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Goodbye!
Well, sadly, I never got to officially say goodbye last year. I was extremely busy with my work and there was no choice but to abandon the blog. Returning after almost two years, I'm sad to find that many people have discovered this blog only after it was abandoned.
I wish to ask for forgiveness from those who enjoyed reading my blog and watched with hope that they would see a new post here. This will the last new post here, and alas, it is not about IT or electronic media. Instead I request forgiveness from all readers of this blog as I never hinted at the possibility of shutting down this blog.
I still do not plan to shut down the blog completely. Instead I will let it remain online for people to enjoy age-old articles. Personally, I am very pleased with the quality of the articles I have written years ago, considering my actual age at that time (you will be surprised). I am still younger than most of the blogging generation, especially in Sri Lanka.
Blogging here has been a great adventure for me. During its single year of real existence, this blog garnered thousands of visits and several committed readers, which is a great achievement for me. I learnt more about writing (somewhat) professionally in English, which later went on to help in my education. I learnt more about the world IT and media, especially in Sri Lanka, and I hope you learnt something too.
I hope to launch another blog soon, less under a false identity and more relevant to my real life. However I will not inform readers of this blog about my new adventure. It will be a new beginning, and it will not be directly targeted at IT or electronic media.
Finally, thank you for being a reader of this blog. It has been a pleasure blogging for you.
And Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 2010 to all of you!
City Hits + TechnoGuy's Blog
TechnoGuy's Blog has formed a partnership with City Hits, aiming to provide even more information and an improved service to our readers.
City Hits is a Sri Lanka-based Entertainment Community with the vision "to be the most important gateway to WORLD and a "one-stop" site for ENTERTAINMENT and leisure related information on the Internet". Although launched only in December 2007 (4 months ago), the blog has already garnered a large readership with almost 5500 hits so far. City Hits provides information on the latest TV Shows, Box Office Movies, Promotional Offers by Local Services, Sri Lanka's Popular Night Clubs, and so much more. Go there now and have a look for yourself.
TechnoGuy's Blog is about "Information Technology and Electronic Media from a Sri Lankan viewpoint". It has been online for just over a year now, and have over 5500 hits with 7 feed subscribers.
We hope that our readers will benefit as much as we do from this partnership.
TechnoGuy is now on YouTube
I'm now registered on YouTube to provide videos related to Pay Television and IT in Sri Lanka. Of course I only have Dialog TV at home, so most of the videos will be related to it. Through this I hope to tell the world how good/bad the situation of Pay TV in Sri Lanka is, and educate future customers through real life videos so that they can see the truth for themselves.
Please send in your ideas for new videos via comments here or email.
Sir Arthur C. Clarke has left us
He is most well known around the world for creating the concept of Satellite Technology. Satellites play a vital role in today's world for communication and other purposes. If not for this man, when would such a conecpt have been created?
He also wrote a number of interesting science fiction books, and made many predictions about the future of mankind and the universe. He predicted that man would visit the Moon before the year 2000, and man did go there in 1969 and many times afterwards. Most of his other predictions too have proved to be correct.
Arthur C. Clarke lived in Sri Lanka (of all countries) for a large portion of his lifetime. I believe he liked the peaceful environment and beautiful scenery which would help him continue inventing, writing and predicting. He adapted to the Sri Lankan way of life and ofter enjoyed wearing a sarong and t-shirt like most other Sri Lankan men do.
Another major part of his life was his post-Polio syndrome which made him unabled to walk properly and placed him in the wheelchair. Yet he continued to lead an active lifestyle. Countless times I saw him at the Otter's Aquatic Club, sitting in his wheelchair, enjoying the scenery and watching the children have fun in the pool. He came there for regular exercise to keep himself as fit as possible.
Sri Arthur C. Clarke was awarded a CBE (knighthood) in 1989, although he was unable to fly to England and receive the honours from the Queen as he was too ill for the long journey. He was also the Chancellor of the Moratuwa University from 1979 to 2002. The Moratuwa University was the first to offer IT eduction in Sri Lanka, and Arthur C. Clarke would have played a major role in its development.
In 2005, Sir Arthur C. Clarke was present at the opening of CBN Sat, Sri Lanka's first Satellite Pay Television network. CBN Sat caused a revolution in the television industry of Sri Lanka, and Arthur C. Clarke would have been happy to be a part of its beginning.
In December 2007, Arthur C. Clarke celebrated his 90th birthday together with the President of Sri Lanka and numerous other dignitaries. At the same time he produced a video bidding farewell to his frined and fans, knowing that he would leave the world soon.
Early this morning, Sir Clarke passed away after being hospitalized for four days. He would have predicted his deaths months or even years ahead. And he would have been happy and at peace when he died, as he knows what a great service he has done for mankind.
Sir Arthur C. Clarke, may your sould Rest In Peace!
VerveEarth
VerveEarth is a new seach engine-type website which turns surfing the World Wide Web into just surfing the World. VerveEarth organizes registered websites and blogs according to their base position in the world. For example, my blog's link is in Colombo, Sri Lanka on the VerveEarth map.
When you visit VerveEarth, first you see a world map (via Google Maps), with RSS icons all over the place. You can zoom in to any region and all websites/blogs in that area will be shown clearly using those icons. You place your mouse over the icons to read their titles, or click on them to see the latest posts in short (thanks to RSS). If you are registered at VerveEarth, you can choose favourites and then view a map of only your favourite websites in the world.
VerveEarth gives everyone a more interesting way to browse the internet. Apart from just clicking around the world map, you can type in a website and search in normal fashion. If you really want to understand what I say clearly, then visit VerveEarth now.
I got to know about VerveEarth from a email sent to me from the CEO of the service (it was probably automated). VerveEarth's website is completely interactive and loads surprisingly fast on my snail-type SLT ADSL connection.
At the moment VerveEarth has very few websites documented as blog owners have to register for people to see it on the map. VerveEarth probably will not go for web crawling like other search engines. And also VerveEarth is still in beta, so you can trust the service to improve more as time goes on.
If you own a website or blog, I recommend you go over to VerveEarth and put it on the map. Once the service becomes popular you can expect a ton of hits to your blog/website.
In Sri Lanka - As of now only my blog and another blog are registered at VerveEarth.
The First Anniversary
Twelve months ago, a man nicknamed himself TechnoGuy Sri Lanka and entered the worldwide blogosphere. He created a blog to tell the world about Information Technology worldwide and how it affects Sri Lanka, and also to tell the world about the local Media industry.
Twelve months after February 17th, 2007, the very same man celebrates one year of blogging and thus the First Anniversary of TechnoGuy's Blog.
I am very happy on this day. First of all, I thank the TV & Radio Sri Lanka group of blogs for introducing me to Blogging. A partial thanks also goes to the shutdown of CBN Sat, which is not really a good thing, but prompted me to search the internet for information and made me discovery the CBN Sat Forum (now Dialog TV Forum).
Although I have become increasingly busy at work during the last year, it has not kept me from blogging. True, I missed out one entire month without a single post. But yet I tried my best back then, and still try to do so now whilst I am piling up with an ever-largening amount of work.
I have posted almost 50 posts and I've had an amazing 4500 visitors so far. I'm waiting for another 500 visitors. Meanwhile I've had almost 10 polls in which people have actively participated.
On December 26th, 2007, I introduced a new visual theme for the blog. This was both good and bad. The good was that this new style allows for a two side-columns for better organization. And the new theme does look better than the Blogger-made theme I used. The bad was that I lost all poll information because I overlooked writing it down before replacing the template.
I truly hope and pray that my blog will live on for many years to come, whatever may happen to me. I will try my best to post something useful and interesting as frequently as possible.
So I wish myself the best wishes for the future of TechnoGuy's Blog, and wonder what to post next.
Meanwhile, would you kindly consider voting on how well I've done so far, and commenting on future improvements I could make?
New Channels on Dialog TV (Early 2008)
Its time for new channels once more on Dialog Satellite Television. This time the channels are not essential for Dialog's survival (at least for the moment), but will be pleasant additions if package prices are not increased.
Here are the channels that have already been launched:-
CH55 - Shruthi Television - Hindu religious channel
CH56 - Rana Ru - Entertainment and news for members of armed forces (scrambled for ordinary subscribers)
Unfortunately, this year there is no complete list of channel which will be launched. But here are the channels thought to be launched on Dialog TV on their 4th Transponder, according to unverified sources:-
Fox FX - Dedicated to programming targetted at men
Fox Crime - All about crime
Fox News Channel - Popular news channel based in U.S.A.
Fox Sports - Sports channel which is available only in the Middle East so far
Fox Movie Channel - Movies from U.S.A.
Deutsche Welle TV - News and entertainment from Germany
TV5 Monde - Movies and entertainment from France
E! Entertainment Television - #1 channel for hollywood gossip and rumours (already on Dialog Mobile TV)
Channel NewsAsia - News channel based in Singapore
Baby TV - Entertainment for toddlers and information for parents
SS Music - Music from all Southern states of India
Channel C - Sri Lankan Music channel backed by Torana Music (already on Dialog Mobile TV)
There is a possibility that Dialog is in talks with Sun Network to provide India's most popular Tamil-language channels on Dialog TV. Hopefully these talks will have a positive result.
Picture Quality
Shruti Television has a high picture quality so far as only 10 channels are active, and 8 channels are probably not working at their fullest yet. Unfortunately the quality of Rana Ru cannot be accessed as the channel is scrambled for ordinary customers.
Sound Quality
It is difficult to measure the sound quality as many programmes on Shruti Television do not have professionally recorded audio.
EPG
None of the channels have Electronic Programme Guides so far.
But another interesting piece of information is that the EPG will be given a dedicated data channel. That means the EPGs of all channel will load faster and all EPGs can be accessed without changing the channel.
Acknowledgement
I thank all those who post information regarding new channels and improvement on Dialog TV at the Dialog TV Forum. The information provided here is solely based on the information they have provided.
Dialog Mobile TV: Updated
Dialog has updated and improved their Mobile Streaming Television service sometime during the last few days. I was pleasantly surprised to browse to the Dialog Mobile TV Channels page and find some new channels and a new design.
3G and GPRS Feeds
First of all, each channel has two feed. One is for 3G and the other for GPRS. The GPRS feed has a lower bitrate so that GPRS users can actually watch television properly without spending the day buffering. The 3G feed has a higher bitrate and therefore higher quality, and so far I have not experienced any buffering problems.
New Channels
The important part is that Dialog has introduced new channels. Two of the new channels are popular pay television channels. Another new channel is a local pay television channel, launched last year on Dialog Satellite Television. I have never heard of the other new channels, so it is possible that Dialog (or a friendly company) is broadcasting those themselves.
Live Cricket
This channel contains STAR Sports India which broadcasts the India-Australia-Sri Lanka Triangular Series these days. It is unknown whether this channel is permanent.
The good old new channel that was available on Mobile TV for a long time now.
This remains Cartoon Network India, and is a trouble for parents who care about their Phone bills. Nothing has changed here (except for the seperate GPRS and 3G feeds).
Channel C
This is a new channel which broadcasts Sri Lankan music videos. It is currently undergoing test transmissions.
The ultimate channel for Hollwood Gossip and News. It is unclear whether this is the Asian feed or European Feed so far. But this channel is supposed to turn up on Dialog Satellite Television as well in the next few days.
This is the Sri Lankan pay television channel which broadcasts tele-dramas and films 24/7. It was launched on Dialog Satellite Television in December last year. The channel will be available only for Dialog Satellite TV customers who pay an extra LKR 25 after March 31st 2008. This makes me wonder whether Mobile TV customers too will have to pay for the channel.
Crazy TV
All things crazy! I go crazy when I try to sort out if this channel is international. So I believe that this channel may be broadcasted by Dialog themselves.
Joke TV
Once again, the channel is self explanatory. And also, this too may be broadcasted by Dialog.
Bollywood TV
This channel broadcasts Indian music. So far I have not seen any films, so maybe the channel is only for Bollywood Music. I've never heard of this channel before either.
Local Channels
The local channels on Dialog Mobile TV are the same as on Dialog Terrestrial and Dialog Satellite, except that here TNL is missing. Isn't something else missing from before?
The loss of the Maharaja
Yes, Sirasa TV, Channel One MTV and Shakthi TV are missing. And possibly they are not returning at all. Why? I don't know.
There is a possibility that Dialog wants Maharaja out of the way as Dialog is launching its own channels now. Or maybe Maharaja Corporation wants their channels to be available only on terrestrial. Whatever happens, it's Maharaja's loss, not Dialog's.
Final Thoughts
This improvement is likely to heat up the mobile market in Sri Lanka. So far, Dialog has been utterly silent about this, but soon there is likely to be a major advertising programme. Mobitel will work fast to improve their services and maybe introduce some new channels to their Mobi TV service. However, no one seems to be talking about any Mobi TV, even though Mobitel has announced it. Does anyone know about it?
These days Dialog may be celebrating the 10th Anniversary of Dialog GSM (not confirmed), which means that there will be many benefits for customers.
I'm watching and waiting for Dialog's next move, as well as their competitor Mobitel's next move.
Dialog TV: Going MPEG-4
NOTE: The switch to MPEG-4 is probably not going to happen so soon, but this article will remain here if anyone want to get a faint idea of what may be planned.
Dialog Satellite Television is planning to add a wide range of new channels within the next few months using MPEG-4 encoding technology. MPEG-4 offers lower bitrates and better quality, which means that any digital broadcaster can broadcast even more channels than before within the same limited space.
Lets have a look at what MPEG-4 can change for current and future customers of Dialog TV.
Solving the Transponder Issue
Dialog has only three transponders at the moment, with one more on its way. Each of the current transponders can fit in around 18 channels (except the third transponder, which has 19) with acceptable quality using MPEG-2 encoding. This results in a total of 55 channels, which is the channel count on Dialog. Once Dialog gets a transponder, addition of channels can be done fast. But the problem is that transponders are expensive, and satellites are fast running out of them.
So the best solution is to fit as many channels as possible to the existing transponders. This can be done even now with MPEG-4. But ultimately each channel will have less bandwidth to call its own, and the overall quality will suffer.
This is where the new MPEG-4 comes in. Using MPEG-4, the current channel number of 18 per transponder can be doubled to 36 channels. Yet there will not be a loss of quality because of the magic of MPEG-4. The quality may even be better than before.
This means that Dialog can avoid having to purchase more transponders, but still introduce more new channels.
Being a MPEG-4 decoder does not mean that the decoder is immediately MPEG-2 compatible. This depends completely on the hardware and software. But since MPEG-4 decoder processors are quite powerful, it is likely that MPEG-2 can also be decoded quite easily after a system software upgrade.
The Current Plans
Please note that these are subject to change. Visit the Dialog TV Forum for the latest information.
Dialog now plans to introduce a fourth transponder with 35 channels, using MPEG-4 encoding. This will surely be a great treat for the customers.
But using MPEG-4 will need customers to purchase new decoders, and so far Dialog does not sound like they will give them out free. According to the current information, those who want access to the new channels can purchase the new decoder. The new MPEG-4 decoder will cost around LKR 6000+++.
The new decoder will be backward compatible with MPEG-2, as channels on the existing three transponders will not be upgraded to MPEG-4 immediately.
Certain sources suggest that Dialog TV will use the same decoder as the Indian DTH service Sun Direct. Sun Direct too broadcasts using MPEG-4, and uses the same Irdeto encryption technology, so this is quite possible.
There is also a possibility that MPEG-4 decoding will be enabled through some sort of software upgrade for existing decoders, but it depends completely on whether the hardware will be powerful enough to decode the power hungry MPEG-4.
Customers will have to watch and wait till Dialog launches their new transponder with new technology. Unfortunately, the new channels being in MPEG-4 means that existing customers cannot watch the test transmissions. Lets be patient, shall we...
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