Modern Boys Tv II

This week more of a follow up to last weeks post with a bent around the use of things such as my Chromebook rather than any external box although you can "cast" to Chromecast or use ye olde usb to hdmi to connect the Chromebook to the tv if you wish.

What isn't generally understood is because of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and its Act, because you cannot collect data from children lawfully when using any streamed tv service on free to air channels you do not need to create an account to access them.

Just click on the programs and tell it you have a license if they ask and it all starts to play

This comes into children's programming because as most UK people would be aware the BBC and ITV originally started out producing programming for children that was shown on the regular channels before we switched off our analogue tv system in 2012.

Around 2002 what had been launched in 1985 as a branded block of programming for children entitled "CBBC" (Children's BBC) became a separate channel to which after 2012 much of the BBC children's output moved over to exclusively. 

The output for those up to Seven years of age became Cbeebies (Children's BBC for infants).

When the iPlayer, the BBC only streaming service launched online those two channels had their own presence and the easiest way of accessing is via their own tabs which lists programs such as Blue Peter as well as having an option for "linear" timetabled tv channel viewing as we did with tv in the past when it was tune in at 5pm or miss out!

Itv expanded its output into a dedicated children's channel Citv, (Children's ITV) that runs throughout  the day and that does include the new version of the seventies classic How! show apart from other shows and bought in cartoons.

My5 is the streaming portal for the whole Channel Five group but the main value from my point of view is the Milkshake block that includes shows like Paw Patrol and Peppa Pig which you can select to watch episodes of.

This enables you to put together with any paid for streamed service by making a mini list of the portals, a set of channels you can watch in HD or if you have a older spare Chromebook (or laptop) dedicate to tv which you can set to a height you can watch from the floor just like you did free from anything too grown up.

If like me you've good internet and Wifi, it's easier than adjusting the "rabbits ears" antenna we used to do!

Modern Boys Tv

It's recovery Friday here as I get through my comics and magazines taking my tablets ready for another week

There is of course another form of entertainment in my life which is Television and that is what I will be talking about this week.

Like most of us it entered into my life in the living room certainly with recollections from being a bit over five years of age on a 19 inch 4:3 aspect ratio black and white screen mainly in 405 lines as the BBC 2 channel in 625 lines was a bit weak and amongst the early shows I liked were Hector's House, Camberwick Green and Trumpton.

I also started to watch a show I still watch then Blue Peter of which there's a fair bit around the blogs but suffice to say the magazine format got me hooked at an early age.

As time moved on I did watch programs around the natural world and science such as Tomorrow's World and many of Jacques Cousteau's marine life explorations and really from around about the age of twelve the sorts of shows I watched became fixed.

Television went colour although it wasn't until the mid 1970's we had a colour set.

Like many people as vulgar as whopping great big satellite looked slapped on properties looked I had Sky Television from the early 1990's  more for additional programming such as Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, Discovery and Eurosport and for a period Sky Sports.

For me television pretty much has to be in short trousers because much programming aimed at older teens and adults just flies over my head being hard to follow and understand what is going on in popular soaps so it's no surprise just like I was back at ten to twelve years of age I watch children's tv and a mixture of sport and documentaries.

For several years we've had BT Tv, a mixture of BT's two sports channels a mix of mainly children's channels and discovery in standard definition via the internet through a YouView box that allowed HD FreeView but recent changes in the package upping the price brought a rethink.

Generally I find the two BBC children's channels mainly CBBC and sometimes CBeebies and Itv Kids offer most of the shows I like especially as the BBC do show a few more imported shows that in the past you needed Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network for and the only show that I do care for that's not on those three, Paw Patrol can be seen on YouTube via a computer or streaming device.

I do find Eurosport handy for things such as cycling which is relaxing to watch, tennis, minor motor sports and winter sports such as skiing which I loved in the days of Ski Sunday on BBC 2 and that lead to look at ways of getting that.

Discovery+ had combined Eurosports tv platforms with it's own which feature channels like Animal Planet and it's Science based channels plus Quest and Really on a streaming platform which could be had for £5 per month if you took the annual payment option.

That unlike Eurosports original streaming option uses HTML5 through the browser to render the pictures unlike the original MS Silverlight that was so susceptible to letting computer viruses in even Microsoft discontinued it (and didn't allow Edge, their newer browser to work with it).

That means I can watch via a Wifi Computer anywhere in the house that   of BBC and ITV content online stretched out across the carpet in my grey shorts just as I did when we had to use a Tv watching similar programming for pocket money prices.

The week in rest

 

 

To be very honest I have not been feeling very good all week and that is but one reason why firstly I've been in bed a fair bit during the week and I'm taking a couple of days off mass reposting over my Tumblr although we *should* be at the point of having completed 1,900 posts out of a good 2,300 odd.

The other is with this infection - whatever it might be - I just have't felt up to much at all so I've needed to conserve my energy which has affected participation at various places across the week, feeling pretty drained.

I just hope this thing goes away in a week or so.

New term, new tools

Today officially in this district is the second return to  school day which is a bit different from the norm because usually we would not go back until the first full week in September but with losing a fair bit of studying due to Covid last term and the Queen's Coronation extra day's holiday, the 2021/2 timetable has been rejigged.

The art dept brings a new thing for this term that bridges the gap for when we are out and about exploring and part of the origins of this blog is photography.

The Canon SX 10 IS is an unusual camera that starts with having a fixed 28 to 560mm (in 35 film terms) zoom lens which is rare even within the so-called Super Zooms speciality companies such as Tamron and Sigma make as extras meaning without  changing a lens you can tackle practically any subject you might wish to.

The other thing is not just are the focal lengths marked on the barrel but the mode selector allows both Aperture and Shutter priority auto exposure as well as full manual for more creative control using that lens to say blur out distant objects or waterfalls.

You will note it even has a hotshoe for a Canon Speed-lite flashgun like a DSLR  has.

The rear panel isn't especially complicated for all that but it has both an electronic viewfinder like a DSLR with in effect a miniscreen fitted you view through but also a fully tilting screen that helps taking pictures at awkward angles so you can see where the lens really is pointing.

This means you can use it in effect as a mirrorless dslr with no "mirror slam" when taking pictures where you don't want to be heard.

It's a few years old so its resolution is only 10 megapixels but that is more than adequate for printing out to A3 size (and frankly most websites compress the image quality to increase the uploading time) and uses the easily found AA batteries.

It just lends itself to days out when having everything at hand speeds up taking good pictures and weighs less than my Minolta XD7 did with the 75 to 150 F4 zoom fitted.