Windows 10
Ten things you should do withyour PC
March 2020 | |^19
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Choose your streams
Learn an instrument
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ou can easily find lots of
great content online
– start with free catch-
up services from the
major UK TV channels:
BBC iPlayer, ITV Hub, All
and My5, some or all of which should
available through your smart TV or
failing that your web browser. Don’t
forget UK TV Play (https://uktvplay.uktv.
co.uk/) too, which includes catch-up and
box sets from the likes of Dave, Drama
and Yesterday. Paid-for channels are
available through your main satellite or
cable provider.
Sky subscription too expensive? A
much cheaper alternative is NowTV
(www.nowtv.com), which offers non-
contract access to movies, sports and TV
channels via a variety of packages. Our
favourite is the Entertainment pass,
which offers access to box sets, catchup
and live streams from 16 channels. £8.
a month is quite steep, but save moneyby buying two-month
passes in the high street or
online from http://www.pcworld.
co.uk for £10 a pop.Five dedicated
Streaming services are also
available. The big two are
Amazon Prime (part of its
£7.99/month member
package), which offers TV,
movies and an increasing
amount of sport, plus
Netflix (www.netflix.com/
gb/) offers even more
exclusive content
alongside its catalogue of movies and
shows – prices start from £5.99/month.
Coming up on the rails is AppleTV+
(£4.99/mo, http://www.apple.com/uk/apple-tv-
plus), its lower price reflecting the
smaller library it currently offers.
Rounding things off are specialist
services are Britbox (£5.99/mo,http://www.britbox.co.uk), which offers
classic BBC and ITV shows, and the
recently launched Disney+ (£5.99/mo,
https://disneyplus.com/uk), which
exclusively offers content from
Disney-owned properties including
Star Wars, Marvel and the National
Geographic Channel.usic is far more than just
the food of love – it’s
nourishment for our very
soul. And what better
way is there to express
yourself than through
music? It’s never too late to pick up an
instrument, whether starting from
scratch or picking up where you left
off years – or even decades – ago.
The good news is that your PC can
provide you with all the support you
need to develop your musical abilities
as well as record your ongoing progress
and even provide you with the means
of writing your own pieces.
Start with PlayPerfect (www.
nchsoftware.com/practice/), a free
program to help you practice your
instrument between lessons. It
provides a series of pieces to play
along to through your microphone,
using an optional metronome to
help with tempo.During installation you’ll
be offered several related
programs – including
PitchPerfect to aid the
tuning of your guitar.
You’ll also be offered
Crescendo, a musical
notation program for
creating and editing
pieces to add to
PlayPerfect. We’d
recommend you skip this
in favour of MuseScore
(https://musescore.org/en).
Unlike Crescendo, it’s
completely free and open
source, plus it supports a
wider selection file formats, making
it easier to source whatever pieces
you’re currently learning through
sites such as http://www.free-scores.com –
make sure they’re formatted as two
staves, and export them from
MuseScore as .mid files to use inPlayPerfect. If you have a MIDI keyboard
with suitable USB-to-MIDI cable (around
£10-15, try http://www.artistguitars.co.uk),
then check out LMMS (https://lmms.io/),
a free recording tool that can be used to
record anything from practice sessions
to full-blown original compositions.Don’t forget UK TV Play when setting up free streaming catch-up
services to watch on-demand.Import your own scores into PlayPerfect for practice purposes.