RTE

Technology

The Future of Unlimited Broadband

June 12, 2009 by 0 Comments

The wisdom and practicality of ISPs offering “unlimited” bandwidth in a fixed price plan has come under scrutiny again as British Telecom are beginning to feel the pinch as the popularity of BBC’s iPlayer continues to grow.

The most popular (and cheapest) broadband products offered by ISPs are usually limited in the amount of downloads that can occur, and this has been traditionally to prevent en mass downloading of illegal games and videos.

However, now that more and more TV channels are making content available legally (RTÉ Player being the most recent), the ISPs are finding it tough going to provide networks that can keep up with growing usage of such legal services.

Some of the BBC executives have suggested that the ISPs just didn’t see this coming and are themselves to blame for not planning for it. This is an arguable point alright and it will be interesting to see if they learn from this experience and prepare better for the adoption of full blown IPTV.

Source: SlashDot

Multimedia - Technology

RTÉ Player Launched

April 21, 2009 by 5 Comments

The Irish national broadcaster RTÉ has launched its own TV Player allowing viewers (in Ireland) to watch programmes up to 21 days after they were broadcast. It is similar in concept to the BBC iPlayer (which was actually launched several years ago now) with the exception that it does not yet support Radio broadcasts. RTÉ have been broadcasting live TV from their website for some time now with limited availability of pre-broadcast programmes but this takes things a great deal further.

At first glance, I think it looks really well, seems pretty easy to use and plays well on my home broadband connection.

Source: RTÉ News

Life

Questions & Answers no more

March 11, 2009 by 0 Comments

After 21 years at the helm of the RTÉ current affairs programme, Questions & Answers, the presenter John Bowman has decided to call it a day (to focus on other projects).

For me this programme is famed for the appearances of the legend that is Willie O’Dea, who (it was once alleged) only ever seems to appear when the Fianna Fáil Government are knee-deep in controversy. There is no one quite like Willie to shout down every other panel member, no matter what the topic. One of my favourite quotes from him is, “Sure, sure, sure … the-the-the last time that crowd were in Government, they left the health service in rag order“  in reference to whether the current opposition could have any real impact on the heath service.

RTÉ did indicate that they are planning to unveil another current affairs programme to occupy the same slot but without John or Willie on board, will it be as entertaining? Only time will tell.

Source: RTE News