Results tagged “tv” from Birmingham Mail - Technobabble

JUST arrived in my email inbox - a survey carried out into the thoughts of Birmingham parents into kids and their tv watching habits.

Now I won't bore you with a rant about surveys from PR companies - let's just say we get a lot and leave it there.

This one came up with surprisingly pro-TV responses - for example 84 per cent of parents in Birmingham supposedly believe it has a "positive effect on their child's development".

Those parents surveyed said it helps them to expand their imagination (59 per cent) and broaden vocabulary (65 per cent).

The press release adds: "These findings form part of an independent report by Dr Tanya Byron which looks at the effects of TV viewing on young children."

A quick shifty at Dr Byron's wikipedia entry reveals that amongst her many talents are "hosting and co-writing TV programmes".

And who has put out the research? Er Freeview. Who some recall may have an interest in studies which say kids watching tv is 'beneficial'.

Oh well. I'll chuck their books in the bin, stop talking to them and leave it in the hands of cbeebies then!

Below - this is what your child should look like!

It's been something which I've wondered about for some time.

When watching a film on the DVD player, it seems to 'pause' every so often on a single frame.

It's not that annoying I suppose, but it did make me wonder if there was something wrong with the player itself.

It actually turns out to be something quite straight forward.

When the dual layer DVD disc makes the transition from one layer to the other it stops for perhaps a second.

I for one would have hoped that solving this would be relatively straight forward - but no, all new releases I buy seem to have the same issue.

Interesting new statistics from Ofcom about people's habits during the current multimedia explosion.

For me the striking thing is that people aren't changing their habits much - just doing more.

The report shows that Consumers spent 429 minutes, or more than seven hours a day, watching television, listening to radio, surfing the internet and making fixed-line and mobile calls in 2007, compared with 423 minutes in 2002.

This is an incredibly huge sounding amount, although I suppose you've got to take into account people will probably be doing other things, including driving, at the same time.

You might have thought traditional pursuits such as the simple telly would have seen a huge decline as a result of the increased platforms on offer.

But no - in 2007, 218 minutes a day were spent watching television, compared with 224 in 2002 - not a great deal of difference.

So basically social networking on the internet, texting, sending video messages, streaming your tedious existence pointlessly over the net through bambuser and so on is all in addition to whatever radio, tv and phone calls you were doing before!

You see those people over there in the corner? You probably don't recognise them, but they're your family. Go on, try and talk to them. Perhaps even go out somewhere together. Oh - someone's written a pithy comment on your Facebook wall. Better reply. Chance gone.