1.
BBC Radio 1
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Radio 1 provides alternative genres after 7,00 pm, including electronic dance, hip hop, rock, indie or interviews. It was launched in 1967 to meet the demand for music generated by radio stations. Recently, the BBC claimed that it targets the 15–29 age group. BBC Radio 1 started 24-hour broadcasting on 1 May 1991, Radio 1 was established in 1967 as a successor to the BBC Light Programme, which had broadcast popular music and other entertainment since 1945. Radio 1 was conceived as a response to the popularity of offshore pirate radio stations such as Radio Caroline and Radio London. Radio 1 was launched at 7,00 am on Saturday 30 September 1967. The first words on Radio 1 – after a countdown by the Controller of Radios 1 and 2, Robin Scott, welcome to the exciting new sound of Radio 1. This was the first use of US-style jingles on BBC radio, the first complete record played on Radio 1 was Flowers in the Rain by The Move. The second single was Massachusetts by The Bee Gees, the breakfast show remains the most prized slot in the Radio 1 schedule, with every change of breakfast show presenter exciting considerable media interest. Despite this, it gained massive audiences, becoming the most listened to station in the world with audiences of over 10 million claimed for some of its shows, in the early-mid-1970s Radio 1 presenters were rarely out of the British tabloids, thanks to the Publicity Departments high-profile work. Alan Freemans Saturday Rock Show was voted Best Radio Show 5 years running by readers of a music publication. In his last few months as controller, Johnny Beerling commissioned a handful of new shows that in some set the tone for what was to come under Matthew Bannister. One of these Loudnproud was the UKs first national radio series aimed at a gay audience, far from being a parting quirk, the show was a surprise hit and led to the networks first coverage of the large outdoor Gay Pride event in 1994. Bannister took the reins fully in October 1993 and his aim was to rid the station of its Smashie and Nicey image and make it appeal to the under 25s. Although originally launched as a station, by the early 1990s. Many listeners rebelled as the first new DJs to be introduced represented a crossover from other parts of the BBC with Emma Freud, Evans was a popular but controversial presenter who was eventually sacked in 1997 after he demanded to present the breakfast show for only four days per week. Evans was replaced from 17 February 1997 by Mark and Lard – Mark Radcliffe and they were replaced by Zoë Ball and Kevin Greening eight months later in October 1997, with Greening moving on and leaving Ball as solo presenter. Documentaries like John Peels Lost in Music which looked at the influence that the use of drugs have had over popular musicians received critical acclaim but were slated inside Broadcasting House, later in the 1990s the Britpop boom declined, and manufactured chart pop came to dominate the charts
2.
BBC Radio 1Xtra
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BBC Radio 1Xtra is a digital radio station in the United Kingdom from the BBC specialising in urban music. Launched at 18,00 on 16 August 2002, it had been codenamed Network X during the period and is the sister station to BBC Radio 1. The station is broadcast from the 8th floor of New Broadcasting House, shared with Radio 1, the current station controller is Ben Cooper, who took over from predecessor Andy Parfitt on 28 October 2011. It is available on radio, digital satellite television, digital terrestrial television. The first ever played on 1Xtra was a specially created track produced by DJ Skitz and Rodney P and featuring Beverley Knight. The show was presented by the Rampage DJ collective and the then breakfast show host. As part of its public service broadcasting remit, 1Xtra is required to carry a significant amount of news, information, 1Xtra had its own news service, 1Xtra News, which was operated as a subsidiary of Radio 1s Newsbeat operations. The tone and style of the presentation is in keeping with the stations overall target audience - young. Initially, in addition to regular hourly bulletins, TX had a flagship weekday two-hour news, features, the Trust required that 1Xtras main bulletins not air at the same time as those on Radio 1. When the new bulletins were introduced in late summer 2009, they aired at 12noon and 5pm, as of Summer 2009 it was reported that Radio 1 and 1Xtra were carrying shared news bulletins at weekends, weekday news output remained separate. September 2012 saw an increase in Newsbeat bulletins simulcast with Radio 1. Weekday breakfast bulletins at 06,00,07,30,08,00,08,30 and 09,30 remain bespoke 1Xtra broadcasts. From 10,30, bulletins are shared with Radio 1, in the first quarter of 2011, 1Xtra was part of an efficiency review conducted by John Myers. His role, according to Andrew Harrison, the executive of RadioCentre, was to identify both areas of best practice and possible savings. 1Xtras typical audience is between 15 and 30 years old, the upper age range is deliberately lower than sister station Radio 1 which is closer to 35. This has now itself been replaced by a rerun of the previous weeks overnight mix show from 4-7 am, saturday evening content is now simulcast entirely with BBC Radio 1 - this allows Radio 1s flagship urban content to air on 1Xtra. A list of past presenters is shown below, BBC 1Xtra, archived from the original on 25 February 2007. BBC NEWS - Entertainment - TV and Radio - 1Xtra celebrates birthday presence
3.
BBC Television
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BBC Television is a service of the British Broadcasting Corporation. The corporation has operated in the United Kingdom under the terms of a royal charter since 1927 and it produced television programmes from its own studios since 1932, although the start of its regular service of television broadcasts is dated to 2 November 1936. The BBCs domestic television channels have no advertising and collectively they account for more than 30% of all UK viewing. The services are funded by a television licence, the BBC operates several television networks, television stations, and related programming services in the United Kingdom. As well as being a broadcaster, the corporation also produces a number of its own programmes in-house. The simultaneous transmission of sound and pictures was achieved on 30 March 1930, by late 1930, thirty minutes of morning programmes were broadcast from Monday to Friday, and thirty minutes at midnight on Tuesdays and Fridays after BBC radio went off the air. Bairds broadcasts via the BBC continued until June 1932, the BBC began its own regular television programming from the basement of Broadcasting House, London, on 22 August 1932. Ally Pally housed two studios, various stores, make-up areas, dressing rooms, offices, and the transmitter itself. BBC television initially used two systems on alternate weeks, the 240-line Baird intermediate film system and the 405-line Marconi-EMI system. The use of both made the BBCs service the worlds first regular high-definition television service, it broadcast from Monday to Saturday between 15,00 and 16,00, and 21,00 and 22,00. The two systems were to run on a basis for six months, early television sets supported both resolutions. Television production was switched from Bairds company to what is now known as BBC One on 2 August 1932, regularly scheduled electronically scanned television began from Alexandra Palace in London on 2 November 1936, to just a few hundred viewers in the immediate area. The first programme broadcast – and thus the first ever, on a dedicated TV channel – was Opening of the BBC Television Service at 15,00, the first major outside broadcast was the coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth in May 1937. The service was reaching an estimated 25, 000–40,000 homes before the outbreak of World War II which caused the service to be suspended in September 1939. Also, many of the services technical staff and engineers would be needed for the war effort. According to figures from Britains Radio Manufacturers Association,18,999 television sets had been manufactured from 1936 to September 1939, BBC Television returned on 7 June 1946 at 15,00. Jasmine Bligh, one of the announcers, made the first announcement, saying. Do you remember me, Jasmine Bligh, the Mickey Mouse cartoon of 1939 was repeated twenty minutes later
4.
BBC
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The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. It is headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, the BBC is the worlds oldest national broadcasting organisation and the largest broadcaster in the world by number of employees. It employs over 20,950 staff in total,16,672 of whom are in public sector broadcasting, the total number of staff is 35,402 when part-time, flexible, and fixed contract staff are included. The BBC is established under a Royal Charter and operates under its Agreement with the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. The fee is set by the British Government, agreed by Parliament, and used to fund the BBCs radio, TV, britains first live public broadcast from the Marconi factory in Chelmsford took place in June 1920. It was sponsored by the Daily Mails Lord Northcliffe and featured the famous Australian Soprano Dame Nellie Melba, the Melba broadcast caught the peoples imagination and marked a turning point in the British publics attitude to radio. However, this public enthusiasm was not shared in official circles where such broadcasts were held to interfere with important military and civil communications. By late 1920, pressure from these quarters and uneasiness among the staff of the licensing authority, the General Post Office, was sufficient to lead to a ban on further Chelmsford broadcasts. But by 1922, the GPO had received nearly 100 broadcast licence requests, John Reith, a Scottish Calvinist, was appointed its General Manager in December 1922 a few weeks after the company made its first official broadcast. The company was to be financed by a royalty on the sale of BBC wireless receiving sets from approved manufacturers, to this day, the BBC aims to follow the Reithian directive to inform, educate and entertain. The financial arrangements soon proved inadequate, set sales were disappointing as amateurs made their own receivers and listeners bought rival unlicensed sets. By mid-1923, discussions between the GPO and the BBC had become deadlocked and the Postmaster-General commissioned a review of broadcasting by the Sykes Committee and this was to be followed by a simple 10 shillings licence fee with no royalty once the wireless manufactures protection expired. The BBCs broadcasting monopoly was made explicit for the duration of its current broadcast licence, the BBC was also banned from presenting news bulletins before 19.00, and required to source all news from external wire services. Mid-1925 found the future of broadcasting under further consideration, this time by the Crawford committee, by now the BBC under Reiths leadership had forged a consensus favouring a continuation of the unified broadcasting service, but more money was still required to finance rapid expansion. Wireless manufacturers were anxious to exit the loss making consortium with Reith keen that the BBC be seen as a service rather than a commercial enterprise. The recommendations of the Crawford Committee were published in March the following year and were still under consideration by the GPO when the 1926 general strike broke out in May. The strike temporarily interrupted newspaper production and with restrictions on news bulletins waived the BBC suddenly became the source of news for the duration of the crisis. The crisis placed the BBC in a delicate position, the Government was divided on how to handle the BBC but ended up trusting Reith, whose opposition to the strike mirrored the PMs own
5.
576i
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576i is a standard-definition video mode originally used for broadcast television in most countries of the world where the utility frequency for electric power distribution is 50 Hz. Because of its association with the colour encoding system, it is often referred to as simply PAL, PAL/SECAM or SECAM when compared to its 60 Hz NTSC-colour-encoded counterpart. The 576 identifies a vertical resolution of 576 lines, and the i identifies it as an interlaced resolution and its basic parameters common to both analogue and digital implementations are,576 scan lines or vertical pixels of picture content,25 frames per second. Digital information not to be displayed as part of the image can be transmitted in the lines, teletext and other services. Analogue television signals have no pixels, they are rastered in scan lines, in digital applications, the number of pixels per line is an arbitrary choice as long as it fulfils the sampling theorem. Values above about 500 pixels per line are enough for conventional broadcast television, DVB-T, DVD and DV allow better values such as 704 or 720. The video format can be transported by major digital television formats, ATSC, DVB and ISDB, and on DVD, when 576i video is transmitted via baseband, most of the differences between the one-letter systems are no longer significant, other than vertical resolution and frame rate. Digital video uses its own separate space, so even the minor colour space differences between PAL and SECAM become moot in the digital domain. When 576i is used to transmit content that was composed of 25 full progressive frames per second. This is the opposite of NTSC, motion pictures are typically shot on film at 24 frames per second. When telecined and played back at PALs standard of 25 frames per second and this also applies to most TV series that are shot on film or digital 24p. Depending on the system in use, it also slightly increases the pitch of the soundtrack by 70.67 cents. More recently, digital conversion methods have used algorithms which preserve the pitch of the soundtrack. Conversion methods exist that can convert 24 frames per second video to 25 frames per second with no speed increase, however image quality suffers when conversions of this type are used. This method is most commonly employed through conversions done digitally, and is employed in situations where the importance of preserving the speed of the video outweighs the need for image quality. Many movie enthusiasts prefer PAL over NTSC despite the formers speed-up, because the results in telecine judder. States the majority of authorities on the subject favour PAL over NTSC for DVD playback quality, also DVD reviewers often make mention of this cause. For example, in his PAL vs. NTSC article, the founder of MichaelDVD says, Personally, I find all but intolerable and find it very hard to watch a movie on an NTSC DVD because of it
6.
1080i
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1080i is an abbreviation referring to a combination of frame resolution and scan type, used in high-definition television and high-definition video. The number 1080 refers to the number of lines on the screen. The term assumes a widescreen ratio of 16,9, so the 1080 lines of vertical resolution implies 1920 columns of horizontal resolution. A1920 pixels ×1080 lines screen has a total of 2.1 megapixels and this format is used in the SMPTE 292M standard. The choice of 1080 lines originates with Charles Poynton, who in the early 1990s pushed for square pixels to be used in HD video formats, within the designation 1080i, the i stands for interlaced scan. A frame of 1080i video consists of two fields of 1920 horizontal and 540 vertical pixels. The first field consists of all odd-numbered TV lines and the second all even numbered lines, 1080i differs from 1080p, where the p stands for progressive scan, where all lines in a frame are captured at the same time. In native or pure 1080i, the two fields of a frame correspond to different instants, so motion portrayal is good and this is true for interlaced video in general and can be easily observed in still images taken of fast motion scenes. However, when 1080p material is captured at 25 or 30 frames/second, it is converted to 1080i at 50 or 60 fields/second, respectively, in this situation both fields in a frame do correspond to the same instant. The field-to-instant relation is more complex for the case of 1080p at 24 frames/second converted to 1080i at 60 fields/second. Both field rates can be carried by digital television broadcast formats such as ATSC, DVB. The frame rate can be implied by the context, while the rate is generally specified after the letter i. In this case 1080i60 refers to 60 fields per second, the European Broadcasting Union prefers to use the resolution and frame rate separated by a slash, as in 1080i/30 and 1080i/25, likewise 480i/30 and 576i/25. Resolutions of 1080i60 or 1080i50 often refers to 1080i/30 or 1080i/25 in EBU notation, 1080i is directly compatible with some CRT HDTVs on which it can be displayed natively in interlaced form, but for display on progressive-scan—e. g. Most new LCD and plasma TVs, it must be deinterlaced, depending on the televisions video processing capabilities, the resulting video quality may vary, but may not necessarily suffer. For example, film material at 25fps may be deinterlaced from 1080i50 to restore a full 1080p resolution at the frame rate without any loss. Preferably video material with 50 or 60 motion phases/second is to be converted to 50p or 60p before display, worldwide, most HD channels on satellite and cable broadcast in 1080i. This also allows local newscasts on these ABC affiliates to be produced in the resolution to match the picture quality of their 1080i competitors
7.
United Kingdom
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The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom or Britain, is a sovereign country in western Europe. Lying off the north-western coast of the European mainland, the United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border with another sovereign state—the Republic of Ireland. The Irish Sea lies between Great Britain and Ireland, with an area of 242,500 square kilometres, the United Kingdom is the 78th-largest sovereign state in the world and the 11th-largest in Europe. It is also the 21st-most populous country, with an estimated 65.1 million inhabitants, together, this makes it the fourth-most densely populated country in the European Union. The United Kingdom is a monarchy with a parliamentary system of governance. The monarch is Queen Elizabeth II, who has reigned since 6 February 1952, other major urban areas in the United Kingdom include the regions of Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester. The United Kingdom consists of four countries—England, Scotland, Wales, the last three have devolved administrations, each with varying powers, based in their capitals, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, respectively. The relationships among the countries of the UK have changed over time, Wales was annexed by the Kingdom of England under the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542. A treaty between England and Scotland resulted in 1707 in a unified Kingdom of Great Britain, which merged in 1801 with the Kingdom of Ireland to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Five-sixths of Ireland seceded from the UK in 1922, leaving the present formulation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, there are fourteen British Overseas Territories. These are the remnants of the British Empire which, at its height in the 1920s, British influence can be observed in the language, culture and legal systems of many of its former colonies. The United Kingdom is a country and has the worlds fifth-largest economy by nominal GDP. The UK is considered to have an economy and is categorised as very high in the Human Development Index. It was the worlds first industrialised country and the worlds foremost power during the 19th, the UK remains a great power with considerable economic, cultural, military, scientific and political influence internationally. It is a nuclear weapons state and its military expenditure ranks fourth or fifth in the world. The UK has been a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council since its first session in 1946 and it has been a leading member state of the EU and its predecessor, the European Economic Community, since 1973. However, on 23 June 2016, a referendum on the UKs membership of the EU resulted in a decision to leave. The Acts of Union 1800 united the Kingdom of Great Britain, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have devolved self-government
8.
Crown dependencies
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The Crown dependencies are the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea and the Bailiwicks of Jersey and Guernsey in the English Channel. Being independently administered jurisdictions, they do not form part of either the United Kingdom or the British Overseas Territories and they are self-governing possessions of the Crown. Internationally, the dependencies are considered territories for which the United Kingdom is responsible rather than as sovereign states, as a result, they are not member states of the Commonwealth of Nations. However, they do have a relationship with the Commonwealth, the European Union and they are not part of the European Union, although they are within the EUs customs area. In each case, the head of government is referred to as a Chief Minister, the Crown is defined differently in each crown dependency. Legislation of the Isle of Man defines the Crown in right of the Isle of Man as being separate from the Crown in right of the United Kingdom and this constitutional concept is also worded as the Crown in right of the Bailiwick of Guernsey. Each Bailiwick is a Crown dependency and each is headed by a Bailiff, each Bailiwick has its own legal and healthcare systems, and their own separate immigration policies, with local status in one Bailiwick having no jurisdiction in the other. The two Bailiwicks exercise bilateral double taxation treaties, since 1961, the Bailiwicks have had separate courts of appeal, but generally the Bailiff of each Bailiwick has been appointed to serve on the panel of appellate judges for the other Bailiwick. The Bailiwick of Guernsey comprises three separate jurisdictions, Guernsey, which also the nearby islands of Herm and Jethou. Sark, which includes the nearby island of Brecqhou. Alderney, including smaller surrounding uninhabited islands, the parliament of Guernsey is the States of Deliberation, the parliament of Sark is called the Chief Pleas, and the parliament of Alderney is called the States of Alderney. The three parliaments together can also approve joint Bailiwick-wide legislation that applies in those parts of the Bailiwick whose parliaments approve it. Guernsey issues its own coins and banknotes, Guernsey banknotes Coins of the Guernsey pound These circulate freely in both Bailiwicks alongside UK coinage and English and Scottish banknotes and they are not legal tender within the UK. There are no parties in any of the parliaments, candidates stand for election as independents. e. 5432 on 2 wheels and on 4 wheels, the Bailiwick of Jersey consists of the island of Jersey and a number of surrounding uninhabited islands. The parliament is the States of Jersey, the first known mention of which is in a document of 1497, Jersey issues its own coins and banknotes, Jersey banknotes Coins of the Jersey pound These circulate freely in both Bailiwicks alongside UK coinage and English and Scottish banknotes. They are not legal tender within the UK but are legal currency backed by deposits at the Bank of England, there are few political parties, as candidates generally stand for election as independents. The Isle of Mans Tynwald claims to be the worlds oldest parliament in continuous existence, candidates often stand for election as independents, rather than being selected by political parties
9.
BBC Two
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BBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom, Isle of Man and Channel Islands. It covers a range of subject matter, but tending towards more highbrow programmes than the more mainstream. Like the BBCs other domestic TV and radio channels, it is funded by the television licence and it is a comparatively well-funded public service network, regularly attaining a much higher audience share than most public service networks worldwide. Originally styled BBC2, it was the third British television station to be launched, a high-definition version of the channel launched on 26 March 2013, replacing BBC HD. British television at the time of BBC2s launch consisted of two channels, the BBC Television Service and the ITV network made up of regional companies. Both channels had existed in a state of competition since ITVs launch in 1955, the 1962 Pilkington Report on the future of broadcasting noticed this, and that ITV lacked any serious programming. It therefore decided that Britains third television station should be awarded to the BBC, prior to its launch, the new BBC2 was promoted on the BBC Television Service, the soon to be renamed BBC1. The animated adverts featured the campaign mascots Hullabaloo, a mother kangaroo, however, at around 18,45 a huge power failure, originating from a fire at Battersea Power Station, caused Television Centre, and indeed much of west London, to lose all power. BBC1 was able to continue broadcasting via its facilities at Alexandra Palace, associated-Rediffusion, the London weekday ITV franchise-holder, offered to transmit on the BBCs behalf, but their gesture was rejected. At 22,00 programming was officially postponed until the following morning, there was believed to be no recording made of this bulletin, but a videotape was discovered in early 2003. By 11,00 on 21 April, power had restored to the studios and programming began. The launch schedule, postponed from the night before, was successfully shown that evening. In reference to the cut, the transmission opened with a shot of a lit candle which was then sarcastically blown out by presenter Denis Tuohy. To establish the new identity and draw viewers to it. The production chosen was The Forsyte Saga, a adaptation of the novels by John Galsworthy, featuring well-established actors Kenneth More. Unlike BBC1 and ITV, BBC2 was broadcast only on the 625 line UHF system and this created a market for dual standard receivers which could switch between the two systems. On 1 July 1967, during the Wimbledon Championships, BBC2 became the first channel in Europe to begin broadcasts in colour. The thirteen part series Civilisation was created as a celebration of two millennia of western art and culture to showpiece the new colour technology, BBC1 and ITV later joined BBC2 on 625-line UHF band, but continued to simulcast on 405-line VHF until 1985
10.
BBC Four
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BBC Four is a British television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation and available to digital television viewers on Freeview, IPTV, satellite, and cable. BBC Four launched on 2 March 2002, with a running from 19,00 to 04,00. The channel shows a variety of programmes including comedy, documentaries, music, international film, original programmes, drama. An alternative to programmes on the mainstream TV channels and it is required by its licence to broadcast at least 100 hours of new arts and music programmes,110 hours of new factual programmes and to premiere twenty international films each year. BBC Four launched on 2 March 2002 at 19,00 GMT, BBC Four began originally as a late schedule to BBC Two, before it received its own channel, along with BBC Three. Curiously, BBC Four had to launch before BBC Three as a result of the government delaying approval plans, BBC Four would rebrand this channel, and bring it into line with the well recognised BBC One and Two brands at the same time. Planning for the new channel, along with the new BBC Three, had been in progress since October 2000, however, the BBC Four plans were approved earlier, and as a result launched before BBC Three. BBC Four was different from the old BBC Knowledge, the channel would be more heavily promoted with more new and original programming and the channel would not be broadcast 24 hours a day. This was because on the Freeview digital terrestrial platform, BBC Four is broadcast in a statistically multiplexed stream in Multiplex B that timeshares with the CBeebies channel. As a result, BBC Four broadcasts from 19,00 to around 04,00 each night, with an hours down-time, on 12 May 2011, BBC Four was added to the Sky EPG in the Republic of Ireland on channel 230. It later moved to EPG211 to free up space for new channels, BBC Four forms part of the BBC Vision group, and as a result, the channel controller is answerable to the head of this executive department, Emma Swain, as of 2012. The channel direction is determined by the channels remit, set by royal charter and the governing body. On 20 January 2016, Kim Shillinglaw announced that she had decided to leave the BBC as the Controller of BBC Two & BBC Four, as a result of the reorganisation, the post of Controller BBC Two and Four will close after her departure later in 2016. On 16 July 2013, the BBC announced that a high-definition simulcast of BBC Four would be launched by early 2014, the channel launched on 10 December 2013, and rolled out nationwide up to June 2014. The channel broadcasts on the BBCs new HD multiplex on Freeview, prior to launch, the majority of BBC Fours HD output was broadcast on the BBC HD channel before its closure on 26 March 2013. The first evenings BBC Four programmes were simulcast on BBC Two, BBC Four further supports foreign language films with its annual World Cinema Award which has been running since 2004. On weekdays at 19,00 and weekends at 21,00 and it screens a number of documentaries such as The Century of the Self and The Trials of Henry Kissinger. The channel is also home to many political travel shows such as Holidays in the Axis of Evil which features investigative journalism, drama has given the channel some of its most popular programmes, with The Alan Clark Diaries and Kenneth Williams, Fantabulosa
11.
BBC News (TV channel)
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BBC News is the BBCs 24-hour rolling news television network in the United Kingdom. For a time, looped news, sport and weather bulletins were available to view via BBC Red Button, on 22 February 2006, the channel was named News Channel of the Year at the Royal Television Society Television Journalism Awards for the first time in its history. The judges remarked that this was the year that the channel had really come into its own, from May 2007, UK viewers could watch the channel via the BBC News website. In April 2008, the channel was renamed BBC News as part of a £550,000 rebranding of the BBCs news output, complete with a new studio and presentation. Its sister service, BBC World was also renamed BBC World News while the news bulletins became BBC News at One, BBC News at Six. Across the day the channel averages about twice the audience of Sky News, as a major part of the BBC News department, the channel is based at and broadcast from Broadcasting House in Central London. It was named RTS News Channel of the Year again in 2017, BBC News 24 was originally available to digital terrestrial, satellite and cable television subscribers. To this day, it and BBC Parliament remain the only BBC digital channels which are available to analogue cable subscribers. This coverage was improved in 1998 with the advent of television in the United Kingdom allowing satellite. The BBC had run the news channel BBC World for two and a half years prior to the launch of BBC News 24 on 9 November 1997. Sky News had had a hand with domestic news for over eight years. Sky News objected to the breaking of its monopoly, complaining about the associated with running a channel that only a minority could view from the licence fee. Sky News claimed that a number of British cable operators had been incentivised to carry News 24 in preference to the commercial Sky News. However, in September 1999 the European Commission ruled against a complaint made by Sky News that the publicly funded channel was unfair and illegal under EU law. The Commission ruled that the fee should be considered state aid but that such aid was justified due to the public service remit of the BBC. The channels journalistic output has been overseen by Controller of the channel, Kevin Bakhurst and this was a return to having a dedicated Controller for the channel in the same way as the rest of the BBCs domestic television channels. At launch, Tim Orchard was Controller of News 24 from 1997 until 2000, editorial decisions were then overseen by Rachel Atwell in her capacity as Deputy Head of television news. Her deputy Mark Popescu became responsible for content in 2004
12.
BBC Parliament
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The channel also broadcasts reports from the European Parliament and the annual conferences of the main political parties and the Trades Union Congress. On 14 October 2016, the received a new look. Before being taken over by the BBC, the channel was known as the Parliamentary Channel, operated by United Artists Cable, the Parliamentary Channel launched as a cable-exclusive channel in 1992. The channel was purchased by the BBC in 1998, retitled BBC Parliament and it now broadcasts on cable, satellite, and Freeview. The channel ran as a service via DAB from launch until 14 November 2000. Due to capacity limitations on the terrestrial television platform, now known as Freeview, from launch until 30 October 2002. Then on Freeview from October 2002 until 13 November 2006 the channel was able to broadcast a quarter-screen picture. After receiving thousands of angry and perplexed emails and letters, not to mention questions asked by MPs in the House itself, the BBC eventually found the bandwidth to make the channel full-screen. Until 2008, BBC Parliament was unique amongst the BBC channels in being broadcast using non-BBC facilities, with ITVs Millbank Studios in Westminster supplying the engineering, production, editorial and journalism were, however, maintained by the BBC. The previous idents, also based on a Big Ben clock motif ran from 2009-2016 and this replaced the channels previous identity which was first introduced in 2002. BBC Parliament was taken off the air during the 2012 Summer Olympics on Freeview in post-digital switchover areas to enable BBC Three to broadcast 24 hours a day. The BBC had done the same during the 2008 Summer Olympics as it used the space to provide an additional BBC Red Button option for Freeview users, BBC Parliament is the only BBC channel which does not broadcast in HD. This has been the case since 10 December 2013 when BBC Three, BBC Four, BBC News, CBBC, on 5 September 2016 BBC Two began broadcasting BBC Parliament during BBC Twos overnight downtime. However this has subsequently been discontinued, the House of Lords is broadcast live only on days when there is no House of Commons sitting scheduled. A summer special is also produced featuring several beach books, briefings - a strand of programmes, usually broadcast weekend evenings, containing recorded coverage of major press briefings and conferences given by politicians in the previous week. Daily Politics - a daily political programme broadcast weekdays on BBC Two during parliamentary sessions and presented by Andrew Neil, daily Politics discusses the latest political news from across the United Kingdom, and is repeated on BBC Parliament every night at midnight. The Sunday Politics from BBC One is also repeated at midnight on the day of broadcast, dragons Eye - presented by Adrian Masters or Rhun ap Iorwerth, providing a weekly roundup of Welsh political developments. Eòrpa - current affairs series which covers political and social developments covering Europe, hearts and Minds - weekly programme covering the latest issues in the politics of Northern Ireland
13.
CBBC (TV channel)
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CBBC is a British free-to-air childrens television channel operated by the BBC. CBBC is primarily aimed at viewers 6 to 12 years old, CBBC was named Channel of the Year at the Childrens BAFTA awards in November 2008 and 2015. The channel averages 300,000 viewers daily, the channel originally shared bandwidth on the digital terrestrial television platform with BBC Knowledge, and later BBC Three, necessitating that CBBC sign off at 7,00 p. m. daily. Beginning on 11 April 2016, following the closure of the linear BBC Three television service, on 22 August 2008, the BBC announced that the channel would be available live on its website from 16 September. CBBCs reach further expanded with the addition of the channel on the Sky line-up in the Republic of Ireland on 12 May 2011, since 27 March 2013, CBBC has been carried by the British Forces Broadcasting Service, sharing a channel with BBC Two. Along with CBBC, the CBBC channel is operated by the BBC Childrens department within the BBC and is part of the BBC North group, the CBBC channels programming output is very similar to the strand shown on BBC One. The channel often complements this strand with programmes shown earlier than on the channels, repeats or whole series shown in a day. The following is a list of the ten most watched shows on CBBC, as part of the channels original remit, the channel originally needed to show 100 hours a year of factual and schools programmes. Much of this programming was old BBC Schools programming shown, in cases, decades before. Very little new schools programmes were commissioned, the CBBC channel has had relatively similar presentation to that of its strand counterpart. The logo has remained the same as the service, green coloured blobs at the beginning of its life. At the beginning of September 2007, along with the relaunch, when the channel launched, presentation was located in TC2 at BBC Television Centre, where the channel shared studio facilities with the channels original magazine show Xchange. A further change was to place on 4 December 2006 when all output moved to a Chroma key set within TC12. This short live decision lasted until the 2007 relaunch, which involved a new office set being constructed, initially in TC12, in 2011, the CBBC Channel moved to MediaCityUK, and has been presented from there since 5 September. On 16 July 2013, the BBC announced that a high-definition simulcast of CBBC would be launched by early 2014, the channel launched on 10 December 2013. The channel broadcasts on the BBCs existing HD multiplex on Freeview, prior to launch, the majority of CBBCs HD output was broadcast on BBC HD before its closure on 26 March 2013. The HD channel was not added to the Sky EPG in the Republic of Ireland, as from 2013, CBBC Extra is now also accessed by the CBBC website. CBBC Extra is an interactive television service from CBBC provided by the BBC Red Button
14.
CBeebies
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The name is used to brand the free-to-air domestic British channel, and is used for international variants supported by advertising, subscription or both. The channel was first launched on 11 February 2002, the channel has won a number of awards. At the BAFTA Childrens Awards, it won awards in 2002 and it has also won Best Schools Programme – 0–6 years awards from the Royal Television Society from 2002 to 2008. CBeebies is the childrens channel in the UK and is the 8th most watched channel overall. CBeebies HD officially launched on 10 December 2013, the CBeebies channel launched on 11 February 2002. The domestic CBeebies channel broadcasts from 6,00 a. m. to 7,00 pm each day– a result of the channel sharing bandwidth with the channel BBC Four on the Freeview platform, later on they launched a weekly publication called CBeebies Weekly. Since 27 March 2013, CBeebies has been carried by the British Forces Broadcasting Service, the international CBeebies channel is advert-free and wholly owned by BBC Worldwide. The first international launch for the CBeebies channel was in India in May 2007, the channel is available in the Republic of Ireland, Singapore, Hong Kong, Poland, Indonesia, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Africa, Australia, and the United States. In March 2011, the on demand version of the network was launched in the US and is available on Xfinity. On 13 May 2011, CBeebies was launched as a block on the channel BBC Kids in Canada. It is serving a similar schedule to the main channel, in the UK, CBeebies is operated by the BBC Childrens division and part of BBC North. The division is responsible for CBBC and overall strategic responsibility for all of the BBCs domestic services for children rests with the Director of Childrens. She took over from the first controller Michael Carrington in 2010, internationally, CBeebies is owned by BBC Worldwide, who operate the brand. CBeebies offers a mix of mostly UK-produced entertainment and educational output designed to encourage learning through play and these goals are realised through a range of programmes about simple science, natural history, music and movement, storytelling, make up and make do, puzzle programmes and animation. The channels schedule is deliberately the same every weekday, with a different schedule at weekends, the schedule also includes signed programmes, shown in the UK between 14,00 and 17,00 on weekends. The international channels also show many programmes broadcast on the UK channel, inversely however, shows that air on CBeebies in the UK may air on networks other than CBeebies worldwide. Also, the international CBeebies airs 24 hours a day, unlike the UK variant, the following is a list of the ten most watched shows on CBeebies, based on Live +7 data supplied by the Broadcasters Audience Research Board. The links between programmes on CBeebies are primarily achieved through the use of in-vision continuity, using presenters to interact with the children, in the UK, links are pre-recorded rather than broadcast live, as is the case on sister channel CBBC
15.
Freeview (UK)
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Freeview is the United Kingdoms digital terrestrial television platform. It is operated by DTV Services Ltd, a joint venture between the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Sky and transmitter operator Arqiva, the service provides consumer access via an aerial to the six DTT multiplexes covering the United Kingdom. In April 2014 it had some 60 DVB-T TV channels,26 digital radio channels,10 HD channels, six services,11 streamed channels. A number of new HD channels launched in 2014, from a new group of multiplexes awarded to Arqiva, the new HD channels were launched in selected areas on 10 December 2013 with a further roll-out during 2014. DTV Services delivery of television and radio is labelled Freeview. Reception of Freeview requires a Freeview tuner, either in a separate box or built into the TV set. Since 2008 all new TV sets sold in the United Kingdom have a built-in Freeview tuner, Freeview HD requires a HDTV-capable tuner. Digital video recorders with a built-in Freeview tuner are labelled Freeview+, depending on model, DVRs and HDTV sets with a Freeview tuner may offer standard Freeview or Freeview HD. DMOL, a company owned by the operators of the six DTT multiplexes is responsible for platform management and policy, including the electronic programme guide. The founding members of DTV Services, who trade as Freeview, were the BBC, Crown Castle UK, on 11 October 2006, ITV plc and Channel 4 became equal shareholders. Since then, the Freeview model has been copied in Australia, with the launch of Freeview other channels were broadcast free-to-air, such as, Sky Travel, UK History, Sky News, Sky Sports News, The Hits and TMF were available from the start. BBC Four and the interactive BBC streams were moved to multiplex B, under the initial plans, the two multiplexes operated by Crown Castle would carry eight channels altogether. The seventh stream became shared by UK Bright Ideas and Ftn which launched in February 2003, the eighth stream was left unused until April 2004 when the shopping channel Ideal World launched on Freeview. There are now 14 streams carried by the two multiplexes, with Multiplex C carrying 6 streams, and Multiplex D carrying 8 and it has recently been announced that more streams are now available on the multiplexes, and that bidding is under way. The Freeview service underwent an upgrade on 30 September 2009. The changes, meant to ensure reception of Channel 5. The Freeview website crashed and the centre was inundated as a result of the problems. The change involved an update to the NIT, which some receivers could not accommodate, many thousands of people could not receive some channels
16.
KPN
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KPN is a Dutch landline and mobile telecommunications company. KPN started as a public company and is based in The Hague. KPN took on its present form on 1 January 1989 when the PTT was privatised, before the spin-off of TPG, the company also controlled the national Dutch postal services. The Dutch government progressively privatized KPN beginning in 1994, reducing its stake to 6. 4% in 2005, in 2001 KPN tried to merge with the Belgian telco Belgacom. It did not succeed because of the objections of the Belgian government, in 2001, Spanish Telefonica expressed an interest in buying KPN. The Japanese mobile telephone company NTT DoCoMo holds a 2% stake in KPN Mobile NV, from 2002 until 2007 KPN Mobile provided i-mode services on its mobile phone networks. I-mode as introduced by KPNs E-Plus in Germany in March 2002, KPN partly owned KPNQwest, a telecommunications company equally owned by KPN and the American Qwest Communications International. The company was set to bring together the state-of-the-art fibre-optic networks of the two partners and the Internet services expertise and customer base of EUnet International, the company collapsed in a bankruptcy in 2002. KPN also has operational synergies through joint ventures with TDC and Swisscom, in 2007 KPN acquired Getronics N. V. a worldwide ICT services company with more than 22,000 employees, and almost doubled its former size. KPN is still divesting parts of Getronics that didnt meet their core interests, recently they sold a Dutch department of Getronics named Business Application Services to CapGemini for about €250,000,000. In August 2013, América Móvil offered to take over the remaining 70% stake of the Dutch telecommunications company for 7.2 billion Euros, América Móvil currently owns close to 30% of KPN. The Dutch Government has issued a warning on this proposed takeover of KPN by Mexican Billionaire Carlos Slim, as part of his ambition to expand his telecom empire. Current main share holders are, Stichting Preferente Aandelen B KPN50. 07% America Movil 14. 86% Norges Bank 3. 09% BlackRock 2. 69% Ontario Teachers Pension Plan 2. 19% JP Morgan Chase & Co 1. The foundation exercised an option to gain roughly 50% of the KPN shares in order to protect KPN against a hostile takeover. This stock has been withdrawn on a special meeting held on the 10th of January 2014. In the Netherlands, KPN has 6.3 million fixed-line telephone customers and its mobile division, KPN Mobile, has more than 33 million subscribers in the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, France, and Spain under different brand names. KPN operates a mobile network for 2G and 3G technologies. 4G has recently rolled out and, as of March 2014
17.
Freesat
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Freesat is a free-to-air digital satellite television joint venture between the BBC and ITV plc, serving the United Kingdom. The service was formed as a memorandum in 2007 and has been marketed since 6 May 2008, Freesats main competitors are Freeview and Freesat from Sky. On digital terrestrial, the channels have always been available free-to-air with the appropriate equipment, in 2007 Freeview was available to only 73% of the population. After analogue TV services were replaced in the digital switchover, this increased to 98. 5% for the public service channels, to provide more widespread coverage and a larger number of channels, a digital satellite alternative was felt necessary. The use of encryption meant that anyone wishing to view the channels had to purchase equipment from Sky, similarly, to use the Videoguard encryption, the broadcasters needed to pay a fee to NDS Group. In May 2003 the BBC moved most of its channels from the Astra 2A satellite to Astra 2D and this move allowed the BBC to stop encrypting its broadcasts while continuing to meet its rights obligations. It dropped the two months later. Two months later, ITV, whose channels had already been located on the Astra 2D satellite since launching on the Sky platform some years earlier, also made their channels free-to-air. On 18 November 2008, Channel 5 commenced broadcasting a single channel via Freesat, eventually adding its ancillary services 5USA, viva moved from free-to-view to free-to-air on satellite on 19 March 2013, before launching on Freesat on 2 April 2013. On 2 April 2013, all seven of Box Televisions channels left Skys subscription package, with six becoming free-to-air on satellite, on 15 April four of the channels – The Box, TV, Kiss TV and Smash Hits – were added to the Freesat EPG. This was followed by Heat and Magic on 29 April, the Freesat project aims to provide a managed service with an Electronic Programme Guide and interactive features similar to the Freeview service launched three years earlier. Unlike Freeview, however, these features are available on approved receivers manufactured under licence from Freesat. The initial plan was to launch the service in early 2006 and this was postponed to Autumn 2007 as approval from the BBC Trust was only received in April 2007. However, the service was delayed and was officially launched on 6 May 2008. The service launched officially on 6 May 2008, from the launch, Freesat advertised all national television channels from the BBC and ITV as being available on the platform, as well as all national BBC radio networks. Channel 4 also managed to make most of its channels free-to-air in preparation for the launch. In addition some channels from other such as Chello Zone, CSC Media Group, Al Jazeera English, Zee Live, Zee News RIA Novosti. BBC HD was the only channel available on Freesat from launch day
18.
Sky UK
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Sky UK Limited is a telecommunications company which serves the United Kingdom. Sky provides television and broadband services, fixed line and mobile telephone services to consumers. It is the UKs largest pay-TV broadcaster with 11 million customers as of 2015 and it was the UKs most popular digital TV service until it was overtaken by Freeview in April 2007. Its corporate headquarters are based in Isleworth, formed in November 1990 by the equal merger of Sky Television and British Satellite Broadcasting, Sky became the UKs largest digital subscription television company. Following Skys 2014 acquisition of Sky Italia and a majority 90. 04% interest in Sky Deutschland in November 2014, the United Kingdom operations also changed the company name from British Sky Broadcasting Limited to Sky UK Limited, still trading as Sky. Sky UK Limited is an owned subsidiary of Sky plc, with its current company directors being Andrew Griffith. Griffith acts as the Chief Financial Officer and the Managing Director for the commercial businesses division, after the two companies merged, subscribers could get access to both channels, and later the sports channel Sky Sports also became encrypted. In the autumn of 1991, talks were held for the broadcast rights for Premier League for a five-year period, ITV were the current rights holders, and fought hard to retain the new rights. ITV had increased its offer from £18m to £34m per year to control of the rights. BSkyB joined forces with the BBC to make a counter bid, Murdoch described sport as a battering ram for pay-television, providing a strong customer base. A few weeks after the deal, ITV went to the High Court to get an injunction as it believed their bid details had been leaked before the decision was taken. ITV also asked the Office of Fair Trading to investigate since it believed Rupert Murdochs media empire via its newspapers had influenced the deal. A few days later neither action took effect, ITV believed BSkyB was telephoned and informed of its £262m bid, and Premier League advised BSkyB to increase its counter bid. BSkyB retained the rights paying £670m 1997–2001 deal, but was challenged by On Digital for the rights from 2001–2004, in May 2006, the Irish broadcaster Setanta Sports was awarded two of the six Premier League packages that the English FA offered to broadcasters. Sky picked up the four for £1. 3bn. In February 2015, Sky bid £4. 2bn for a package of 120 premier league games across the three seasons from 2016 and this represented an increase of 70% on the previous contract and was said to be £1bn more than the company had expected to pay. The move has been followed by staff cuts, increased subscription prices, in September 1993, BSkyB launched Sky Multichannels which was the present digital platforms analogue predecessor. Sky Multichannels was a package that gave access not only to Skys own channels
19.
Sky Ireland
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Sky Ireland Limited is a subsidiary of Sky plc and supplies television, internet and telephony services in Ireland. Its corporate headquarters are in Dublin which were opened by Taoiseach Enda Kenny on 18 January 2013, Skys broadband services have no cap and are unlimited. Sky Ireland employs around 900 staff in Dublin, in 1998 Sky Digital launched its digital television services within Ireland. Sky Ireland provides opt-out feeds of key Sky television channels which includes Sky1, Sky Sports, Sky News, Sky Media Ireland is the media sales arm of Sky Ireland. They sell advertising opportunities across all of Skys wholly owned channels including Sky1, Sky Living, Sky Atlantic, Sky News, in addition, they sell on behalf of media partners including the MTV and Discovery Networks. Sky operated an Irish version of Sky News called Sky News Ireland from 2004 to 2006, as of January 2013, The company has 500 workers that work from its contact centre with a possible increase of 1,000 by year end. BSkyB chief executive Jermey Darroch announced on 18 January 2013 that Sky Ireland will invest a further €1 billion over the five years in Ireland. As of September 2013, Sky Ireland now employ 800 people at its Dublin base, in October 2013 Sky Ireland Launched the On Demand service to its Irish customers. December 2013 Sky launched Irelands biggest Catch-up TV Service, when Sky Digital was launched in 1998 the new service used the Astra 2A satellite which was located at the 28. 5°E orbital position, unlike the analogue service which was broadcast from 19. 2°E. New Astra satellites joined the position in 2000 and 2001, and this trend continued with the launch of Eurobird 1 in 2001. Sky is currently transmitted from the Astra satellites located at 28. 2° east, Sky+ HD material is broadcast using MPEG-4 and most of the HD material uses the DVB-S2 standard. Interactive services and 7-day EPG use the proprietary OpenTV system, with set-top boxes including modems for a return path, Sky News, amongst other channels, provides a pseudo-video on demand interactive service by broadcasting looping video streams. Sky utilises the VideoGuard pay-TV scrambling system owned by NDS, a Cisco Systems company, there are tight controls over use of VideoGuard decoders, they are not available as stand-alone DVB CAMs. Sky has design authority over all digital satellite receivers capable of receiving their service, the receivers, though designed and built by different manufacturers, must conform to the same user interface look-and-feel as all the others. This extends to the Personal video recorder offering, Sky maintains an electronic programme guide which provides information about upcoming programmes and a list of channels. Channels available on Sky are assigned a three digit logical channel number which can be entered on a control to access the channel. The EPG in Ireland gives priority to Irish channels, all channels are grouped into categories depending on their content. What section of the EPG a channel gets allocated is determined by rules set up by Sky Ireland, Sky Ireland has no veto over the presence of channels on their EPG
20.
British Forces Broadcasting Service
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The British Forces Broadcasting Service provides radio and television programmes for Her Majestys Armed Forces, and their dependents worldwide. Editorial control is independent of the Ministry of Defence and the forces themselves. It was established by the British War Office in 1943, in 1944, it was managed by Gale Pedrick. BFBS does not carry commercial advertising, BFBS Radios three stations broadcast on a combination of local DAB, FM and AM frequencies, via live streaming at bfbs. com/listen, on Sky Channel 0211 and Freesat Channel 786. The Forces Station BFBS – contemporary music and Forces Community Radio, BFBS Radio 2 – popular music, news, current affairs and sport. Bespoke news bulletins are broadcast every hour,24 hours a day, utilising content from BBC News, IRN, the standard bulletin is three minutes long, with extended ten-minute Newsplus programmes on weekdays at 0400,0700,1100,1300 and 1700 UK time. Two-minute-long news and sport headlines are broadcast on the half-hour during breakfast programming, bulletins are broadcast around the clock on BFBS Radio and BFBS Gurkha Radio, and during BFBS Radio 2s music programming. BFBS Gurkha Radio broadcasts on AM and DAB in select UK locations as well as on FM in the Falkland Islands, Afghanistan, Brunei, Nepal, Belize and it provides programmes in Gurkhali, for the Gurkha units serving with the British Army. BFBS broadcast in Malta until 25 March 1979, when British forces left the islands and it ceased broadcasts from Berlin on 15 July 1994, following the end of the Cold War, German reunification, and the withdrawal of British forces from the city, after 33 years. The BFBS Berlin frequency was given up on 12 December 1994, BFBS also broadcast on FM in Belize, from Airport Camp near Belize City. These broadcasts could also be received in parts of Guatemala. It ceased broadcasting in the country August 2011, at midnight on Saturday 12 January 2008, the Forces Station BFBS began a trial period of broadcasting nationwide across the UK on DAB, which ran until 23,59 on 31 March 2008. Audience research carried out during the trial concluded that it was successful, until 6 March 2017 when the service ceased, due to the cost to the charity SSVC. On Monday 31 May 2010, BBC Radio 1 teamed up with BFBS to transmit the 10-hour takeover show from Camp Bastion with BFBS presenters and it repeated the link-up in 2011. In December 2011, Smooth Radio broadcast their national breakfast show, presented by Simon Bates, BFBS Television started in Celle, near Hanover in the then West Germany on 18 September 1975 from Trenchard Barracks. This used taped broadcasts from the BBC and ITV, flown to Germany from London, live broadcasts of news and sport began in 1983, using a microwave link between the UK and West Germany, extending as far east as West Berlin. The BFBS TV service used the 625-line PAL system, used in the UK as well as West Germany, by 1982, it was available at 50 sites throughout northern and central regions of West Germany. It was known as SSVC Television between 1985 and 1997, when it reverted to the BFBS name, today it now broadcasts live via satellite
21.
Virgin Media
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Virgin Media PLC is a British company which provides fixed and mobile telephone, television and broadband internet services to businesses and consumers in the United Kingdom. Its headquarters are in Hook, Hampshire, United Kingdom, the company has been a subsidiary of Liberty Global plc, an international television and telecommunications company headquartered in London, since June 2013. Virgin Media previously had a listing on the NASDAQ Stock Market and was a constituent of the NASDAQ-100 index. It also had a listing on the London Stock Exchange. The company was formed in March 2006 by the merger of NTL and Telewest, in November 2006 the company signed a deal with Sir Richard Branson to license the Virgin brand for the combined business. All of the companys services were rebranded under the Virgin Media name in February 2007. At the same date it had around 3 million mobile telephony customers, Virgin Media competes primarily with Sky, BT Group, EE, O2, TalkTalk, Vodafone and Three. The companys origins lie in both Telewest and NTL, which merged in March 2006, Telewest began in 1984 in Croydon under the name Croydon Cable, and was acquired by United Cable of Denver in 1988. The company expanded during the 1990s and adopted the Telewest name in 1992 following the merger of its then-parent TCI and US West. It expanded into cable television access in 1999 by purchasing the remaining 50% stake in Cable London, one of the first cable TV companies in the UK, from NTL, adding 400,000 homes in north London. In April 2000 Telewest merged with Flextech, and in November extended its network with the acquisition of Eurobell. NTL was established by Barclay Knapp and George Blumenthal in 1993 as International CableTel, initially, Cabletel acquired local cable franchises covering Guildford, Northern Ireland and parts of Central Scotland and South Wales. In 1996 CableTel acquired National Transcommunications Limited, the privatised UK Independent Broadcasting Authority transmission network, in 1998 CableTel adopted NTL as its new name. NTL purchased the ISP Virgin. net in 2004, having originally operated it as a joint venture with Virgin Group since it launched in November 1996. It sold ADSL broadband services through BT landlines to those living outside areas served by NTLs cable network and also offered subscription-based, prior to acquiring Virgin. net, NTL offered a similar package called NTL Freedom. Telewest and NTL began discussions regarding a merger in late 2003, thanks to their geographically distinct areas, NTL and Telewest had co-operated previously, as in redirecting potential customers living outside their respective areas. On 3 October 2005, NTL announced a US$16 billion purchase of Telewest, to prevent this, Telewest instead acquired NTL. In December 2005 NTL, Telewest and mobile network operator Virgin Mobile UK announced that talks had taken place regarding a merger
22.
Virgin Media Ireland
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Virgin Media Ireland is Liberty Globals telecommunications operation in Ireland. It is the largest digital cable television provider within the Republic of Ireland, as of 31 December 2014, the company offers broadband internet, digital television and digital telephony to 1.1 million customers. Virgin Media Ireland previously traded under the branding Chorus NTL until 4 May 2010 and it is primarily in competition with Sky Ireland, eir and Vodafone in the Irish pay TV market. Originally a joint venture with Independent News and Media, IN&M sold its shares to Liberty in 2004, in May 2005, NTL agreed to sell its Irish operations NTL Ireland to Liberty Global. Morgan Stanley held the shareholding until Competition Authority approval was obtained and this occurred in December 2005 and UPC Ireland came into being on 12 December 2005. In 2006, UPC Ireland began to integrate the brands Chorus, branding wise, on 5 September 2006 NTLs website was changed to the same design as Chorus i. e. itself based on UPC Netherlands website design at the time. 25 January 2007, NTL Ireland updated the electronic programme guide software to remove the NTL logo, on 31 January 2007, NTL and Chorus began advertising jointly, although the adverts were simply the ongoing campaign from NTL with the Chorus logo added to them. On 4 June 2007 @ntlworld. ie e-mail addresses switched to @upcmail. ie, the new UPC Mediabox set top boxes which contain a hardrive based digital video recording system are fully UPC branded and come with a much enhanced EPG. These were rolled out on both the ex NTL and Chorus cable networks, from 2008, the old Pace STBs supplied by NTL Ireland were replaced with new Pace STBs designed for UPC, also branded UPC Mediabox but without the hard drive/recording capabilities. In a Sunday Business Post article on 11 February 2007, UPC Irelands marketing manager revealed that the rebrand was due to place no later than May 2007. On 16 May 2007 UPC Netherlands introduced a new UPC logo, from July 2007, all UPC advertising began bearing a composite logo reading Chorus NTL – a UPC company. On 10 June 2007 UPC announced its takeover of one of the remaining small Irish operators and this gained UPC an extra 2000 customers. During late September and early October 2007, Chorus and NTL included a leaflet with their bills explaining that a rebrand would occur on 21 October. That did not happen, however, on 30 October 2007, in November 2007, NTL Business was rebranded UPC Business, making it the first part of the company to officially adopt the UPC name. On 29 April 2008 UPCs former Cork Communications cable network, latterly part of Chorus, became the first cable network in the Ireland to switch to digital, with the analogue signal switched off. On 4 May 2010 UPC began a €3 million spend on rebranding, completing the change from Chorus, a high-profile media campaign – fronted by broadcaster Craig Doyle – was planned to run for 3 months. It also lit up a number of buildings in Dublin, Galway, UPC had received the final approvals to acquire assets from broadband rival Broadworks, which was in liquidation. This would give it access to about 6,600 homes in west Dublin, the Competition Authority cleared the deal on 21 April 2010
23.
Ziggo
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Ziggo is the largest cable operator in the Netherlands, providing cable television, broadband Internet, and telephone service to both residential and commercial customers. The company is the result of the merger between Multikabel, @Home Network, and Casema and launched officially on 16 May 2008, later followed by a merger with UPC Nederland in the first quarter of 2015, at that time the second largest cable company in the Netherlands. It kept the brand name Ziggo and its main competitors are KPN and CanalDigitaal. Most of the capital was up to 2012 held by holding companies of two private equity firms, Cinven and Warburg Pincus. On 21 March 2012, Ziggo was listed on the NYSE Euronext stock exchange, additionally, there are options traded on the Ziggo share. Cinven and Warburg Pincus started to reduce their stake in Ziggo, in March 2013 Liberty Global acquired a 12. 65% stake in Ziggo. This increased to 15% in April and 28. 5% in July, on 27 January 2014 Liberty Global announced that it would be acquiring all remaining shares in Ziggo for €10 billion. The takeover was subject to approval and was expected to close by the second quarter of 2014. In May 2014 the European Commission announced opening an investigation to assess whether the proposed acquisition of Ziggo by Liberty Global is in line with the EU Merger Regulation. The opening of an in-depth inquiry does not prejudge the outcome of the investigation, in November 2014 Liberty Global took over Ziggo. In December 2014 the shares of Ziggo N. V. were delisted from Euronext Amsterdam as Ziggo was converted into the Dutch private limited company Ziggo Holding B. V, on 5 January 2015 Ziggo started to harmonize its cable network with the UPC Nederland cable network. The name UPC was finally phased out in favor of Ziggo on 13 April 2015, on 15 February 2016, British telecommunications company Vodafone announced the merger of their Dutch operations Vodafone Netherlands with Liberty Global, the owner of Ziggo. The deal was closed on 31 December, creating a new parent company for both Ziggo and Vodafone, called VodafoneZiggo, with a 50/50 joint ownership by Liberty Global, in 2014 the Ziggo cable network passed 6.983 million homes in the Netherlands. Ziggo offers analog and digital television to 4.089 million subscribers of which 3.321 million watch digital. In recent years the number of analogue channels has been reduced to make bandwidth available for digital HD channels. At the moment Ziggo uses both the Nagravision and Irdeto conditional access system, nevertheless, about 40 TV channels and also 40 radio channels are transmitted in clear. Basic service is called Kabel TV and includes both analogue and digital channels, consists of about 40 digital and 25 analogue television channels and it consists of all the major Dutch networks and some of the main networks of neighbouring countries. Additional TV and radio channels are available through TV Standard, Movies & Series XL, every additional package comes with Stingray Music which offers 35 additional radio channels, as well as interactive video on demand services
24.
Netherlands
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The Netherlands, also informally known as Holland is the main constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a densely populated country located in Western Europe with three territories in the Caribbean. The European part of the Netherlands borders Germany to the east, Belgium to the south, and the North Sea to the northwest, sharing borders with Belgium, the United Kingdom. The three largest cities in the Netherlands are Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague, Amsterdam is the countrys capital, while The Hague holds the Dutch seat of parliament and government. The port of Rotterdam is the worlds largest port outside East-Asia, the name Holland is used informally to refer to the whole of the country of the Netherlands. Netherlands literally means lower countries, influenced by its low land and flat geography, most of the areas below sea level are artificial. Since the late 16th century, large areas have been reclaimed from the sea and lakes, with a population density of 412 people per km2 –507 if water is excluded – the Netherlands is classified as a very densely populated country. Only Bangladesh, South Korea, and Taiwan have both a population and higher population density. Nevertheless, the Netherlands is the worlds second-largest exporter of food and agricultural products and this is partly due to the fertility of the soil and the mild climate. In 2001, it became the worlds first country to legalise same-sex marriage, the Netherlands is a founding member of the EU, Eurozone, G-10, NATO, OECD and WTO, as well as being a part of the Schengen Area and the trilateral Benelux Union. The first four are situated in The Hague, as is the EUs criminal intelligence agency Europol and this has led to the city being dubbed the worlds legal capital. The country also ranks second highest in the worlds 2016 Press Freedom Index, the Netherlands has a market-based mixed economy, ranking 17th of 177 countries according to the Index of Economic Freedom. It had the thirteenth-highest per capita income in the world in 2013 according to the International Monetary Fund, in 2013, the United Nations World Happiness Report ranked the Netherlands as the seventh-happiest country in the world, reflecting its high quality of life. The Netherlands also ranks joint second highest in the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index, the region called Low Countries and the country of the Netherlands have the same toponymy. Place names with Neder, Nieder, Nether and Nedre and Bas or Inferior are in use in all over Europe. They are sometimes used in a relation to a higher ground that consecutively is indicated as Upper, Boven, Oben. In the case of the Low Countries / the Netherlands the geographical location of the region has been more or less downstream. The geographical location of the region, however, changed over time tremendously
25.
Belgium
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Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a sovereign state in Western Europe bordered by France, the Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg, and the North Sea. It is a small, densely populated country which covers an area of 30,528 square kilometres and has a population of about 11 million people. Additionally, there is a group of German-speakers who live in the East Cantons located around the High Fens area. Historically, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg were known as the Low Countries, the region was called Belgica in Latin, after the Roman province of Gallia Belgica. From the end of the Middle Ages until the 17th century, today, Belgium is a federal constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary system of governance. It is divided into three regions and three communities, that exist next to each other and its two largest regions are the Dutch-speaking region of Flanders in the north and the French-speaking southern region of Wallonia. The Brussels-Capital Region is a bilingual enclave within the Flemish Region. A German-speaking Community exists in eastern Wallonia, Belgiums linguistic diversity and related political conflicts are reflected in its political history and complex system of governance, made up of six different governments. Upon its independence, declared in 1830, Belgium participated in the Industrial Revolution and, during the course of the 20th century, possessed a number of colonies in Africa. This continuing antagonism has led to several far-reaching reforms, resulting in a transition from a unitary to a federal arrangement during the period from 1970 to 1993. Belgium is also a member of the Eurozone, NATO, OECD and WTO. Its capital, Brussels, hosts several of the EUs official seats as well as the headquarters of major international organizations such as NATO. Belgium is also a part of the Schengen Area, Belgium is a developed country, with an advanced high-income economy and is categorized as very high in the Human Development Index. A gradual immigration by Germanic Frankish tribes during the 5th century brought the area under the rule of the Merovingian kings, a gradual shift of power during the 8th century led the kingdom of the Franks to evolve into the Carolingian Empire. Many of these fiefdoms were united in the Burgundian Netherlands of the 14th and 15th centuries, the Eighty Years War divided the Low Countries into the northern United Provinces and the Southern Netherlands. The latter were ruled successively by the Spanish and the Austrian Habsburgs and this was the theatre of most Franco-Spanish and Franco-Austrian wars during the 17th and 18th centuries. The reunification of the Low Countries as the United Kingdom of the Netherlands occurred at the dissolution of the First French Empire in 1815, although the franchise was initially restricted, universal suffrage for men was introduced after the general strike of 1893 and for women in 1949. The main political parties of the 19th century were the Catholic Party, French was originally the single official language adopted by the nobility and the bourgeoisie
26.
Switzerland
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Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a federal republic in Europe. It consists of 26 cantons, and the city of Bern is the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in western-Central Europe, and is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland is a country geographically divided between the Alps, the Swiss Plateau and the Jura, spanning an area of 41,285 km2. The establishment of the Old Swiss Confederacy dates to the medieval period, resulting from a series of military successes against Austria. Swiss independence from the Holy Roman Empire was formally recognized in the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The country has a history of armed neutrality going back to the Reformation, it has not been in a state of war internationally since 1815, nevertheless, it pursues an active foreign policy and is frequently involved in peace-building processes around the world. In addition to being the birthplace of the Red Cross, Switzerland is home to international organisations. On the European level, it is a member of the European Free Trade Association. However, it participates in the Schengen Area and the European Single Market through bilateral treaties, spanning the intersection of Germanic and Romance Europe, Switzerland comprises four main linguistic and cultural regions, German, French, Italian and Romansh. Due to its diversity, Switzerland is known by a variety of native names, Schweiz, Suisse, Svizzera. On coins and stamps, Latin is used instead of the four living languages, Switzerland is one of the most developed countries in the world, with the highest nominal wealth per adult and the eighth-highest per capita gross domestic product according to the IMF. Zürich and Geneva have each been ranked among the top cities in the world in terms of quality of life, with the former ranked second globally, according to Mercer. The English name Switzerland is a compound containing Switzer, a term for the Swiss. The English adjective Swiss is a loan from French Suisse, also in use since the 16th century. The name Switzer is from the Alemannic Schwiizer, in origin an inhabitant of Schwyz and its associated territory, the Swiss began to adopt the name for themselves after the Swabian War of 1499, used alongside the term for Confederates, Eidgenossen, used since the 14th century. The data code for Switzerland, CH, is derived from Latin Confoederatio Helvetica. The toponym Schwyz itself was first attested in 972, as Old High German Suittes, ultimately related to swedan ‘to burn’
27.
UPC Switzerland
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UPC Switzerland LLC, trading exclusively under the brand name UPC, is the largest broadband cable operator in Switzerland. Founded 1994 through multiple mergers between companies, it is part of Liberty Global Europes UPC Broadband division since the end of 2005. In the 1930s the first cable network operators started to broadcast a variety of channels to households via cable. One of these cable network operators was Rediffusion S. A. established in 1931, at the end of the 1950s Rediffusion began to broadcast the first black/white television channels from the Üetliberg antenna tower in Zürich. In 1994 Rediffusion and other independent cable network companies merged to form Cablecom, owned by Siemens, VEBA, Cablecom acquired the successful Internet service provider SwissOnline in 1998. Over the following years the network operator grew by acquiring various cable network companies including, for instance Balcab. These takeovers allowed cablecom to extend its network throughout Switzerland, in 2000 the previous owners of Cablecom sold out to the British-American NTL for a price of 5.8 billion Swiss francs. In the years followed, operative business was sustainably improved. In the wake of financial difficulties NTL sold Cablecom to a group of banks, the owners planned to go public with Cablecom in the middle of October 2005. After Liberty Global Europe, an owned subsidiary of Liberty Global acquired Cablecom for 2.8 billion on 30 September 2005. In the years that followed Cablecom invested in its network development, in 2007 the company launched high definition television. Two years later introduced its first combination deals. In 2010 Cablecom launched the DigiCard enabling customers to enjoy digital TV without having to connect a device to their Television set. Cablecom began offering Video on Demand with HD and 3D content in early 2011, Cablecom was relaunched as upc cablecom in April 2011 with the slogan “More Power, More Joy”. With the upc cablecom brand the company wishes to be perceived on the market as a subsidiary of Liberty Global while retaining its legacy as part of Swiss telecommunications history, in the course of rebranding the red wrench was replaced by a new logo. In June upc cablecom signed an agreement with Orange to keep an option open of offering customers mobile telephony products in the future, at the beginning of 2013 the entertainment platform Horizon was launched onto the Swiss market. Therefore, the television and radio channels differ between the three grids. UPC TV Mini consists of approximately 55 television channels, including 21 high-definition simulcast channels, the channels differ between the three regional grids, with a focus on carrying channels in the regions main language
28.
WightFibre
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WightFibre is the only provider of commercial and residential cable television services on the Isle of Wight. They also provide telephone and broadband internet services and it is the last remaining cable company in the UK which is not part of Virgin Media which, from March 2006, operated more than 95% of cable services in the UK. The Isle of Wight Cable and Telephone Company and Omne Communications were taken over by CLS Holdings in the years of the 21st century. It ran two separate operations, WightCable on the Isle of Wight, and WightCable in south west Scotland. CLS Holdings sold both of the two companies to separate private investors who intend to operate them separately. Smallworld Cable was absorbed by Virgin Media in 2014 leaving WightFibre as the sole independent UK cable company, WightCable Ltd was sold in the last part of 2005, now going under the name Wight Cable 2005 Ltd. New branding was introduced, services upgraded and internet speeds increased, in 2012, WightCable changed its name to WightFibre, promising increased internet speeds up to 100Mbit/s, and introducing IPTV with high-definition channels and on-demand services. A £500,000 investment saw the launch of 50Mb broadband in July 2012, the company advertised heavily and returned to growth in October 2012. A small scale trial of the companys new IP based TV service was held in Nov & Dec 2012, in February 2013 WightFibre was acquired by Keith Young, a serial entrepreneur who was also an original investor in Easynet. The management team remained in place and the strategy remained unchanged
29.
Telenet (Belgium)
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Telenet Group is the largest provider of cable broadband services in Belgium. Its business comprises the provision of analog and digital television, fixed and mobile telephone services, primarily to residential customers in Flanders. In addition, Telenet offers services to customers all across Belgium. Since 11 October 2005, Telenet has been listed on the Euronext stock exchange under the ticker TNET. Its main competitors on the cable broadband Internet market are Numericable and VOO in the Brussels region, and Belgacom, through its acquisition of Sinfilo, Telenet acquired a large network of Wi-Fi hotspots in addition to its cable Internet service. In December 2016, Telenet bought rival SFR Belux from Altice, in January 2008, Telenet acquired Hostbasket, Belgiums largest hosting company, to offer services appropriate for organisations and companies. Hostbasket offers classic hosting, infrastructure solutions and applications, since 1998, Telenet has offered fixed telephony using its cable network under the brand name Telenet Freephone. In 2008, it has more than 600,000 customers and its main competitors on the Belgian fixed telephone market are Numericable and VOO in Brussels, using optic fibre. Its other main competitor is Proximus, leader of the Belgian DSL market and it has released FreePhone Mobile in November 2011. This is an option which allows its customers to call all mobile lines for free during the morning. An extra option called FreePhone Mobile 24 is available as well and this allows customers to call mobile lines all day. Since July 2006, Telenet Mobile offers mobile services as a full MVNO. Today it has more than 80,000 customers and it competes with the mobile network operators Proximus, owned by the Belgian state owned telecommunications company Belgacom. In 2009, Telenet acquired the Belgian retail store network of BelCompany from the Dutch Macintosh Retail Group, in 2011 Telenet and Voo formed a new company, Telenet Tecteo BidCo, to participate in the auction for obtaining the fourth 3G license on the Belgian market. As there were no other bidding parties they obtained license for €71.5 million. In 2015 Telenet acquired the mobile operator Base from its previous owner KPN for €1.325 billion, Telenet launched Telenet Digital TV interactive television on its cable television network on September 3,2005. Telenet also rolled out high definition television services during 2008, in July 2008 Telenet reached an agreement with Interkabels INDI regarding the acquisition of its 800,000 cable TV customers. Its main competitors on the Belgian digital television market are Numericable, other competitors are Belgacom TV IPTV and TV Vlaanderen Digitaal, owned by Belgacom and an Airbridge Investments -Providence Equity Partners consortium, in the Flanders and Brussels regions
30.
IPTV
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Unlike downloaded media, IPTV offers the ability to stream the source media continuously. As a result, a client media player can begin playing the data almost immediately and this is known as streaming media. Although IPTV uses the Internet protocol it is not limited to television media streamed from the Internet, IPTV in the telecommunications arena is notable for its ongoing standardisation process. Historically, many different definitions of IPTV have appeared, including elementary streams over IP networks, transport streams over IP networks and these services may include, for example, Live TV, Video On Demand and Interactive TV. These services are delivered across an access agnostic, packet switched network that employs the IP protocol to transport the audio, video, the term IPTV first appeared in 1995 with the founding of Precept Software by Judith Estrin and Bill Carrico. Precept developed an Internet video product named IP/TV, the software was written primarily by Steve Casner, Karl Auerbach, and Cha Chee Kuan. Precept was acquired by Cisco Systems in 1998, Internet radio company AudioNet started the first continuous live webcasts with content from WFAA-TV in January 1998 and KCTU-LP on January 10,1998. The operator added additional VoD service in October 2001 with Yes TV, kingston was one of the first companies in the world to introduce IPTV and IP VoD over ADSL as a commercial service. The service became the reference for various changes to UK Government regulations, in 2006, the KIT service was discontinued, subscribers having declined from a peak of 10,000 to 4,000. In 1999, NBTel was the first to commercially deploy Internet protocol television over DSL in Canada using the Alcatel 7350 DSLAM, the service was marketed under the brand VibeVision in New Brunswick, and later expanded into Nova Scotia in early 2000 after the formation of Aliant. IMagic TV was later sold to Alcatel, in 2002, Sasktel was the second in Canada to commercially deploy Internet Protocol video over DSL, using the Lucent Stinger DSL platform. In 2005, SureWest Communications was the first North American company to offer high-definition television channels over an IPTV service, in 2005, Bredbandsbolaget launched its IPTV service as the first service provider in Sweden. As of January 2009, they are not the biggest supplier any longer, TeliaSonera, in 2007, TPG became the first internet service provider in Australia to launch IPTV. Complementary to its ADSL2+ package this was, and still is, free of charge to customers on eligible plans and now offers over 45 local free to air channels, by 2010, iiNet and Telstra launched IPTV services in conjunction to internet plans but with extra fees. In 2008, PTCL launched IPTV under the name of PTCL Smart TV in Pakistan. S. Markets with an IPTV service called Prism and this was after successful test marketing in Florida. During the 2014 Winter Olympics Shortest path bridging was used to deliver 36 IPTV HD Olympic channels, in 2016, KCTV introduced the Set-top box called Manbang, claiming to provide video-on-demand services in North Korea via quasi-internet protocol television. According to KCTV, viewers can use the service not only in Pyongyang, stating that the demands for the equipment are particularly high in Sinuiju, with several hundred users in the region
31.
Brussels
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Brussels, officially the Brussels-Capital Region, is a region of Belgium comprising 19 municipalities, including the City of Brussels which is the capital of Belgium. The Brussels-Capital Region is a part of both the French Community of Belgium and the Flemish Community, but is separate from the region of Flanders or Wallonia. The region has a population of 1.2 million and an area with a population of over 1.8 million. Brussels is the de facto capital of the European Union as it hosts a number of principal EU institutions, the secretariat of the Benelux and the headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization are also located in Brussels. Today, it is considered an Alpha global city, historically a Dutch-speaking city, Brussels has seen a language shift to French from the late 19th century onwards. Today, the majority language is French, and the Brussels-Capital Region is a bilingual enclave within the Flemish Region. All road signs, street names, and many advertisements and services are shown in both languages, Brussels is increasingly becoming multilingual with increasing numbers of migrants, expatriates and minority groups speaking their own languages. The most common theory of the origin of Brussels name is that it derives from the Old Dutch Broekzele or Broeksel, meaning marsh, Saint Vindicianus, the bishop of Cambrai made the first recorded reference to the place Brosella in 695 when it was still a hamlet. The origin of the settlement that was to become Brussels lies in Saint Gaugericus construction of a chapel on an island in the river Senne around 580. The official founding of Brussels is usually situated around 979, when Duke Charles of Lower Lotharingia transferred the relics of Saint Gudula from Moorsel to the Saint Gaugericus chapel, Charles would construct the first permanent fortification in the city, doing so on that same island. Lambert I of Leuven, Count of Leuven gained the County of Brussels around 1000 by marrying Charles daughter, as it grew to a population of around 30,000, the surrounding marshes were drained to allow for further expansion. The Counts of Leuven became Dukes of Brabant at about this time, in the 13th century, the city got its first walls. After the construction of the city walls in the early 13th century, to let the city expand, a second set of walls was erected between 1356 and 1383. Today, traces of it can still be seen, mostly because the small ring, Brabant had lost its independence, but Brussels became the Princely Capital of the prosperous Low Countries, and flourished. In 1516 Charles V, who had been heir of the Low Countries since 1506, was declared King of Spain in St. Michael and St. Gudula Cathedral in Brussels. Upon the death of his grandfather, Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor in 1519 and it was in the Palace complex at Coudenberg that Charles V abdicated in 1555. This impressive palace, famous all over Europe, had expanded since it had first become the seat of the Dukes of Brabant. In 1695, during the Nine Years War, King Louis XIV of France sent troops to bombard Brussels with artillery, together with the resulting fire, it was the most destructive event in the entire history of Brussels
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Flanders
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Flanders is the Dutch-speaking northern portion of Belgium, although there are several overlapping definitions, including ones related to culture, language, politics and history. It is one of the communities, regions and language areas of Belgium, the demonym associated with Flanders is Fleming, while the corresponding adjective is Flemish. The official capital of Flanders is Brussels, although Brussels itself has an independent regional government, in historical contexts, Flanders originally refers to the County of Flanders, which around AD1000 stretched from the Strait of Dover to the Scheldt estuary. In accordance with late 20th century Belgian state reforms the area was made two political entities, the Flemish Community and the Flemish Region. These entities were merged, although geographically the Flemish Community, which has a cultural mandate, covers Brussels. Flanders has figured prominently in European history, as a consequence, a very sophisticated culture developed, with impressive achievements in the arts and architecture, rivaling those of northern Italy. Belgium was one of the centres of the 19th century industrial revolution, geographically, Flanders is generally flat, and has a small section of coast on the North Sea. Much of Flanders is agriculturally fertile and densely populated, with a density of almost 500 people per square kilometer. It touches France to the west near the coast, and borders the Netherlands to the north and east, the Brussels Capital Region is an enclave within the Flemish Region. Flanders has exclaves of its own, Voeren in the east is between Wallonia and the Netherlands and Baarle-Hertog in the consists of 22 exclaves surrounded by the Netherlands. It comprises 6.5 million Belgians who consider Dutch to be their mother tongue, the political subdivisions of Belgium, the Flemish Region and the Flemish Community. The first does not comprise Brussels, whereas the latter does comprise the Dutch-speaking inhabitants of Brussels, the political institutions that govern both subdivisions, the operative body Flemish Government and the legislative organ Flemish Parliament. The two westernmost provinces of the Flemish Region, West Flanders and East Flanders, forming the central portion of the historic County of Flanders, a feudal territory that existed from the 8th century until its absorption by the French First Republic. Until the 1600s, this county also extended over parts of France, one of the regions conquered by the French in Flanders, namely French Flanders in the Nord department. French Flanders can be divided into two regions, Walloon Flanders and Maritime Flanders. The first region was predominantly French-speaking already in the 1600s, the latter became so in the 20th century, the city of Lille identifies itself as Flemish, and this is reflected, for instance, in the name of its local railway station TGV Lille Flandres. The region conquered by the Dutch Republic in Flanders, now part of the Dutch province of Zeeland, the significance of the County of Flanders and its counts eroded through time, but the designation remained in a very broad sense. In the Early modern period, the term Flanders was associated with the part of the Low Countries
33.
Wallonia
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Wallonia is a region of Belgium. Wallonia is primarily French-speaking, and accounts for 55% of the territory of Belgium, unlike Flanders, the Walloon Region was not merged with the French Community of Belgium which is the political entity that is responsible for matters related mainly to culture and education. The German-speaking minority in the east forms the German-speaking Community of Belgium, during the industrial revolution, Wallonia was second only to the United Kingdom in industrialization, capitalizing on its extensive deposits of coal and iron. This brought the wealth, and, from the beginning of the 19th to the middle of the 20th century. Since World War II the importance of industry has greatly diminished. Wallonia now suffers high unemployment and has a significantly lower GDP per capita than Flanders. The economic inequalities and linguistic divide between the two are major sources of conflict in Belgium and is a major factor in Flemish separatism. The capital of Wallonia is Namur but the city with the greatest population is Charleroi, most of Wallonias major cities and two-thirds of its population lie along the Sambre and Meuse valley, the former industrial backbone of Belgium. To the north lies the Central Belgian Plateau, which, like Flanders, is relatively flat, in the south-east lie the Ardennes, hilly and sparsely populated. Wallonia borders Flanders and the Netherlands in the north, France to the south and west, Wallonia has been a member of the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie since 1980. The term Wallonia can mean different things in different contexts. One of the three regions of Belgium is still constitutionally defined as the Walloon Region, but the regions government has renamed it Wallonia. In practice, the difference between the two terms is small and what is meant is usually clear, based on context, the root of the word Wallonia, like the words Wales, Cornwall and Wallachia, is the Germanic word Walha, meaning the strangers. Wallonia is named after the Walloons, the population of the Burgundian Netherlands speaking Romance languages, in Middle Dutch, the term Walloons also included the French-speaking population of the Prince-Bishopric of Liège or the whole population of the Romanic sprachraum within the medieval Low Countries. Julius Caesar conquered Gaul in 57 BC, the Low Countries became part of the larger Gallia Belgica province which originally stretched from southwestern Germany to Normandy and the southern part of the Netherlands. The population of territory was Celtic with a Germanic influence which was stronger in the north than in the south of the province. The ancestors of the Walloons became Gallo-Romans and were called the Walha by their Germanic neighbours, the Walha abandoned their Celtic dialects and started to speak Vulgar Latin. The Merovingian Franks gradually gained control of the region during the 5th century, the language border began to crystallize between 700 under the reign of the Merovingians and Carolingians and around 1000 after the Ottonian Renaissance
34.
Telfort
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Telfort B. V. is a Dutch mobile telecommunication company, and a subsidiary of KPN. It operates GSM mobile telecommunications service in the Netherlands and it markets itself as being the cheapest option available, and goes to some lengths to give the appearance of being a no frills operator. The company was formed in 1997 as a joint venture between British Telecommunications and Nederlandse Spoorwegen, in 2000, BT acquired the company. The group became part of the BT Wireless business and after its spin-off as mmO2, however, in 2003, O2 sold the company to Greenfield Capital Partners. It then reverted to the Telfort name, in July 2005 Telfort was sold to telephone company KPN. In October 2007, KPN, which had bought the Dutch operations of Tiscali some months earlier and it has, since then, expanded its operations to include fixed phone lines and digital television subscriptions
35.
XS4ALL
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XS4ALL is the third-oldest Internet service provider in the Netherlands, after NLnet and SURFnet. XS4ALL was the company to offer Internet access to private individuals. Founded in 1993 as an offshoot of the hackers club Hack-Tic by Felipe Rodriquez, Rop Gonggrijp, Paul Jongsma and Cor Bosman, while based in Amsterdam. Initially only offering dial-in services via modem and ISDN today it offers dial-up access as well as Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line, as of 2007, XS4ALL was one of the larger ISPs in The Netherlands. In 2005, the company had a turnover of 86.1 million euro, also in 2005, XS4ALL employed 327 people and served 265,000 private subscribers. The company is known for its willingness to take on issues, has taken legal action against spammers. From these days there is also a relationship with NGO Bits of Freedom, in December 1996, XS4ALL put the Belgrade radio station B92 online using streaming audio technology in response to the jamming of its broadcasts by the regime of Slobodan Milošević. XS4ALL installed a line to the radio station in response to a request from Adriënne van Heteren. In September 1996, members of the German InternetContentTaskForce blocked XS4ALL for about a month one of its subscribers had put an issue of radikal magazine on his homepage. Radikal is illegal in Germany, and to prevent its publication the German Bundesanwaltschaft ordered commercial ISPs in Germany to block its website and they ended up blocking the entire XS4ALL site, which at the time had about 6,000 personal and commercial homepages. On 11 April 1997 one of the largest German ISPs, the Deutsches Forschungsnetz academic backbone network, many protest letters were sent, mirrors were once again set up around the world, and the complete issue of radikal 154 was posted in the newsgroup de. soc. zensur. As a result, the blockade only lasted a few days, the founders of XS4ALL were interrogated as suspects of publication of terrorist propaganda, but no legal actions were initiated against them. XS4ALL then implemented several technologies to sabotage the attempt, such as automatically rotating the IP address of its website. The ICTF ended up censoring all IP traffic to the XS4ALL domain, after a couple of weeks this became untenable, a global protest against the censorship emerged, and a global network of mirror sites was created by the online community. The ICTF abandoned its efforts after several weeks, in early 2011 the government in Egypt blocked internet-access hoping to thwart organizers of protests against the government and also to control the news leaving the country. On an incoming requests XS4All opened up their --still existing-- dial-in modems to give people from Egypt direct access to the open internet, when later that year a similar situation arose in Libya, the possibilities of such connections were brought to the attention of protesters in that country. It is one among five servers being targeted as such, in December 1998, XS4ALL was sold to the Dutch incumbent phone company KPN. Many of the employees, especially system managers, still work there
36.
Eir (telecommunications)
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Eircom Limited, trading as Eir, is a fixed, mobile and broadband telecommunications company in Ireland, and a former state-owned monopolist. It is the largest telecommunications operator in the Republic, with a division to service the business and corporate telecom markets in Northern Ireland, as Bord Telecom Éireann, the company was state-owned until 1999, when it was floated on the Irish and New York Stock Exchanges. Eir operates the fixed-line telephone network, an LTE, HSDPA and GSM/EDGE mobile telephone network Meteor, as of Q12013, Eircom had 54% market share of fixed voice lines, 40% market share of fixed broadband, 11% of mobile broadband, and 17% of mobile. By late 2007 Eircom added their 500, 000th DSL subscriber but broadband share may have fallen to 44% due to growth of fixed wireless, cable and fibre services. Its main competitors are Virgin Media Ireland, Vodafone Ireland, Imagine Communications and Magnet Networks and Smart Telecom, with a mix of LLU/GLUMP from Eircom, Eir operates the largest fixed-line telecommunications network in the Republic of Ireland, under licence from the Commission for Communications Regulation. Most homes and businesses in the state are dependent on their network, a range of telecommunications services is provided on the network including Business IP, its MPLS platform. Eir have also completed a wholly owned fibre network ring around Northern Ireland and their ISP division, Eir Net, provides dial-up services, as well as broadband services. Any alarm-monitoring products using SMS are hardcoded to work with Eirs SMSC, so will not work on Digiweb, BT, Smart, DECT SMS handsets are also preprogrammed for Eirs SMSC. Eirs mobile arm, Meteor, provides a range of HSPA. Its GSM network operates at 1800 MHz and 900 MHz ranges, GPRS and EDGE data services are also available. Meteor have launched HSPA services in Dublin, Cork, Dundalk, Meteor provides both bill-pay and pre-pay plans and has approximately 19% of the Irish mobile market, with 1,032,000 cellular subscribers on the Meteor network. The company has used EDGE technology on its network and has received a 3G license, formally removed from Eirs competitor, as an operator with significant market power, Eir is required to provide a number of wholesale products to other operators and to switch calls onto other phone networks. Many broadband products offered by other operators are resales of the Eir product, a series of telephone directories is distributed annually to all households in the Republic of Ireland. The six annual directories list numbers in the local dialling area, the company was formed in 1984 as Bord Telecom Éireann, under the Posts and Telecommunications Act 1983. In May 2013, it announced that Phonewatch had been sold to Oslo-based company, from 2000 to 2008, Eircom sponsored the League of Ireland. Although EU laws required the opening of the Irish telecommunications market, Telecom Éireann was privatised, this was very controversial and subject to much debate. The process began in 1995, and by July 1999 the government had disposed of all of its shareholding. Eircom plc was floated on the Irish, London and New York Stock Exchanges on 8 July 1999
37.
Streaming media
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Streaming media is multimedia that is constantly received by and presented to an end-user while being delivered by a provider. A client end-user can use their player to begin to play the data file before the entire file has been transmitted. For example, in the 1930s, elevator music was among the earliest popularly available streaming media, the term streaming media can apply to media other than video and audio such as live closed captioning, ticker tape, and real-time text, which are all considered streaming text. As of 2017, streaming is generally taken to refer to cases where a user watches digital video content or listens to audio content on a computer screen. With streaming content, the user does not have to download the digital video or digital audio file before they start to watch/listen to it. There are challenges with streaming content on the Internet, as of 2016, two popular streaming services are the video sharing website YouTube, which contains video and audio files on a huge range of topics and Netflix, which streams movies and TV shows. Live streaming refers to Internet content delivered in real-time, as events happen, Live internet streaming requires a form of source media, an encoder to digitize the content, a media publisher, and a content delivery network to distribute and deliver the content. Live streaming does not need to be recorded at the origination point, in the early 1920s, George O. Attempts to display media on computers date back to the earliest days of computing in the mid-20th century, however, little progress was made for several decades, primarily due to the high cost and limited capabilities of computer hardware. From the late 1980s through the 1990s, consumer-grade personal computers became powerful enough to various media. These technological improvement facilitated the streaming of audio and video content to users in their homes and workplaces. The band Severe Tire Damage was the first group to live on the Internet. On June 24,1993, the band was playing a gig at Xerox PARC while elsewhere in the building, as proof of PARCs technology, the bands performance was broadcast and could be seen live in Australia and elsewhere. Microsoft Research developed a Microsoft TV application which was compiled under MS Windows Studio Suite, realNetworks was also a pioneer in the streaming media markets, when it broadcast a baseball game between the New York Yankees and the Seattle Mariners over the Internet in 1995. The first symphonic concert on the Internet took place at the Paramount Theater in Seattle, the concert was a collaboration between The Seattle Symphony and various guest musicians such as Slash, Matt Cameron, and Barrett Martin. When Word Magazine launched in 1995, they featured the first-ever streaming soundtracks on the Internet.4 in 1999, in June 1999 Apple also introduced a streaming media format in its QuickTime 4 application. It was later widely adopted on websites along with RealPlayer. In 2000 Industryview. com launched its worlds largest streaming video archive website to help promote themselves
38.
BBC iPlayer
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BBC iPlayer is an internet streaming catchup television and radio service in the United Kingdom. The service is available on a range of devices, including mobile phones and tablets, personal computers. Neither the iPlayer services nor the individual TV programmes display any commercial advertising, the terms BBC iPlayer, iPlayer, and BBC Media Player all refer to the same services. BBC Redux was developed as a proof of concept for a cross-platform, BBC iPlayer left beta and went live on 25 December 2007. On 25 June 2008, a new-look iPlayer was launched, originally as a beta-test version alongside the earlier version, the site tagline was Catch up on the last 7 days of BBC TV & Radio, reflecting that programmes were unavailable on iPlayer after this time. The BBC state on their website that this is due to copyright reasons, the marketing slogan was later changed to Making the unmissable, unmissable. In May 2010 the site was updated again, to include a recommendations feature, the feature was added to the search function and the channels function. When users click on a programme by another broadcaster, they are redirected to the relevant broadcasters catch up service, in April 2014, BBC iPlayer was once again relaunched with a new look and a different user interface. From October 2014, the BBC extended the availability for programmes on iPlayer from 7 days to 30 days. However, due to legal reasons, most news bulletins are available for 24 hours after initial broadcast. Some archive programming is availabily for the term, such as Timewatch. Specific applications for mobile platforms were launched in February 2011 and these were initially for iOS and Android devices, where the launch would have the biggest impact. In 2015, the BBC reported that it was moving towards playing audio, the original iPlayer service was launched in October 2005, undergoing a five-month trial by five thousand broadband users until 28 February 2006. The iPlayer was heavily criticised for delay in its launch, rebranding, a new, improved iPlayer service then had another very limited user trial which began on 15 November 2006. At various times during its development, iPlayer was known as the Integrated Media Player, Interactive Media Player and this was done reportedly to allow British ISPs and the BBC to gauge the effect of the iPlayer traffic on the Internet within the UK. However, it was only to users of Windows XP. This was a decision by the BBC, which led to a petition against the decision being posted on 10 Downing Streets e-petition website. The petition reached 16,082 signatures on 20 August 2007, the response from the Government was
39.
Isle of Man
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The Isle of Man, also known simply as Mann, is a self-governing crown dependency in the Irish Sea between England and Northern Ireland. The head of state is Queen Elizabeth II, who holds the title of Lord of Mann, the Lord of Mann is represented by a Lieutenant Governor. Foreign relations and defence are the responsibility of the British Government, the island has been inhabited since before 6500 BC. Gaelic cultural influence began in the 5th century and the Manx language, in 627, Edwin of Northumbria conquered the Isle of Man along with most of Mercia. In the 9th century, Norsemen established the Kingdom of the Isles, magnus III, King of Norway, was also known as King of Mann and the Isles between 1099 and 1103. In 1266, the became part of Scotland under the Treaty of Perth. After a period of alternating rule by the kings of Scotland and England, the short form often used in English, Mann, is derived from the Manx Mannin, though sometimes the name is written as Man. The earliest recorded Manx form of the name is Manu or Mana, the Old Irish form of the name is Manau or Mano. Old Welsh records named it as Manaw, also reflected in Manaw Gododdin, the name for an ancient district in north Britain along the lower Firth of Forth. The oldest known reference to the calls it Mona, in Latin, in the 1st century CE, Pliny the Elder records it as Monapia or Monabia. Later Latin references have Mevania or Mænavia, and Eubonia or Eumonia by Irish writers and it is found in the Sagas of Icelanders as Mön. The name is cognate with the Welsh name of the island of Anglesey, Ynys Môn, usually derived from a Celtic word for mountain. The name was at least secondarily associated with that of Manannán mac Lir in Irish mythology, later, a Manannán is recorded as the first king of Mann in a Manx poem. The island was cut off from the islands around 8000 BC. The first residents were hunter gatherers and fishermen, examples of their tools are kept at the Manx Museum. There were also the local Ronaldsway and Bann cultures, during the Bronze Age, burial mounds became smaller. Bodies were put in stone-lined graves with ornamental containers, the Bronze Age burial mounds created long-lasting markers around the countryside. The ancient Romans knew of the island and called it Insula Manavia although it is whether they conquered the island
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Channel Islands
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The Channel Islands are an archipelago in the English Channel, off the French coast of Normandy. They are considered the remnants of the Duchy of Normandy, and although they are not part of the United Kingdom, it is responsible for the defence, the Crown dependencies are not members of the Commonwealth of Nations nor of the European Union. They have a population of about 168,000. The total area of the islands is 198 km2, the two bailiwicks have been administered separately since the late 13th century, each has its own independent laws, elections, and representative bodies. Any institution common to both is the rather than the rule. The Bailiwick of Guernsey is divided into three jurisdictions – Guernsey, Alderney and Sark – each with its own legislature, the term Channel Islands began to be used around 1830, possibly first by the Royal Navy as a collective name for the islands. The permanently inhabited islands of the Channel Islands are, Jersey Guernsey Alderney Sark Herm Jethou Brecqhou There are also several uninhabited islets and they are an incorporated part of the commune of Granville. While they are popular with visitors from France, Channel Islanders rarely visit them as there are no transport links from the other islands. Chausey is referred to as an Île normande, Îles Normandes and Archipel Normand have also, historically, been used in Channel Island French to refer to the islands as a whole. The lowest point is the Atlantic Ocean, the earliest evidence of human occupation of the Channel Islands has been dated to 250,000 years ago when they were attached to the landmass of continental Europe. The islands became detached by rising sea levels in the Neolithic period, hoards of Armorican coins have been excavated, providing evidence of trade and contact in the Iron Age period. Evidence for Roman settlement is sparse, although evidently the islands were visited by Roman officials, the Roman name for the Channel Islands was I. Lenuri and is included in the Peutinger Table The traditional Latin names used for the islands derive from the Antonine Itinerary, gallo-Roman culture was adopted to an unknown extent in the islands. In the sixth century, Christian missionaries visited the islands, samson of Dol, Helier, Marculf and Magloire are among saints associated with the islands. In the sixth century, they were included in the diocese of Coutances where they remained until reformation. The islands were inhabited by Britons, who also inhabited Wales, south west England, from the beginning of the ninth century, Norse raiders appeared on the coasts. Norse settlement succeeded initial attacks, and it is from this period that many names of Norse origin appear. In 933, the islands were granted to William I Longsword by Raoul King of Western Francia, in 1066, William II of Normandy invaded and conquered England, becoming William I of England, also known as William the Conqueror
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Image resolution
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Image resolution is the detail an image holds. The term applies to digital images, film images. Higher resolution means more image detail, image resolution can be measured in various ways. Resolution quantifies how close lines can be to other and still be visibly resolved. Resolution units can be tied to physical sizes, to the size of a picture. Line pairs are used instead of lines, a line pair comprises a dark line. A line is either a line or a light line. A resolution of 10 lines per millimeter means 5 dark lines alternating with 5 light lines, photographic lens and film resolution are most often quoted in line pairs per millimeter. The resolution of digital cameras can be described in different ways. Resolution is the capability of the sensor to observe or measure the smallest object clearly with distinct boundaries, there is a difference between the resolution and a pixel. A pixel is actually a unit of the digital Resolution depends upon the size of the pixel, usually, with any given lens setting, the smaller the size of the pixel, the higher the resolution will be and the clearer the object in the image will be. Images having smaller pixel sizes might consist of more pixels, the number of pixels correlates to the amount of information within the image. An image of N pixels height by M pixels wide can have any less than N lines per picture height. Other conventions include describing pixels per unit or pixels per area unit. None of these pixel resolutions are true resolutions, but they are referred to as such. Below is an illustration of how the image might appear at different pixel resolutions. An image that is 2048 pixels in width and 1536 pixels in height has a total of 2048×1536 =3,145,728 pixels or 3.1 megapixels, one could refer to it as 2048 by 1536 or a 3. 1-megapixel image. Or, you can think of it as a low quality image if printed at about 28.5 inches wide
