IDTV

Nadine Peck joins Farncombe Technology as Senior Consultant

Digital migration specialist Farncombe Technology has appointed Nadine Peck, until recently Project Leader at the BBC for the UK Digital Switchover Help Scheme, as Senior Consultant. Nadine oversaw the process according to which energy efficiency company eaga plc was recently contracted by the BBC to deliver the £500 million Help Scheme – which offers support to the elderly or disabled to help them switch to digital television.

Nadine joined the BBC in 2002 as Operations Manager for BBC Strategy & Distribution, before becoming a Senior Project Manager with BBC Operations managing its Digital Switchover Project. While in that role she managed a number of complex digital switchover projects, represented the Corporation on key switchover-related working groups, and worked alongside officials at the UK government’s Department of Media, Culture and Sport to develop Help Scheme policy.

Prior to joining the BBC, Nadine was Head of Coverage Services at ITV Digital, which she joined soon after it launched the world’s first commercial DTT service (as ONdigital) in 1998.

"Nadine has an unrivalled track-record managing the complex processes associated with digital switchover," said Farncombe’s founder, Andrew Glasspool. "She will play a key role in helping us to accelerate the rapid expansion of our digital migration business in Europe and beyond."

Nadine’s appointment follows that of digital watermarking specialist Lionel Tranchard, who joined Farncombe as Principal Consultant from Thomson STS at the beginning of the year.

Farncombe helping eaga deliver £500m Digital Switchover Help Scheme

Farncombe Technology is helping green support services company eaga deliver the £500m Digital Switchover Help Scheme (DSHS) on behalf of the BBC.

Under the DSHS, those over 75 years old, or who receive certain disability benefits, or who are registered blind or partially sighted, will qualify for support during the course of the digital switchover process. The DSHS is due to operate over a five-year period. Those eligible can get help with choosing the right digital television equipment and installing it in their home, and fitting a new aerial where necessary. A helpline will be provided when people are getting used to the equipment.

The BBC appointed eaga and finalised the contract on 25th February. Farncombe advised eaga in the run-up to the submission of its tender, and has now been retained by eaga to offer strategic advice and assistance on a variety of issues during the course of the BBC contract, including set-top box technology, and customer installation and call-centre procedures.

Connected TV blog launched in beta

Well, the new blog mentioned in my previous post is now up and running, at least in beta, here.

It includes the majority of the old posts from this blog, but for the time being I'm keeping IDTV going since it provides an easy interface to my old website, idtv.co.uk (see page listings in left-hand side-bar), which still seems to be garnering a fair amount of traffic.

New blog about to be launched - watch this space

Farncombe Technology, my new employer, has agreed to allow me to launch a new group blog about the future of television, which they will host. This will shortly see the light of day, and will incorporate the previous posts from the IDTV blog.

When it goes live, this page will automatically redirect to it. Meanwhile, I am trying to work out what to do with the old idtv.co.uk News and FAQs linked to from this page (which still seem to be attracting a lot of traffic even though they haven't been updated for ages!).

Watch this space....

iPhone: texting on a touch-screen?

In all the coverage of Apple's new i-Phone, no-one seems to have mentioned that one of the major mobile telephony applications today (certainly for teens and young adults) is texting rather than voice. Indeed, in Japan, teens text or email in preference to making voice-calls. But how efficiently can you text from a touch-screen (which is what iPhone is proposing)? And do you really want the thing that you're tapping numbers on all the time and holding up to your ear to listen to be the same thing you watch video back on?

I think Steve Jobs has just taken convergence one step too far. By all means combine iTunes with mobile telephony: Apple stands a better chance of making that combination work than most. But converging all the input and output functions onto a single touch-sensitive display device may prove to be a bridge too far.

I think this one's slipped through Apple's net because Jobs and other Apple execs are all baby boomers, and they typically just don't use mobiles for texting. But if you want a new mobile phone to take off, you have to take the 11-16s with you, too, and that means making SMS as easy if not easier than before. I doubt if the iPhone's touch-screen can pull that one off.