MIDDLEBURGH

Middleburgh TV

I have been severely chastised, and taken to task, over my last three posts. Apparently they are considered self indulgent and boring, with only the snow monkey livecam and the african music redeeming them. The Snow Monkeys were in fact a subtle joke open to two interpretations and the African Music is well ... African. If you are desperate for an explanation of the joke You can try asking me through the feedback link at end of the post.

Anyway life goes on and I feel compelled to continue with at least one more potentially boring and self indulgent post, if only to purge myself, traumatised as I am, by the recent concurrent loss of both internet connectivity and cable TV.

The Grasshopper Years - from nappies to nipples..

An Indian colleague of mine does not remember having a TV when he was a child. I on the other hand remember B/W sets not unlike like the one shown on which I watched such character forming programs as

• Watch with Mother,specifically Andy Pandy (with consort Looby Loo) and Bill and Ben (with consort Weed) In retrospect I can see where I got my gender stereotypes come from!!
• Sooty and Sweep Who would believe that H.Corbett was related to The Fish and Chip King, Harry Ramsden or could make a living by shoving his hand up a glove "puppet"
• Noddy and his politically incorrect crew. The Gollywogs have have since been "moved on" and the product repackaged for the US market .... it's only a matter of time before Martin Scorsese does a remake .... (but will anyone send in the investigators to look for the bodies .....)
• Pinky & PerkyTop of the pops sanitised for the teenie bobs !!!
• Stingray Actually I remember nearly all the early Gerry Anderson programs

My father, an early practitioner and aspiring master of the art of the "couch potato", was into

• Sports,
• Variety shows such as Satuday Night at London Palladium and Black and White Minsterals (which I detested and as a consequence I think it acted as vaccine in face of any racist under messages implicit in Noddy )
• Qizz shows such as Hughie Green in "Double your Money" and "Open the Box" and
• shows like "This is Your Life".

I wonder whether a child could claim "abuse" if they were forced to watch such programs these days ? Mum on the other hand , keeper of the family social conscience, compensated by making me watch serious programs like Panarama

At some point we got a color TV and I can remember coming home from school and watching the C4 test transmissions, in particular a program on the Frank Whittle's jet engine (lots of color diagrams showing air flows etc) and Monkey King (Journey to the West) in Chinese with English subtitles (my first Chinese language program). Memorably I watched the original Startrek, the original Dr Who, the Prisoner. and Neil Armstrong (live, save transmission delay) going for a stroll a long long way away.

Of course as I grew older I was subjected to the "American" dream through cultural programs such asSpasky and Crutch, Kojak, Columbo etc and of course the nightly episodes of Vietnam War in all its gory, in that time before news crews became "embedded" and "managed"

The Playlist

I travel a fair bit in Asia and on hotel TV's I search in order, for

• News programs (in English)
• Films/entertainment(French or Japanese films with english subtitles work for me)
• sport (CCTV5 shows a lot of soccer and and like music channels the spoken commentary is not material so my linguistic non abilities are not challenged)
• music

This pretty much reflects what I watch at home over cable ie

• BBC World News
• Australian Network (news and English language drama/documentaries)
• BBC Entertainment (English drama - well I would would wouldn't I)
• HBO (english language films

and local TV - Pearl/World - English language documentaries/drama

Although other channels are theoretically available over the internet. I rarely watch them. I haven't the patience to put up with pixilated pictures, buffering delays etc, and whilst I am quite happy to pay to visit cinema or rent a DVD, I am not inclined to pay to watch "monetarised" TV content over the internet.

However I am not adverse to exploring opportunities to find a "free" channel showing live soccer if there is match on that I can't otherwise see, and judging by the number of visitors to a previous post on this site referring the p2p streaming I am not the only one. There are a number of Chinese p2p streaming sites and lots of other sites listed ( elsewhere ). I am told that a good (at least in HK) CCTV5 streaming site is here and this UK site looks interesting.

I also regard it as a worthy technical challenge to watch TV over a WIFI or 3G link on my mobile phone. The following are a few of my favorite internet TV news links for live and Video on demand ..... and for those who like something different I recommend Suriname ATV orOR Livedepending on how squeamish you are.

UK	BBC News Console ITN News Console | ITN UK News (yahoo) SKY Reuters UK
Ireland	RTE news | RTE Primetime
France	France24
Finland	YLE News
Germany	Deutsche Welle
Australia	ABC SBS
New Zealand	TVNZ TV3
FIJI	FIJI TV
Canada	Canadian Broadcating Company
Japan	NHK World TV
China	CCTV9
Hong Kong	HKATV RTHK
India	DDI News IBN-CNN SIFY CNBC
Israel	Jerusalem on line Israel National News
Quatar	Al Jazereer
Egypt	Egyptian TV
Tunisia	Television Tunisiene
South Africa	SABC News 3
Nigeria	NTA news
Antiga	Carabean Broadcasting Corporation
USA	CNN CBS ABC

Posted at 1/14/2007 09:11:00 pm by David Middleburgh   Permalink

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