. Clicking the link does indeed take you to exclusiveonlinevid.com, which proceeds to run a ton of Javascripts. I’ve not looked at them in detail, and it’s not automatically propagated through my own Facebook account, but I suspect it’s another of the ‘survey’ type scams that’s been around on Facebook lately.

Updated: I’ve now also seen links to keywordcache.com – the second screenshot below – which once again claims to be a Winehouse-related video, and is definitely a survey scam.

A clear indication that the video is a fake is the supposed comments below it, the most recent of which is apparently from the 8th of June; it would be hard to have a ‘night before death’ video from six weeks ago.

So, if you see this link, don’t click on it. Tell your friends if they’ve posted it on their walls, and never, ever, fill in your Facebook password just to see a video.

The comments below this supposed video from yesterday are dated June 8th and earlier - clearly a fake

The scam is also linked to keywordcache.com - don't click any links!

Multitasking on the iPod touch

I have recently bought an iPod Touch, to replace an old iPod that got dropped in water. One of the reasons for choosing the Touch was the ability to run apps, including the 3CX softphone, allowing it to be used as an extension to my phone system.

I know this will not be a popular post with some people, but I have to say that my experience of multi-taking on the iPod Touch is horrible, and it’s certainly ensured that I won’t consider an iPhone when I next look for a new mobile. Apple makes some great products, and I just can’t understand how they came up with an implementation of multi-tasking that is so clunky, and actually makes Symbian S60 look like a shining example of good UI design.

3CX phone allows me to use an iPod touch as an extension to my phone system

This is the 3CX phone in action. It works pretty well, and means that I can effectively use the iPod Touch to replace my DECT cordless phone, when I’m around the house or in the back garden. Pretty neat; as I’ve mentioned before, my phone system is all VoIP now.

Of course, for a soft phone to be useful, it has to be running, and 3CX goes into multi-tasking mode. That’s fine – I don’t want it to suddenly disconnect from the phone system and miss calls as a result. But what happens when an app is multi-tasking? You get a big red pulsing bar at the top of the iPod screen, that’s what. It looks like this:

When an app is multitasking, this red bar appears at the top of the screen

In a way this is useful, as it lets me know the application is running, and I haven’t accidentally quit it, but I can’t help thinking it could have been a little more subtle, perhaps? Just turn the title bar red, maybe? That’s particularly important, because not all apps appear clever enough to know about this, and in some of them, if the red bar is at the top of the screen, the labels for some buttons disappear off the bottom. Oh dear.

Now, let’s see what happens when you double click the button on the Touch, to see the app list.

In the list of apps, there's no context to say 3cx is different

This is the task switcher / list of recent apps. First, it seems to be essentially doing two things – allowing me to either close a running app, or remove something from the recent list. That’s fine, but there’s absolutely no context here. If the way that 3CX is running is significant enough to merit that pulsing red bar elsewhere, why isn’t it indicated here in some way too? If the app is multi-tasking, then closing it from here will stop it doing so and that might be important – in the case of 3CX, it means you won’t get your phone calls.

So, why can’t there be something to indicate that?

The other bugbear I have about this is that it all seems a hell of a palaver; I’m used to Symbian, and I know it’s fashionable to knock it, but if I wanted to kill an app, I’d hold down the menu key, pick it from the list, and press the C/Delete key to kill it. Job done.

Here, I’ve got to double click the button, then hold my finger on an icon until they all wobble and the minus sign appears, and then tap the one I want to kill, and then press the button to get back to ‘normal’ mode.

I really am struggling to see that as an advance. Yes, I know there are lots of things that iOS does that people think Symbian makes impossible; I know that many of the settings in Symbian are tucked away and confusing; and I know that I can just tap on an app in iOS and it’ll carry on where I left off, which is probably find for most users.

But I still really find this multitasking business – as described here, with 3CX – utterly bonkers on the iPod Touch. And since SIP functionality is something I consider very important in a mobile, it really has put me right off having an iPhone.