Information and instructions for those interested in following Big Brother Finland 2011 (especially during the exchange week)SummaryA brief summary of this post without all the excruciating details:
OverviewBig Brother Finland 2011 - the seventh Big Brother season in Finland - began on 30th of August, at 7 p.m. local time (19:00 EEST, 16:00 UTC/GMT). It is now week number 8, day 51 of 97. The tagline for this season is "
More secrets than ever before."
Live 24/7 video feedsFor those interested in following Big Brother Finland live, there is a 24/7 video feed service with six different live feeds from the house:
- "Director's Cut 1"
- "Director's Cut 2"
- "Living Room"
- "Bedroom"
- "Yard"
- "Camera Mix"
During the exchange week, there's now also an extra feed:
- "Big Brother Norway" (The BB Norway 24/7 live service includes several feeds, but only a single Director's Cut feed. This is the DC feed.)
In order to view the Finnish 24/7 live feeds (yes, they
can be viewed from abroad!), you need a paid subscription to Katsomo.fi, the video portal maintained by Sub / MTV3 Oy. ("Sub" is the TV channel in charge of broadcasting the show locally. MTV3 Oy is its parent company. This company also hosts a number of other TV channels. "Katsomo" is a shared video portal for all of them.)
Note: Subscribers to the Norwegian TV2/Sumo 24/7 live service now get the Finnish DC1 feed free for the duration of the exchange, just like subscribers to the Finnish Sub/MTV3/Katsomo 24/7 live service get the Norwegian DC feed for free. Unfortunately, Siv Anita is often shown in the Finnish DC2 feed while the DC1 feed is showing what the other housemates are doing. There have already been some interesting discussions between Siv Anita and the BBF housemates which have only been viewable on the DC2 feed. If you want to watch the DC2 feed, I guess there's no other way to get it than subscribing to the Finnish 24/7 live feeds directly.A couple of screenshots from the Big Brother Finland 24/7 live video feed service:
The labels below the video picture, on the black bar, are for switching between the different feeds. You can also get a thumbnail preview pane showing what's going on in the other feeds by clicking the "Näytä kamerat" link.
Major credit cards are accepted. The pricing is as follows:
- Entire season: 33 euros.
- A Month: 20 euros.
- A Day: 8 euros.
- An Hour: 3 euros.
(There
was a two-day mid-season campaign during last Sunday and Monday where you could subscribe to the rest of the season for a mere €16.50 but that offer is no longer valid.)
You can subscribe to the feeds at
http://www.katsomo.fi/bigbrother. Once you have done that, you simply log in to the same page with your newly created Katsomo account, and can then access the live video feeds with your web browser. You need Microsoft's Silverlight plugin for your browser, preferably the most recent version. Since Katsomo makes use of the DRM features in Silverlight, and these have not been ported to Linux, Moonlight on Linux isn't going to work.
The DC1/DC2 feeds have a human director and human camera operators. In these feeds, pictures fluidly switch from one camera to the next, tracking the housemates and following the flow of the events in the usual style of a TV show.
DC1 is the primary feed and the one you'll be watching the most. DC2 is a secondary feed, useful in situations where people have divided into smaller groups and doing different things in different parts of the house. At times when all housemates have gathered together, DC2 may revert back to an identical picture with DC1 or display another angle to the situation. Sound engineers control the mic lines for both the DC1 and the DC2 streams independently so if they're showing different events and persons in different places, they can each have independent audio with the irrelevant mic lines closed.
The other four feeds behave in a more simplistic manner and can be likened to surveillance cameras. In these feeds, the sound only comes from the fixed house mikes - complete with all the ambient sounds such as echo, hum of air conditioning, etc. The cameras in these four feeds are not fixed, though. For example, they might switch cameras or point the camera currently providing the picture to the feed at a different direction, showing a more relevant view. In any case, these feeds are not constantly tended or monitored by human operators the way the DC1 and DC2 streams are, so they're much more static in their nature.
BBViewer - an alternative way to view the feedsThere is also an alternative way of viewing the 24/7 live video feeds:
BBViewer.
BBViewer is an unofficial, fan-made Windows software application for viewing the Big Brother Finland 24/7 live video feeds. Here's a screenshot of BBViewer 2011 with all the six video feeds running simultaneously:
You can think of BBViewer as an alternative multimedia viewer application for watching the feeds. BBViewer is a more convenient way to watch them than having to use the offical Katsomo BB 24/7 live web page with a clumsy web browser.
BBViewer displays the video feeds in a separate window which is independent of your web browser. You can rearrange the video panes as you see fit, or pop them out as separate windows. You can also pin BBViewer in one the corners of your screen, on top of all other windows. There's a PIP (Picture-in-Picture) function as well.
BBViewer is free to download and use (donationware, actually!) but using it requires an MTV3 Katsomo user account/password and a valid BBF2011 24/7 subscription so it's only useful for those who have subscribed to the service and paid for access. Here's
a translation of most of the UI options.
If you're interested in using BBViewer, make sure you'll apply the latest updates to Internet Explorer. You should also install the most recent version of Microsoft's
Silverlight plugin for IE. BBViewer's video viewing functionality depends on these components.
Daily highlights and other BB shows broadcast on TV and viewable on the InternetIn addition to the live 24/7 video feeds, you will find...
- the daily highlights (titled "Big Brother", broadcast at 9 p.m. each night from Monday to Saturday)
- the Sunday live eviction shows (titled "Big Brother Talk Show", broadcast at 9 p.m. each Sunday), and
- the daily "BB Extra" talk shows (titled "Big Brother Extra", broadcast at 7 p.m. from Monday to Friday) - these have interviews (the Monday interview segment is reserved for the evictee), behind-the-scenes segments and information about upcoming events and twists, and also a brief live segment in which they typically show the housemates receiving a new task or hearing the result of the previous one, etc.
...for online viewing in the Katsomo service after they have first been broadcast locally.
Actually - at least if youre a 24/7 subscriber - you can even watch all the BB shows
live as they're broadcast on TV. This can't be done in BBViewer, as BBViewer only allows watching the TV shows later on, when they're over and archived. (BBViewer, of course, also allows viewing the 24/7 live feeds from the house even during the eviction show, when the housemates are sitting on the sofas, and you can see the actual moment of eviction from inside the house this way as well, but not the studio segments where the evictee sees his or her friends, relatives, or loved ones, is being interviewed etc.)
In order to view the actual shows and the studio segments live, you need to log in to the Katsomo BB page. Click on BB-ohjelmat ("BB Shows") > Kaikki ohjelmat ("All shows") > Big Brother Talk Show > NYT -alkanut 21.00 ("NOW - broadcast began at 21:00 (9 p.m.)") The same principle also applies to the other BB shows if you want to watch them live as they're broadcast. You can
check out the local Finnish time on this page.
The aforementioned shows are also available for free viewing at the following address (at least from Finnish IP addresses, but I'm not completely sure if they're also freely accessible from abroad without a paid subscription - at least you can't view them live going that route):
http://www.bigbrother.fi/videot.shtml/ohjelmat("Videot" = Video clips, "Ohjelmat" = Shows, "Valitse päivä" = Pick a day)
The official website, forums, etc.In addition to the streaming video service and the recorded shows, there's also the official BBF2011 website with news articles, video clips and updates:
http://www.sub.fi/bigbrother/And the official discussion forum:
http://keskustelut.sub.fi/forum/big-brother-2011/And, alternatively, the unofficial but rather popular and well-established independent local fan forum, BBPlaza, which you're reading right now:
http://www.bbplaza.net/forum/http://www.bbplaza.net/Discussion threads concerning the exchangeSee these English-language threads for more information:
Housemate swap between BB Finland 7 and BB Norway 4 (BBPlaza, this thread)
Big Brother Norway 4 - Live discussion topic (BBPlaza)
Big Brother Finland 7 - Live discussion topic (BBPlaza)
Big Brother 7 Finland (World of Big Brother)
Big Brother 4 Norway (World of Big Brother)
Big Brother 7 Finland 2011 (The-site)
BigBrother Norway 2011 (The-site)
Related threads in Finnish:
Asukasvaihto (BBPlaza)
Kuka asukasvaihtoon? (BBPlaza)
Big Brother Norja 2011 (BBPlaza)
Big Brother Norja 2011 - 24/7 keskustelu/raportointi (BBPlaza)
(Parts of the text in this post have been lifted and adapted from my previous posts to the Big Brother Finland 7 thread on World of Big Brother forum.)
There are also English threads on BBPlaza for general discussion about the exchange housemates (their personalities and opinions on their doings in the house):
Siv Anita AustadJanica Kortman And the corresponding Finnish threads:
Siv Anita AustadJanica KortmanSee
here for the Finnish language threads for the other BBF housemates, and
here for the evicted BBF housemates.
OtherHope this helps for starters.
In case you're trying to subscribe to the live 24/7 feeds but encounter difficult Finnish words, use
Google Translate to your advantage. Or ask for help here. You need to
register first in order to participate in the discussions.
You may also use Google Translate for reading the Finnish language forum discussions - such as the threads on this forum, as well as the news articles on the official website. Alas, as useful as it might be with some other languages, Google Translate mostly turns Finnish text into incomprehensible gobbledy-gok "English".
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Feel free to spread the word and the link to this thread to any interested party. For example, Norwegian viewers already seem to be asking how to watch Finnish BB on the live chat of the official Norwegian BB website, and the Finnish viewers would probably like to know more about the Norwegian housemates and house. If you can help them find this information, all the better. You may need to use a simple shortened URL for referring to this thread, such as http://bit.ly/nqewv5, as not all sites accept ampersands or other special characters in their chat messages.
He really dislikes David who entered the big brother house later (together with silje). Andreas P is also a professional cook, so he is the one making most of the food in there. He got nominated the third time this week but got immunity for winning a challenge.
