Sky Price increases for January VAT increase.

As expected, due to the change in UK VAT rates in January, Sky have announced their prices to take this into account.

One "mix" pack - £19.50 (was £19)
Each extra pack - £1 (no change)
Sky Sports pack - £20.25 (was £20)
Single Sky Sports - £12.25 (was £12)
Sky Movies pack - £16 (no change)
Sky World - £52 (was £51)
HD - £10.25 (was £10)
Multiroom - £10.25 (was £10)
ESPN - £9 / £12 (no change)

.ma vs. .mb…which is best?

.ma vs. .mb…which is best?

BBC One HD starts test broadcasts

BBC One HD, a free to air channel on Astra 2d, has started test transmissions ahead of its full launch at 7pm on 3rd November 2010.

You can add this BBC1 HD channel, to see the test, using a HD box.

Frequency: 10.84700 GHz
Polarisation: V (vertical)
Symbol rate: 22.0 Mbaud
FEC: 5/6

It is tagged as channel "6941" and is only showing a BBC One HD Promo loop.

When laucnhed, the current BBC HD

Sky to shuffle entertainment channel numbers in 2011

According to reports, Sky has plans to reshuffle its entertainment channel lineup from next year, including the rebranding of Living TV and arrival of new channel Sky Atlantic.

From early 2011, Sky Atlantic will launch exclusively on Sky to host content from the satellite broadcaster's recent multi-million pound deal with US studio HBO.

After acquiring The Living TV Group from Virgin Media in

video projection installation art in commercial product.

Sky Sports 3d - 3d football matches on Sky Sports October and November 2010

Sky 3DTV is available on Sky HD Channel 217

OCTOBER

Sat 23 Tottenham vs Everton (12.45) - Premier League - Sky Sports 3D TV

Tues 26 Manchester United vs Wolves (8.00pm) Carling Cup - Sky Sports 3D TV

Sun 31 Newcastle v Sunderland (4.00pm) Premier League - Sky Sports 3D TV

NOVEMBER

Sun 7 Liverpool vs Chelsea (8.00pm) Premier League - Sky Sports 3D TV

Wed 10 Manchester City vs Manchester

Review of 'The Battle of Chile'

Great films rarely arrive as unheralded as "The Battle of Chile" did in 1975, a two-part, three-hour-and-ten-minute documentary about the events leading to the fall of Chilean President Salvador Allende. This film doesn't even present itself with fanfare, and it takes a while to get going. It opens in March of 1973 with inquiring reporters asking people how they're going to vote in the coming congressional election, which amounts to a plebiscite on the Allende government. The election is taking place after Allende has been in office for over two years and has been trying to reorganize the society and move it toward Socialism within the framework of democratic government. His Popular Unity coalition was put into office with only a third of the popular vote, so he has been on shaky ground. His efforts to nationalize certain industries have brought on a squeeze from the banking and industrial community and from foreign interests (especially the United States), and Chile is suffering economic deprivations.

The interviews show us the colliding points of view in the country and the self-assurance of each group, but we don't have enough background information to sort out the material and we tend to look at it in human-interest terms, enjoying the faces, being amazed at the unembarrassed articulateness of the Chileans. The mikes are shoved at them and they talk; this goes on for a long time, and we seem to be getting no more than a bystanders' view of history. Up through the election - in which Allende makes a small gain (to 43.4 per cent of the votes), though the opposition bloc also makes a gain (to 54.6 per cent), and the result is a continuing stalemate - we have a sense of the limitations of photographic journalism when it comes to analyzing what's going on. Besides the man-in-the-street interviews, the film seems to give us only the public actions - the speeches, the violent confrontations, the mobs and meetings, the parades with workers chanting funny, dirty rhymed slogans - and none of the inner workings. Those are supplied by an English narrator (a woman), who keeps interpreting for us. She is concise in exactly the wrong way. We need to have groups identified and their positions explained. When the miners in the nationalized copper mines strike, we want to know the issues; she tells us that the less politically sophisticated workers were deceived by the Fascists, while "the more politically knowledgeable stay on the job." There may be considerable truth here; but this kind of thing can drive one a little crazy. She gives us a strict ideological account - almost a parody of Marxism - in which everything that happens is the result of the imperialists' and the industrialists' strategy.

There is no suggestion of any form of regimentation under Allende, yet his supporters talk in terms of "worker consciousness" and other standard formulations which make us wonder where the indoctrination is coming from. When the miners' strike against the government ends (the narrator tells us that it "falls apart"), Allende mobilizes the masses at a big rally and calls out, "Jump if you're not a Fascist!" - and a half-million people jump. It's a staggering image. But, oh, for a more open-minded narrator. We're told that the last strikers "have taken refuge at Catholic University." Who is it that they're taking refuge from - that benevolent papa pleading for a show of support? According to the film, any opposition to Allende is corrupt - as if there were no conceivable good reason to oppose him. Clearly, Allende, who isn't in control of most of the Army units, is hemmed in. The public transportation system is disintegrating: Chile can't get spare parts because of the American embargo. From that big rally on through the street violence that follows, Part I ("The Insurrection of the Bourgeoisie") is terrifyingly well done. It concludes with newsreel footage from the camera of an Argentine who was photographing the skirmishes in the street. An Army man takes slow, careful aim right at us and kills the cameraman, and the image spins skyward. It's an intrusion for the narrator to say of that Army man, "This is the face of Fascism;" that's the voice of ideology, the diminisher.

Part II ("The Coup d'Etat") begins with that summer's insurrectionary right-wing violence against the government; rebel Army troops seize control of downtown Santiago and fire at the Presidential palace, but this attempted coup is put down in a few hours. Now the film gets to its central question: Can a society dedicated to constitutional law make the transition to Socialism peaceably? The Marxist argument has always been that violence comes not from the revolution but from the counter-revolution, and that the workers have to be prepared to defend the revolution by violent means. And Chile serves as a demonstration. There appears to be no way that Allende's legally constituted revolutionary government can move toward Socialism within a legal, democratic framework. It can't defend itself against the industrialists' counter-revolutionary moves unless it suspends constitutional guarantees, forms a people's militia, and claps the opposition in jail. (Could Allende do that without precipitating an immediate right-wing putsch? Maybe not, but in the view here that was his only chance.) The film leaps from one group to another, from meetings of the Chilean Congress to bombings to street demonstrations to workers' discussions. It shows the different elements in the explosive situation with so much clarity that it's a Marxist tract in which the contradictions of capitalism have sprung to life. At a union meeting, the faces are intense and involved, but there are divided, competing strategies among the left-wing groups that support the government, and the workers have a tremendous concern for legality. Meanwhile, Allende is desperately wheeling and horse-trading to get the congressional support he needs, and failing. We actually see the country cracking open. The inner workings are now so public that they can be photographed. Allende asks Congress to declare martial law - which would give him the power to appoint military personnel. It's his only chance of preventing another attempt at a military coup. He is refused, and that same day troops go into the factories, searching for weapons. The violence escalates while Allende's supporters argue whether they should be armed or not, and, step by step, the legal government is overthrown.

This documentary cross-section view of a collapsing government is surely unprecedented. Everybody in the country seems to know that a coup d'etat is coming, and people talk about it freely and coherently. No one seems apathetic, not even the middle-class women, who speak vigorously about how much they hate Socialism. Has there ever been a more articulate culture? Now we understand why the picture laid all that inquiring-reporter groundwork: everybody knows that it's just a matter of time, yet the people who have the most to lose can't get together enough to do anything. Then Allende's naval aide-de-camp, Captain Araya, is killed, and at the funeral the camera moves around solemnly, in closeup, scanning the high-ranking officers gathered there - General Augusto Pinochet among them - as if they were a sculptural group. This is the military brass of Chile shown in all its formality, and at a time of utter stillness. We see these handsome, well-coiffed heads in their dress-uniform collars and hats, and this funeral is the funeral of a society. It's like a classic passage in Tolstoy. We know from this frieze, a monument to the past, that there's no hope for Socialism in Chile. In July, the truck owners, funded by the C.I.A., begin their long strike, which paralyzes the distribution of food, gasoline, and fuel, and there is a call for Allende to resign. Instead, he holds another rally, and eight hundred thousand people, give or take a few, arrive in the afternoon and stick around into the night. But those people have no weapons. On September 11th, the Navy (in touch with United States destroyers that are standing by) institutes the coup d'etat, and the Air Force bombs the state radio station. We hear Allende say he won't resign. The palace is bombarded from the air. And then we see the chiefs of the junta on television, presenting themselves as the new government. They announce that they'll return the country to order, after three years of Marxist cancer.

How could a team of five - some with no previous film experience - working with limited equipment (one Eclair camera, one Nagra sound recorder, two vehicles) and a package of black-and-white film stock sent to them by the French documentarian Chris Marker produce a work of this magnitude? The answer has to be partly, at least: through Marxist discipline. The young Chilean director, Patricio Guzman, and his associates (all Chileans except for one Spaniard) had a sense of purpose. They considered themselves a collective, and they were making a work of political analysis. The twenty hours of footage they shot had to be smuggled out of the country; four of the filmmakers spent some time in custody, and the cameraman, Jorge Muller, hasn't been heard of since his imprisonment. The others fled separately, assembled in Cuba, and, together with a well-known Chilean film editor, Pedro Chaskel, and both Chilean and Cuban advisers, worked on the movie. (A planned Part III has yet to be completed.) There is still the sheer technical skill to account for - the quality of the sound, the camerawork that is discreet and mobile and live, and, above all, the editing, which is so smooth and unemphatic that it never calls attention to itself. Chaskel has an immensely subtle, fluid new technique; Part II has the effect of one long, continuous shot. He owes something to the Italian neorealists, but his other influences aren't easy to place - maybe the early Russians, though he gets the emotion without the shock cuts, in legato.

Patricio Guzman is, of course, the organizing force behind this production, and its controlling intelligence. He has said, in an interview with Julianne Burton (in the magazine Socialist Revolution, later reprinted in her book Cinema and Social Change in Latin America), that during the street battles he could anticipate what was going to happen and, standing next to the cameraman, tell him when to pan or lower the camera or raise it. That is, he was so attuned to the possibilities in the situation that it was almost as if he were directing the action; he could use the fiction-film methods that he had studied at film school in Madrid in the late sixties. But if the imagination here is Guzman's, so is the vise put on the material. The footage is so spectacular and so sensitively shot that one tends to laugh off the narrator's rigid, instructional approach, but it soaks in, because the whole film is structured to make the same analysis. When we listen to a fiery young leftist urging his comrades to arm in that summer of 1973, we can't help wondering if he's alive - or half alive - but Guzman doesn't encourage elegiac speculations. His is a no-nonsense, revolutionary approach; he is recording the political process as Marx and Lenin described it. That was how he and his group selected what to film: they worked from an outline. In "The Battle of Chile," the United States serves as the imperialist enemy that proves the necessity for revolutionaries to arm their supporters and lock up their potential enemies. Chile is set up as a model failure.

Guzman and his associates have taken a relentlessly non-aesthetic approach, yet with their artistic sensibilities and superb taste "The Battle of Chile" is an elegy in spite of them. For viewers, it is an accusatory elegy. Aesthetically, this is a major film, and that gives force even to the patterning of its charges. We may have less faith than the moviemakers do in the masterminding powers of the C.I.A., but their dogmatic Marxist view of the role of the United States in Chile seems to coincide with all too many facts. Our own American newspapers have given us corroborative evidence. But what else was going on? What was the United States counterpunching at, and why? And when the narrator tells us that the most powerful TV channel in Chile was funded by the Ford Foundation, what was involved in that? It's not enough for "The Battle of Chile" to run for a couple of weekends at the Film Forum in New York City. It needs to be seen on public television worldwide, with those government officials who formed the American policy toward Allende explaining what interests they believed they were furthering. We're owed more discussion of what the United States was up to - even if we can get it only through the public service sponsorship of transnational corporations.

[This is a slightly edited version of a review by Pauline Kael that was originally published in The New Yorker on 23 January 1978. It also appears in the press kit for the 1998 Icarus Films Special Edition DVD of the film. An interview with Patricio Guzman is in The Documentary Makers by David A. Goldsmith and an English subtitled Conversation with Allende is available on Google Video.]

Sky HD channels - over 50 available with more to come.

Here is a list of HD channel available on a SkyHD box.

In addition, BBC One HD will start on the 3rd November - and ITV3 HD and ITV4 HD are expected next month also (Novebmer 2010)

140 - Channel 4 HD
143 - BBC HD
170 - Sky1 HD
171 - Channel 5 HD
178 - ITV1 HD
193 - FX HD
211 - Bio HD
214 - Syfy HD
215 - E4 HD
217 - Sky 3D

220 - Universal Channel HD
222 - Comedy Central HD
224 - Living HD
225 -

wow! what a creative art.....

Learn to see thing in different scale and perspective....

BBC One HD - 3rd November 2010 - Freesat HD and Sky HD Channel numbers

BBC One HD - 3rd November 2010






BBC One HD will be available – from 3 November – on Freesat channel 108, Sky channel 143

BBC HD will be available – from 3 November – on Freesat channel 109, Sky channel 169

Both of these HD channel are on the "old BBC Channel Islands frequency", so reception wwill be as BBC CI was before Monday 18yth October.

Both BBC HD channel will be available for

BBC One HD launch date confirmed

The BBC has confirmed that BBC One HD will launch on Freesat, Freeview, Sky and Virgin Media on November 3.




The channel numbers for each platform have not yet been confirmed.

The launch of BBC One HD was possible on Freeview HD after channel Five decision not to launch Five HD on Freeview before 2012.

BBC One HD will operate in addition to the existing BBC HD channel, and will be a high

Lost BBC Channel Islands on Sky 988 in Spain???

If in the last few days, you have lost your reception of BBC Channel Islands on Sky 988, and other BBC 1 regions in Spain then please read the following link

Changes to BBC1 TV frequencies - Sky Channel 988 Channel Islands in Spain

The BBC, not Sky, have been reallocating their channel to different satellite transponder frequencies.

This means that some channel you used to watch with full all day reception may now only be avilable for part of the dat.

One example is BBC1 Channel Islands on Sky channel 988.

Before today, Monday 18 October, this was regarded as being one of the strongest BBC regions for watching BBC1 TV in the Costa blanca and Spain. After todays changes, it is now one of the weakest satellite TV channels!

However, one of the benefits is that now, expats in weak signal areas like Spain, can now watch increease reception of BBC2 - using the BBC2 Wales and BBC2 Northern Ireland variations on Sky Channel 991 and 992

The Sat and PC Guy - Digital Satellite and Terrestrial Installations and Maintenance for the Costa Blanca

or the forum

The Sat and PC Guy FORUM - Digital Satellite and Terrestrial Installations and Maintenance for the Costa Blanca

Lost BBC Channel Islands on Sky 988 in Spain???

If in the last few days, you have lost your reception of BBC Channel Islands on Sky 988, and other BBC 1 regions in Spain then please read the following link

Changes to BBC1 TV frequencies - Sky Channel 988 Channel Islands in Spain

The BBC, not Sky, have been reallocating their channel to different satellite transponder frequencies.

This means that some channel you used to watch with full all

Sky Movies for Free - Free weekend soon

From 6pm Friday 29th October to 6am Monday 1st November, Sky Movies Showcase (Sky channel 303) will be free to all nonsky movies subscribers.

This will also apply to the Sky Movies Showcase HD channel also (Sky HD 314)

It will not be available to freesatfromsky card users.

The weekend includes a selection of movies that will keep the whole family amused, including thepetrol-head sequel Fast &

BBC HD - BBC One HD - What is HD - tell me more?

In anticipation of BBC One HD, launching on 3rd November 2010 on digital stelite (Freesat and Sky HD), these videos are by the BBC to help you understand HD and what you need to receive it.

What is HD - tell me more?




Four things you need to get BBC HD



How to receive BBC HD. Which services provide BBC HD.




HD on the BBC



The Sat and PC Guy - Digital Satellite and Terrestrial

An Ethnobiographical Film by Jorge Preloran

Jorge Preloran (1933-2009) was an Argentinian-American filmmaker who developed a unique style of ethnobiographical documentary film during the 1960s. One of his most well known works in this genre is Hermogenes Cayo, the Spanish language version of which he made in 1969. A year later, Preloran collaborated with American Anthropologist Robert Gardner to produce an English language version of the film under the title Imaginero. In this film we have the sensitive and human portrayal of a folk artist living on the puna of Northwestern Argentina. The subject of the film, Hermogenes Cayo, is a self made man with a deep dedication to both folk Catholicism and the plastic arts. His creativity and ingenuity reveal a self confidence rarely found in descriptions of Andean lifeways.

The film allows Hermogenes to narrate in his own language, Spanish, some twenty years of his life. Though impoverished, he seems more than satisfied with his lot. His accomplishments are impressive. He produces paintings, altars, and images, and even designs and builds a chapel. When faced with the complexities of a broken harmonium, an instrument he has never seen before, he first rebuilds it without guidance and then proceeds to fashion one for himself from memory. As explanation as to how he accomplishes all this, he states simply that "these things are not of a different world; they were made by men just like me ... All you have to do is be determined and by thinking, thinking ... you can invent machines."

The film picks up the thread of Hermogenes' life at middle age and then, in flash backs, takes him to Buenos Aires. There, in 1946, he participated in the "Raid of Peace" as one of 175 peasants from the puna demanding restoration of ancestral lands that for centuries had belonged to the Church. As participant in the "Raid," he walked 1500 miles over several months time. The trip opened entirely new worlds to him. While in Buenos Aires, he visited nearby Lujan, the great Argentine center of religious pilgrimage. There he encountered forms that were to inspire him throughout the rest of his life.

On returning to the puna, Hermogenes took a woman. After living with her for over ten years, he one day was removed from a religious procession by a German missionary priest who objected to his "living in sin." Instead of turning against religion, Hermogenes reasoned that a man as religious as himself needed order in his life, and so he arranged a formal wedding. The film chronicles the wedding preparations and the ceremony. Since the wedding took place on February 2, the feast of Our Lady of Copacabana, its documentation simultaneously shows the blessing of household saints and Andean dance groups such as the wacawacas. Hermogenes's marriage, unfortunately, did not last long. Approximately one year after the ceremony he died of pneumonia. At death, he was sixty years old.

Hermogenes Cayo's life style was that of Andean, rather than Argentinian man, in cultural terms far more closely related to Bolivia than to Buenos Aires. In colonial days the section of northwestern Argentina shown in the film was part of Alto Peru. Race, economic base, religion, and even dress remain today an integral part of a cultural tradition that stretches from the Peruvian altiplano south. Filmmaker Preloran concentrates on the religious aspect of this tradition and, in particular, on its static qualities. He sees it as totally Spanish, rather than as the synthetic hybrid uncovered by anthropologists. In his words: "what happened was that the Jesuits came into that area with the Conquistadores in the 16th century and displaced native religion. And then it was frozen ... absolutely frozen. And the religion has not changed in 400 years. So today, you still have processions, the cult of images, the other religious festivities of that time, which of course have changed even in Spain; but there they remained exactly the same."

By focusing on one man through a lengthy period of his life, and by allowing that man himself to narrate the film, Preloran has produced the most believable portrait yet of Andean man. His excellent photography and careful editing keep the audience spell-bound. Colors, music, deliberateness, and long silences all ring as authentic for anyone who knows central Andean plateaus. The fact that this is a truly superb film, however, does not preclude flaws - particularly as seen from the point of view of the anthropologist. First of all, in dubbing English translation into Cayo's narrative, much becomes lost. There are spots where it is difficult to understand what is said in either language. Second, the matter of techniques and media used by the artist is very poorly presented. Students of folk art will be greatly disappointed, for they will learn nothing about the paints the artist employs, the canvases (or boards?) on which he paints, or the steps he takes to come up with a finished product. Nor will they have adequate information on the volume of works the artist produced. Most serious of all, however, is the fact that the film presents Hermogenes Cayo largely outside his social context. Even though Preloran assures us that his subject is extroverted and self confident, there seems to be consider- able evidence that he is marginal, and even borders on being a recluse. Hermogenes speaks of a friend, Ambrosio, but we learn nothing of the man. He refuses to participate in carnival, and in fact calls it the work of the devil. Yet anyone with any acquaintance of Andean culture knows that, as a rite of intensification, carnival is one of the most important events of each year. From his Lujan experience onward, Hermogenes considers himself a slave of the blessed virgin, and dedicates all his spare time and efforts to religion. While such intense religiosity is often found among folk peoples of the Andes, it is the exception rather than the rule. One explanation for such unusual orientation may lie in the fact that neither Hermogenes nor his wife knew their fathers. They seem to have been social isolates from birth. His role as religious chanter and image maker seems to have done little to break down his isolation. At his death only three mourners gathered. This, in a culture in which deep bilateral kin ties are the norm, seems unusual to say the least. Not even the fact that families in the area live from three to four miles apart adequately explains the event.

In all fairness to Jorge Preloran, however, it must be said that he never intended to present ethnography. He was working on several documentaries on the cultures of northwestern Argentina. While filming the feast of Our Lady of the Assumption in Casabindo, a hamlet lost in the 12,000 foot high desert that borders on Bolivia and Chile, he was told, by a school teacher, of a Colla artist who would make an interesting subject. For six months Preloran periodically visited Hermogenes, getting to know him as a person. The longer he knew the man, the more his admiration grew. He set up a tape recorder and let Hermogenes talk. From these conversations the idea of a film gradually took shape.

In February, 1966, shooting began with the documentation of Hermogenes's wedding. From then on, Preloran filmed off-and-on for over a year. He was still preparing documentaries in the area and would visit Hermogenes whenever he had time. On returning one day to take additional footage, he was shocked to find that his subject had died. Until that time, Preloran had felt no urgency in his endeavor, nor had he seriously thought of how he was going to make a film out of the footage. By listening anew to Hermogenes's taped narrative, and imposing a heavy editorial hand, Preloran gradually worked his disjointed sequences into a film. In doing so, he tried to keep uppermost the portrait of a living man. He succeeded superbly. In the end, Hermogenes Cayo emerged as a Renaissance type, not only in art style and religious perception, but in wide ranging curiosity and competence. His life, combining constant deprivation with an equally constant search for perfection, speaks in a universal way to the human condition.

Preloran's work brings a challenging dimension to the world of ethnographic films. He criticizes most such endeavors on the grounds that they concentrate overmuch on material culture. He argues that such films should rather present the dramatic flow of natural events, with the unabashed purpose of making an emotional impact. His approach is being amazingly well received. The Argentine National Fund for the Arts was forced to expand an originally planned single showing to six, and Film Comment recently published a nine page interview on his work.

Imaginero gives the most sensitive portrayal of an Andean man yet to be produced by the film medium. Its subject is presented with respect, sensitivity, and a refreshing absence of patronization. As a work of art, and even as ethnography, it is a must for any library which attempts to collect materials on either Latin America or folk art.

[This is a slightly edited version of a film review by William E. Carter that was originally published in American Anthropologist, Vol. 73, No. 6 (December 1971), pp. 1473-75. Further information about the films of Jorge Preloran is available in Louis Werner's essay 'Cineaste of the Human Angle.' Documentary Educational Resources has a filmmaker profile of Jorge Preloran, and has announced its upcoming release of several Preloran films on DVD.]

Important changes to BBC TV frequencies this weekend

Important changes to BBC TV frequencies this weekend

There are some important changes happening on the BBC frequencies:


BBC1 West (Bristol)
BBC1 Channel Islands
BBC1 East (West) (Cambridge)

are all leaving their current frequency, and moving to the frequency currently used by BBC2 England - 10773 H
This means that their reception will be as per BBC2 England.
This means that BBC Channel Islands will no longer be recognised as being the strongest BBC1 region.

BBC1 Manchester
BBC1 Leeds
BBC 1 Tunbridge Wells

are all leaving their current frequency, and moving to the frequency currently used by BBC RAdio 5 Live and BBC1&2 Scotland - 10.802 H
This means that their reception will again be as per / similar to BBC2 England.

BBC1 Wales and BBC2 Wales

will be moving from their current frequency to 10.788v - moving from a weaker horizontal to a stronger vertical frequency. So these Wales regions reception will be as per most BBC1 regions ie - almost 24/7 on most big dishes. Meaning some areas will have 24/7 reception of a BBC2 region.

BBC1 Northern Ireland and BBC2 Northern Ireland

will be moving from their current frequency to 10.817v - moving from a weaker horizontal to a stronger vertical frequency. So these Northern Ireland regions reception will be as per most BBC1 regions ie - almost 24/7 on most big dishes. Meaning some areas will have 24/7 reception of a BBC2 region.

Why the changes?
The BBC have had to have a move around to amke space for the BBC1 HD channel.
This will be starting on Wednesday 3rd November.
The BBC had to make space for this channel, which will be on the same frequency as BBCHD channel.
The BBCHD channel will continue to operate showing "the best of the BBC in HD", and the BBC1 HD channel will be a simulcast of BBC1 London.

It will mean that if you watch BBC1 Channel Islands, then you will find that its reception has changed.

It will also mean that you should now have much better coverage of BBC2, either via BBC2 England (reception not changing), BBC2 Northern Ireland, and BBC2 Wales. The latter two regions have almost the same schedules as BBC2 England, with some minor changes for regional programmes.

Freesat and Sky boxes will automatically update themselves on Monday 18th October 2010 with these new frequencies.

Those with Non Sky or Freesat boxes will have to rescan the channels to make sure your boxes have the new BBC1 and BBC2 frequencies.

The Sat and PC Guy - Digital Satellite and Terrestrial Installations and Maintenance for the Costa Blanca

or the forum

The Sat and PC Guy FORUM - Digital Satellite and Terrestrial Installations and Maintenance for the Costa Blanca

Important changes to BBC TV frequencies this weekend

Important changes to BBC TV frequencies this weekend

There are some important changes happening on the BBC frequencies:


BBC1 West (Bristol)
BBC1 Channel Islands
BBC1 East (West) (Cambridge)

are all leaving their current frequency, and moving to the frequency currently used by BBC2 England - 10773 H
This means that their reception will be as per BBC2 England.
This means that BBC Channel

Live UK football matches on satellite TV Spain - wc 16/10/2010

Live UK football matches on satellite TV Spain - wc 16/10/2010

Saturday 16th October 2010

English Premier League

Newcastle United vs Wigan - 1500 ADMC Sport

Wolves vs West Ham - 1500 ADMC Sport

Arsenal vs Birmingham City - 1500 ADMC Sport

Bolton vs Stoke City - 1500 ADMC Sport D+ Spain

Fulham vs Tottenham - 1500 ADMC Sport RTS 1 Senegal

Manchester United vs West Brom - 1500 ADMC Sport D

BBC2 reception Costa Blanca Spain - potentially good news..

According to reports the BBC are changing some of their frequencies and transponders:

BBC 1 NI, BBC 2 NI, BBC 4, BCeebies will move transponder.

BBC 1/2 NI will move to 10,817 Vert - This means that BBC2 should be available for longer periods than is currently possible. It may mean some have 24/7 of BBC2...

Note that BBC2 NI shows almost the same schedule as BBC2UK, but there are some

The Politics of Music Piracy in Bolivia

The government of indigenous Bolivian president Evo Morales, which was inaugurated in January 2006 and has huge popular support (gaining over 64% of the vote when re-elected in December 2009), has made no significant attempt to confront music, software or book piracy to date. However, the rise of piracy and collapse of the large-scale music industry date from well before Morales' tenure and need to be viewed in broader historical context. In particular, the various phases of neo-liberal policies since the mid-1980s have been seen to have exacerbated inequality, favoured foreign interests, reduced state legitimacy, and ultimately ignited the social movements that swept Morales and his Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) Government to Power. Thus, the growth of piracy may, in part, be seen to reflect social conditions that denied majority access to knowledge and cultural resources and a political climate in which many Bolivians came to feel that laws were unjust and favoured the rich.

 
Piracy has been widely blamed for the near-complete collapse of Bolivia's large-scale 'licit' music recording industry and for the exodus of the multinationals from the country. Recording industry profits in the country in 1995 are estimated to have been in the region of US$20 million. While the three main national labels - Discolandia, Lauro, and Heriba - enjoyed around US$2 million of these profits, the lions' share (US$18 million) went to the multinationals operating in the country. During the 1990s, these included EMI Music, BMG, Warner Music, Universal Music, Sony Music, Leader Music, and Santa Fe Records. Levels of cassette and VHS piracy were already considerable in the mid-1990s, but according to Andres Lopez (formerly of Sony Music) the country's 1999 economic crisis escalated piracy levels from around 65% in 1998 to 85-89% in 1999. In the years around the turn of the millennium, the national and international music industry jointly organized a series of campaigns to combat piracy, including television advertisements, newspaper articles, raids on street vendors using hired police officers, and the mass destruction of pirated discs. The industry also lobbied for the revision of the 1992 copyright law (law 1322), pressured the government to tackle copyright infringement, and censured the state for treating piracy as a 'social' rather than a 'legal' issue. They also brought several cases against pirate producers to the courts, but the defendants, although caught red-handed and admitting guilt, escaped punishment due to legal loopholes. They were able to walk free and entirely unpunished because the two-year maximum jail term for copyright infringement (law 1322) is subject to judicial pardon (according to the Blatmann code of penal procedure), and because fines are not included among the penalties.

Despite the creation of a national intellectual property service (SENAPI) in 1999, and unfulfilled plans to overhaul copyright and create a special police force dedicated to enforcement (proposed by the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights in 2001), the government demonstrated little motivation to combat piracy and respond to music industry pressure. This may be attributed in part to the political unpopularity of enforcement, the issues it raises concerning social inequality, and its relatively low priority given the political turbulence of the early years of the millennium, which included the so-called 'Water Wars' (2000) and 'Gas Wars' (2003). By 2003, Bolivian recording industry profits were estimated to have shrunk to around US$0.6 million, and all of the major international labels had closed their Bolivian offices and left the country. Both Lauro and Heriba had also ceased trading, and in this same year Discolandia downsized to 20 staff (from 150 in 1995). Today, Discolandia - a long-established label that has just celebrated its 50th anniversary - is the only major record label still trading in Bolivia. Nonetheless, many small, low-budget digital studios of varying degrees of informality are active around the country, recording local artists for regional markets, where the low cost of the original products often competes with pirate prices. By contrast, the high overheads and the constraints of the formal sector, alongside a desire to exploit international markets and maintain high profits, have meant that the large-scale labels made relatively few concessions on pricing. Instead, labels such as Discolandia have focused on the production of high-quality recordings, often incorporating glossy informative booklets, which are aimed at exclusive niche markets able to pay international prices, but which are well beyond the budget of the Bolivian majority.

In short, the large-scale record industry, which formerly dominated the market through technological advantage enabled by high capital investment, has almost entirely vanished. In its place we find a multiplicity of small-scale labels or home studios that use low-cost digital equipment requiring relatively little capital investment. As one Cochabamba-based vendor explained in January 2008:

'Many groups [now] prefer to record with other labels. There are currently labels which are not like Lauro, Heriba, Discolandia, or even let's say Sony Music. They are not like these [large scale] labels: they are small labels that offer the capacity to record their product at low cost. Very low cost! Because in truth, with the technology that has now appeared, a console - a simple console - with a computer is more than sufficient to get started, and to have two good microphones, one for the instrument, the other for vocals. You don't need any more than this to make a studio. And for a video production, cameras and all these things are much cheaper, maybe 500 dollars. We are talking about a digital workstation which can create quality images and offer a product at lower costs. Now all these situations can be offered.'

This description of a small-scale home studio describes, almost precisely, the equipment used by the originario (indigenous) artist/producer Gregorio Mamani Macha. He is constantly constrained economically, and although a very well-known artist among low-income indigenous people of the region he is almost unknown among the middle classes. His work has been subject to high levels of piracy, against which he has long been an outspoken opponent. However, piracy was also undoubtedly responsible for the international popularity of a VCD of his music featuring his son, the child star Vichito Mamani. This piracy-generated popularity led the family to undertake concert tours of Peru, Argentina and Bolivia in 2005-2006, enabling Mamani to raise the modest capital necessary to set up a digital studio. While Mamani's home studio and label (CEMBOL) is largely dedicated to producing and promoting his own work, a number of other labels primarily produce the work of others.

For example, Cochabamba-based CG Records and Banana Records are both established producers of originario musics and popular electronic genres, such as cumbia, for low-income markets. They started out, respectively, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, producing cassettes of regional styles for an emergent mass market. As Wilson Ramirez of Banana Records noted in March 2008:

'Formerly, we used to produce cassettes. Well, the people of the countryside identified more with their [own] music; they purchased this music and didn't buy pirated versions. So in our case it was better to dedicate ourselves to the mass market which was more indigenous, as is the case in Bolivia, than to address ourselves to the central market that was already occupied by Chayanne, Luis Miguel and those kinds of foreign music.'

This reported tendency for indigenous peoples to buy originals would now seem to be less in evidence with the escalation of mass piracy following the arrival of VCD technology. Although original VCDs of originario music are far more widely available than those of neo-folkloric and international genres consumed by the middle classes, Wilson Ramirez asserts that 'of every ten discs sold, we sell one original; the pirates [sell] nine.' The effects of piracy have led to the changing of contractual agreements between labels and artists, where a recording fee is only offered to the most established and successful artists. Other artists are required to pay the label to produce their work (Banana Records apparently charges US$500) and may be responsible for their own distribution. Labels rarely produce more than 1000 or 2000 copies of a new release as the window of opportunity for selling originals, before the market is flooded by thousands of pirated copies, is often only a matter of days. Coordinating single-day release in all the major markets around the country has thus become a standard strategy to attempt to recoup production costs. Few labels survive economically from the music business alone, most combining such work with other occupations or businesses. For example, in addition to Banana Records, which has grown increasingly unprofitable, Wilson Ramirez owns a radio station Ritmo - originally set up to promote his recordings - and a successful bakery chain.

A large proportion of small-sized and medium-sized studios might be described as 'informal,' as they neither pay taxes nor register recordings with performers' or composers' rights organizations, or with the national intellectual property service (SENAPI). Although rights to compositions and recordings can now be registered quite simply and cheaply, originario artists/composers and producers often believe that a notated score is required (as was formerly the case), that royalties will not be forthcoming, and that registration will not halt plagiarism. With the pro-indigenous presidency of Evo Morales, newly created originario musicians' organizations have begun to confront a perceived sense of exclusion and discrimination by the existing music royalty collection societies controlled by middle-class artists. Such moves, which are often presented as a 'cultural revolution,' reflect a desire to gain greater equality, recognition and legitimacy. Certain small-scale labels have also sought out ways to become 'legitimate' and move into the formal sector, a widely held aspiration in Bolivia's highly informal economy. Indeed, according to Wilson Ramirez, many apparently licit medium-sized and small-sized labels originally raised the capital necessary to set up studios through piracy, and some continue such practices clandestinely. He identified this shadowy aspect of the activities of many record labels as a key impediment to mounting a unified campaign against piracy.

Drastic reductions in the cost of disc-burning equipment, alongside the growing market for high-quality colour-printed covers, known locally as laminas, and the tightening of border controls point towards increasing localisation of pirate production: a gradual shift from Peru to Bolivia. Peru's hold over the production of pirated music for the Bolivian market appears, partially at least, to have been underpinned by Bolivian national discourses of technological and economic inferiority, which might be seen as counterbalanced by a sense of Bolivian moral and cultural superiority. In addition, for many years the frontier town of Desaguadero has maintained the image of a place where profit is to be made by importing pirated discs: a chimera that, alongside low Bolivian self-esteem as regards national manufacturing, has been in the interests of the many traders of contraband goods. Might these be symptoms of the high levels of informality in the economy?

The large-scale national labels of Discolandia and Lauro founded in the late 1950s (and before them Mendez, in 1949) were key to the development of the sense of a national culture based on 'folklore.' In many parts of Latin America, the development of national folkloric genres has been associated with cultural homogenisation and the erasure of more indigenous and diverse forms. But today's mass of small-scale labels, many of which target an emergent low-income and largely indigenous market, suggest heterogeneity; they stress a diversity of regional, local, urban, rural or ethnic identities; they offer contrasting music aesthetics and values; and they often reflect internal national issues and struggles. There is also a youthful aspect to such developments: not only are young people more at home than their elders with digital technologies, but with over 35% of Bolivia's population under 15 years of age, and a media age of under 22 years, immense potential for individual agency in small-scale record industry lies ahead. Despite the near complete demise of Bolivia's large-scale record industry, it appears that the overall number of recordings being released has increased, as have the sectors of the population how consuming such media. It is now commonplace for low-income consumers to own a sizeable collection of cheap VCDs, although low disc quality, frequent faults, and the medium's intrinsic fragility mean that many quickly become unusable. People sometimes contrasted the throwaway and ephemeral quality of music VCDs, which tend to be 'watched' a few times for their visual novelties, with their multiple 'listenings' to the more robust audio cassette, a format that remains important to the originario music market. Thus, in the shift from analogue audio (cassette) to digital audio-visual (VCD, DVD) music-reception habits, aesthetics and priorities have also transformed. For example, the rise of the VCD music video was, according to some consultants, directly responsible for the growth in popularity of originario charango songs, eclipsing previously dominant electronic genres such as cumbia. However, this may also in part be attributed to the key role played by charango songs in the pro-indigenous election campaign and landslide victory of Evo Morales in December 2005, and to the rise of indigenous politics more generally. Thus, in certain respects, technological developments have moved in parallel with, and may even have underscored, political ones.

[This is a slightly edited extraction from 'Rampant Reproduction and Digital Democracy: Shifting Landscapes of Music Production and Piracy in Bolivia' by Henry Stobart, which was originally published, along with references, in Ethnomusicology Forum, Vol. 19, No. 1, June 2010, pp. 27-56. The extracts are from pages 30-35 and 48-49.]

Its that time of year again....losing BBC and ITV satellite signals in the monring!

This happens twice a year.

In the morning between 10am and 11am, you may well be losing signals, especailly on the weaker BBC and ITV channels, for about 10 minutes.

This is normal - or rather there is little we can do about this.

It is a solar outage.

Basically, the sub is directly in line with the satellites and the earth, and its solar energy "swamps" the satellites, and knocks out those

ITV2 HD to launch today, ITV3 HD and ITV4 HD in November

ITV2 HD to launch today, ITV3 HD and ITV4 HD in November

ITV2 HD will be available on channel 225 on Sky's programming guide

It will be available to Sky HD subscribers only.





For more information please visit:

ITV2 HD to launch today, ITV3 HD and ITV4 HD in NovemberITV2 HD to launch today, ITV3 HD and ITV4 HD in November

The Sat and PC Guy - Digital Satellite and Terrestrial

New Freesat channel to launch – Men and Movies

A new channel from the Movies4Men stable, will be launched soon on Freesat.
It has been annnounced that that “Men & Movies” will launch their new channel on Freesat on the 4th October 2010.
It will be available on Freesat channel 143.
At first it looks like this new channel will be a Freesat exclusive channel, as will appear on the Freesat EPG, but looks that, at first, it will not be added to

An Exhibition of 1980s Latin American Video

Oliver Stone's 1986 film Salvador might remind some viewers of just how often the reading of Latin American experience in North America has to slog its way through the troubled characterizations of self and other alive in the minds of many North Americans, of whatever political stripe. Stone's leading men traverse a dark night of the soul in El Salvador, using the political circumstances of that country to determine just who they are and who they are not. However favorable or controversial the film's political take on El Salvador might be to the viewer, the film remains in its essence a feverish meditation on the state of mind among some North American white males - presumably a marketable way to introduce the consequences of U.S. interventions in the the Third World to the public at large. A pragmatic approach to U.S. media politics might suggest that those of us interested in justice in Central and Latin America should be pleased at Hollywoodish renderings of situations south of the Rio Grande that cast any favorable light on combatants swathed in the the U.S. government's red paintbrush. The other hand suggests that such renderings are a surreal usage of complex, succinct political realities - like the circumstances of the rape and murder of Jean Donovan and three other American nuns in El Salvador in 1980 or Charles Horman's demise as portrayed in the 1982 Costa-Gavras film Missing - to heighten the horrors experienced by U.S. expatriates. The assumption is that we won't understand it or be interested unless it happens to our anti-heroes.

Various individuals and distribution groups have ignored that assumption in favor of a lively engagement with cross-cultural exchange of film and video productions, among them, El Salvador Media Project, Icarus Films, Cinema Guild, and X-Change TV. The appearance of the eight-hour video program Democracy in Communication: Popular Video and Film in Latin America marks a further effort to broaden the representation of Latin America to English speaking audiences. There is obvious value to this in the fact this exhibition consisted largely of the work of a wide variety of independent Latin American producers representing their own countries to themselves. Videomaker Karen Ranucci compiled over 30 tapes from nine different countries during a year spent working as a freelance videographer-journalist in Latin America. The result is an absorbing mixed bag of fiction, documentary, and music video and film that parlays obvious overall value into diverse detail. There's something here for everybody, whether you are concerned wit the state of war in El Salvador or the state of experimental filmmaking in Mexico. Or the state's sense of humor in Nicaragua.

Ranucci unearthed these works in roughly two-week stints spent tracking down any producers she could find in each country. In strictly academic terms, this suggests that a thorough country-by-country representation of popular video and film is not this exhibition's strong point. Since the majority of the tapes have been edited by Ranucci for easier North American distribution (this might account for plot confusion in several), we are not seeing much of this work as it emerged fully conceived from the hands of its producers.

Democracy in Communication is governed instead by a concern for expanding alternative channels of communications distribution in North America. The exhibit remains flexible to whatever venues might show it, be that full or partial viewings at festivals, universities, galleries, libraries, solidarity groups, public access television, or even, in one instance, such institutions as Bell Laboratories. As such, the tapes provide a broad exploratory look into the arena of Latin American productions, in the interests of creating avenues and demand for a great deal more.

The project of attaining democracy in communication is not as simple as fighting the equal time in North America for Latin American producers. For the most part, these programs are selected from efforts within each country to create alternative media space. That means one thing Nicaragua, there no independent video was produced before the overthrow of Somoza in 1979 and where media becomes very much a part of a state in the process of creating itself. It means quite another in El Salvador, where independent production existed entirely within the exigencies of low intensity conflict and guerrilla war. In Brazil and Mexico, both with huge television broadcast corporations heavily engaged in export, independent producers must contend in the margins of markets dominated by forces represented by a sales rep in the international marketing arm of Mexico's TV conglomerate Televisa, one of whom was quoted by Variety magazine as saying: "The public is tired of seeing stories about poor people leading miserable lives."

There is not enough information, however, within the scope of the exhibition for the uninitiated viewer to draw a definitive picture of each country's television broadcast situation. The vitality of individual productions and the juxtaposition of those productions country by country instead introduces a range of issues alive in the minds of those Latin Americans not firmly situated inside the marketing profile. What does the collection include? Small-format community video and organizing tapes from Mexico, Brazil, and Chile. Fiction and documentary film from Peru. Music video from Panama and Peru. Satirical newscasts from Brazil, the BBC picturing Chile, a fascinating video standoff between the government and the guerrillas in El Salvador, television game shows in Nicaragua, and more, although at the time of its initial distribution titles from Bolivia and Uruguay were unsubtitled.

A five-minute cross section of one afternoon of Mexican TV introduced both that country and the premise that U.S. values and multinational commerce dominate much of Latin TV of the day. From popular American 1980s dramas like Magnum PI to commercials for Superlock pantyhose and Mr Clean to Lionel Richie singing "we made our choice" for Pepsi to scenes from ubiquitous Mexican telenovelas exhibiting the vaseline-teeth look of love, viewers may deduce the premise, or the mountain, against which the entire rest of the exhibition makes its assault.

That's a reasonable enough entry and it reasonably disappears into tapes and films that make the world their business according to the interests of the communities and individuals from which they are created. My particular favorites from Mexico are Amas de Casa (Housewives) and Nuestro Tequio (Our Tequio) which were made, respectively, in an urban barrio and in a Zapotec community in the state Oaxaca. Amas features housewives banding together in a union to fight an eviction notice by literally driving the server out into the street to the accompaniment of fireworks set off from the roofs by young boys. The tape was produced by women filmmakers as part of an organizing effort to help neighborhood women combat real evictions. This staged eviction suggests all the awkwardness and enthusiasm of people making use of video to work out their battle plans.

Nuestro Tequio was made by Zapotecas whose purpose is to document their own culture and institutions. The "tequio" is an all day community event where hundreds of people from all over the region gather to perform some community service, in this case restoring the roof of their city hall building. This plot is simple: the roof needs fixing, the roof gets fixed by hundreds of men marching tins of cement up stairs to the flourishing strains of what I only know how to describe as something like "oompah" music. It's a grand 10-minute representation of how the infrastructures of community can be cared for by its inhabitants with their own money and their own time. It's of interest to note that the videomakers raise money for their productions by working as migrant farm laborers in the U.S.

The explicit use of video for local organizing reappears in two tapes from Chile and Brazil. Blanca Azucena (White Lily) takes place in a village in southern Chile. It documents the process by which a group of 10 villagers become popular educators - teaching reading and crafts to local residents. The solid merits of this tape might be encapsulated in the manner in which all 10 educators squeeze onto and around a couch to watch themselves on TV while we watch them move through the various stages of shyness and delight that recognition of a job well done brings. Resistance to self-motivated community education is a matter of fact in Chile. By working out scenarios in video to deal with government and familial resistance, the educators create a model, as do the women in Amas, to apply to real life situations. Blanca Azucena goes a good bit further in documenting how the protagonists feel about their work. They watch themselves at work and see themselves as others see them. Says one, "We all managed to show something of ourselves. For me it was like seeing a poem."

Beijo Ardente (Overdose) was made by an independent video collective in Brazil in support of a group of artists in the city of Porto Alegre attempting create a cultural center by reconverting an old gas plant. The script goes for the jugular by representing politicians and industrialists in the body of a sleazy vampire with vague European origins who spends much of his time cowering in the bowels of the gas plant watching television while his skinhead assistant searches the environs for food, of course, female food. The vampire's rocky demise has more to do with vampire folklore updated to local humor than it does with the triumph of artists over industrialists, which makes this tape both amusing and somewhat predictable.

Brazil's other offerings include hilarious tapes of caricatured TV correspondent Ernesto Varela who takes his crew to watch the induction of a new director in the Xingu Indian National Park. Says Varela, "The Indians are very happy, dancing and singing. It's amazing the number of journalists here tonight," thus initiating numerous visual and verbal jokes regarding TV journalism's Cliff Notes approach to indigenous culture. Sound On/Vision On, a collage of predominantly Afro-Brazilian sounds and images, presents exactly that at some length with only slight and unenlightening commentary on the danger economic development projects are posing to indigenous culture. The opposition of the two styles, one cannily dismembering rote journalism and the other giving itself over to the visual and audio richness of its subjects, represents what is both provoking and rewarding about the exhibition in general. The geographical, political, and aesthetic territories covered are vast. Any one of these tapes suggests many more questions than can or will be answered neatly within the exhibition and its accompanying brochure.

In this light, a program like Chile's Forbidden Dream, a co-production of the BBC and the Chilean theater company ICTUS, satisfies the itch for overview while diminishing the spontaneity apparent in the variegated Brazilian tapes, or even in the above mentioned Chilean Blanca Azucena. A thorough recognition of the ravages wrought by the Pinochet government is laid out by an English narrator. This provides the context for excerpts of the ICTUS group's performances and tapes, many of which echo the theme that years of dictatorship have shrouded the imaginations of Chileans who have lost the ability to dream of, and therefore secure, a just society. That's a conceivable idea, complete unto itself. And particularly so for international audiences who might crave a metaphor they can lay their hands on. But the tape's focus on ICTUS as an artists' group representing the moral and political dilemmas of Chile leans to the precious. There are revealing moments toward the end of the tape when ICTUS directors muse over the fact that military censors still allow them to operate. "We are not significant," says one, and though this talented group's efforts to prove that art can conquer fear in Chile are spirited and relentless, the dominant metaphor of the forbidden dream framed in BBC style lends the tape a reductive quality.

By contrast, and in very different political circumstances, the tapes from El Salvador introduce in steely tones the dynamic propaganda war waged between the military and the guerrillas. Atlacatl is a short publicity tape made by the military and broadcast over state-controlled television. Atlacatl is both a legendary warrior Indian and the name of a special forces battalion trained by the United States as part of an intensified effort to shape up what in the early eighties was a slipshod fighting force.The opening shot backs away from an oversized statue of Atlacatl, "the pride of our race that has never been defeated," to reveal the battalion standing in the dark drinking in the words of Colonel Domingo Monterrosa, who delivers his benediction swathed in the imposing shadow of the statue directly behind him. Monterrosa's face is broadly lit against the surrounding darkness in an apparent effort to further the demigod status of this man and his charges. The tape consists mostly of his speech and a pan on the faces of the intense, raring-to-go soldiery.

The reliance on a legendary figure pulled from a long-decimated indigenous population to promote the idea of single-minded, patriotic, deadly force plays off interestingly against the excerpt from Tiempo de Audacia (Time of Daring), a video and film production from the guerrilla communications system. This is something like pitting John Waynes against how people really talk. The clips opens on army soldiers jogging down a city street chanting, "If I catch you/I will kill you/Your blood I will drink/Your flesh I will eat." The excerpt goes on to detail in haunting visuals and edits the extensive domination of military training by the U.S. It opposes that to images of popular support for the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional shot in villages where the guerrillas have established themselves. I have discussed this work in some detail in an earlier article, "Freedom of Information Acts: Radio Venceremos Film Collective" (The Independent, April 2005). Suffice to say here that the clearly partisan approach by both sides allows us to glimpse the war in El Salvador squarely inside the arguments of those fighting it.

The third tape in this section, Los Refugiados (The Refugees), was made by North Americans and is a pragmatic exception to the rule of Latin American producers in this exhibition. It is based on extensive interviews with Salvadoran refugees and North American religious and legal workers in Long Island, New York, and works well within the tradition of talking heads-style documentary. In the context of Atlacatl and Tiempo de Audicia, it provides compelling and politically astute testimony from Salvadorans whose uncertain status as refugees in the U.S. fleshes out the nature of the war in a way that, say, Oliver Stone's there's-bad-guys-on-both-sides thesis in Salvador fails to do.

Propaganda is of course one of those dragons whose fire no objective North American observer wants to be caught breathing. But propaganda comes in all styles, from all countries, and it promotes both the best and the worst of causes depending on where the viewer makes a stand. A fundamental premise that should not be missed in this exhibition, and in subsequent efforts to distribute Latin American videos, is that the nature of particular struggles can be understood and judged through the efforts of interested parties. For instance, we understand something about the nature of U.S. involvement in Central America by hearing Ronald Reagan's early characterization of Oliver North as a hero.

We understand something about the differing political climate within Central America by going from El Salvador to Nicaragua. Nicaraguan television is produced under a variety of auspices, from state television to independent workshops. The best selections show a rambunctious, if less technically fine, approach to shortages and political aggression from the north. One of these, Que Pasa con el Papel Higencio? (What Happened to the Toilet Paper?), was produced by the agrarian reform ministry and details highly uninhibited public criticism of the government's approach to this particularly affecting shortage. Another, La Virgen Que Suda (The Sweating Virgin), was produced by the government television system, Sandinista TV. It is based on an incident much trumpeted by the now closed U.S.-backed newspaper La Prensa in which a statue of the Virgin Mary was frozen in a bath in order that she might later appear to be sweating her displeasure at the Sandinistas. It features a rubber-masked Uncle Sam riding his horse south of the border to the strains of "the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly." Sam speaks a hilarious Yankee Spanish ("Que pasa in Nick-er-ah-gwa?") and exhorts the sultry Ms. La Prensa to do something to ruffle the Sandinistas' relationship with the church. Everybody hams it up in a drama that shows some local people succumbing to greed and deceit while others, in the true spirit of the revolution, uncover the plot and turn them in. The mix of ribald hilarity with state righteousness won't do much to clarify limping debates here about government censorship in Nicaragua. What will clarify that debate is implicit in the video - the cessation of U.S. military interventions in Nicaragua.

The ravages of the contra war are made explicit in an independent workshop production of stand-up testimonies by people directly affected. Such testimony is essential to any representation of Nicaragua, but this tape suffers in translation from an excess of rhetoric about the need to consolidate the revolution. An entirely different approach to war and oppression comes in the form of a music video from Peru about the disappearances of India peasants in the state of Ayacucho. The song is "Desaparecidos" by Ruben Blades, an extraordinary lyrical rendering of verses about persons in search of their loved ones. The video literally applies the lyrics to testimonies given by Indians whose family members have disappeared under violent circumstances. The combination of art and document is seamless. No so for the producer, who after the appearance of this video lost his job with Peruvian TV for unauthorized use of file tapes.

According to the exhibition notes, independent video production in Peru barely exists. The two 16mm films included present a more studied approach to Peruvian concerns than much of the video. Both are produced under the auspices of Grupo Chaski, a collective of over 35 filmmakers. Gregorio is a feature length fiction about a young Indian boy whose family must migrate to Lima in search of work. The accompanying tragedy of the father's death and Gregorio's gradual evolution into one of a throng of Lima's street kids rings a familiar bell regarding what urban migration does to disenfranchise traditional culture. The strength of this film lies in the determined attention it pays to the look and feel of transience as expressed by the main character.

Miss Universe in Peru plays off the simultaneous occurrence of the Miss Universe Contest and a National Conference of Peasant Women in Lima. A number of themes throughout the exhibition surface in this film, which variously interviews peasant women and contestants and plays those interviews against official television statements trumpeting the benefits the contest portends for Peruvian tourism. "It is evidently a commercial enterprise," says the contestant from Chile. "We are here in a congress and want to move forward. Maybe we aren't beautiful, but these women exhibit themselves like animals," says a peasant woman from the conference. "They carry the message of peace," says a representative of the contest, after she has just finished telling a story about Miss Argentina teaching Spanish to Miss Great Britain. All this is interspersed with television spots promoting the good life for blond women, exploiting Inca heritage as a tourist commodity, and showing contestants rehearsing their routines (among them a Miss Transkei) preparatory to an even that will be attended by all the bigwigs in Lima, including the U.S. ambassador. The careful orchestration between an international television presence, the marketing of women, and the defiance exhibited by indigenous women of Peru deconstructs the meaning of Miss Universe in a way not unlike the full effects of this exhibition.

Democracy in Communication opens doors into the diversity of Latin American productions made in the early 1980s. Its limits as an anthology lie to some extent in the scarcity of accompanying information, concerning both country-by-country political circumstances and the complicated world of communications in North/South relations. The collection's great merits reside in the pioneering effort to create the groundwork for a richly detailed map of popular video and film in Latin America that contributes to a world viewed through the dynamic particulars of the people who inhabit it. In doing so, it rightly presumes upon the intelligence of North American and global audiences alike to take note of what they see.

[This is a slightly edited version of an article by Jane Creighton that was originally published under the title "The Other Americas: Popular Video and Film in Latin America" in the film and video monthly The Independent, Vol. 10, No. 5, June 1987, pp. 18-21. At the time of its writing, Creighton was coordinating a series of readings for the "War and Memory Project" of the Washington Project for the Arts. The article refers to an exhibition of Latin American film and video held in the mid 1980s. A followup festival with some of the same material was organized by Karen Ranucci in 1992. A selection of award winning programs from the latter collection is available on DVD (with online previewing) from Deep Dish TV. For more information about Latin American film and video, readers may find useful the book A Guide to Latin American, Caribbean and U.S. Latino Made Film and Video by Karen Ranucci and Julie Feldman (The Scarecrow Press, 1998).]

Freesat Channel list guide - as at 1st October 2010

A channel list now available via the Freesat EPG

As at 1st October 2010 there were 158 channels availavble via Freesat - 120 TV channel and 38 Radio channel.

Entertainment

101 BBC 1
102 BBC 2
103 ITV1
104 Channel 4
105 Five
106 BBC Three
107 BBC Four
108 BBC HD
110 BBC Alba
113 ITV2
114 ITV2+1
115 ITV3
116 ITV3+1
117 ITV4
118 ITV4+1
119 ITV1 HD
120 S4C Digidol
121 Channel 4 + 1
122 E4
123 E4 +

Freesat - new advert

Freesat - new advert
This is a new Freesat advertising campaign launched today, Saturday 2nd October 2010, to promote their TV Freesat satellite television service.

Freesat consists of more than 140 television and radio channels which can be received free of charge by one dish pointing to positions 28.2 ° East and 28.5 ° East and a Freesat receiver.

Note that a Sky box and a generic free to

New Sky HD channel coming soon - Sky Atlantic HD

Sky today announced plans to launch Sky Atlantic HD , a new entertainment channel, in early 2011.

Sky Atlantic will provide an exclusive home to some of the most hotly anticipated shows in television to customers throughout the UK and Ireland.

Following Sky and HBO's multi-year output deal announced in July, Sky Atlantic HD will air all of HBO's new series exclusively in the UK and Ireland