Radio and Telly UK Digital TV News

One on the Radio and Telly team was asked to appear on this morning’s breakfast show on BBC Radio Norfolk to discuss problems with Freeview after the digital switchover. Talking to Chris Goreham on BBC Radio Norfolk at 08:40 this morning, Pete from our site talked about the problems experienced by those in the Anglia [...]

If you have one or more DAB Digital Radios, you’ll need to retune them today, March the 1st 2012. Users of the Freeview TV system will be familiar with the concept of occasionally re-tuning to ensure that the full range of channels is stored correctly, and today’s Digital Radio Retune is no different – it’s [...]

The Connect TV service appears to have now launched on the Freeview platform, offering an extra 45 channels of TV. Connect TV has had a number of placeholder channels active between channels 110 and 116 for a while, and some of the services switched on February. It seems that the initial offering has been finalised, [...]

The PVR is the best thing to hit the TV scene since the end of Crossroads. It’s changed the way we watch our TV, and whether you have a Sky+, Virgin Tivo, BT Vision or one of the many Freeview and Freesat hard-disk recorders, it’s now increasingly hard not to get a recording of your [...]

It seems that around 900,000 homes may need to get a special filter to be able to keep on watching Freeview from 2013. We first reported on this story in June 2011 (Freeview Interference Forecast), when it was estimated that 760,000 homes could be affected. The Government now puts the estimate at nearer 900,000 Freeview [...]

Happy 155th birthday to the pioneer that made radio and telly what it is today. Heinrich Rudolf Hertz was born in Germany on the 22nd of February 1857, and dedicated much of his (short) life, to pioneering work on electromagnetic waves. He was the first person to prove the existence of the radio waves that [...]

We’ve just noticed that a new placeholder channel has been added to the Freeview lineup: Racing UK (Channel 116) At the moment, the channel is just a placeholder, but here’s what we know so far: The channel appears to be part of the Internet TV services planned by IP Vision. We’re assuming that when this [...]

The online TV service, Fetch TV, has just gone into administration. The Fetch TV service started in 2008 and has been trying to make its place in the crowded Video-on-Demand space for some time. It looks like this week, it has lost its battle as the service owners IP Vision have called in UHY Hacker [...]

Sports channel ESPN will be making its channel available to everyone for free, for one weekend in February. Between 6am on the morning of Friday 3rd February 2012, and 6am on Monday the 6th February 2012, the ESPN channel will be free-to-view on the following services: Freeview Sky BT Vision Top Up TV The following [...]

Netflix launched in the UK today, Monday the 9th of January 2012, with plans to shake up the online movie and TV rental market. Netflix is a big deal in the US, and they appear to be hoping for big things from the UK market. What Netflix offers A simple proposition – movies and TV [...]

Happy New Year from the team at Radio and Telly. This is our first news posting of the year, and it includes a couple of news snippets that we included in our newsletter sent out earlier today. 2012 holds some interesting things in store: The long-awaited launch of YouView, NetFlix coming to the UK, and [...]

There’s been a set-back in the plans for a new Freeview HD channel. Back in 2010, Channel 5 was planning to launch its HD channel on Freeview, but decided that it didn’t want to launch after all – Instead, the channel went to the BBC for its second HD channel. The licence for the fifth [...]

This month sees a few changes to the Top Up TV service, and we’re guessing a lot of customers aren’t going to be happy. If you have Top Up TV, you’ll need to rescan your box to make sure you can continue to watch the service, but you’ll notice some reductions in the content and [...]

If you’re quick, and thinking of getting Sky’s HD TV service, this is the time to do it. For some time now, Sky’s been offering Marks and Spencer vouchers as an incentive to sign up with Sky online. Until recently, you could pick up £25 worth of M & S vouchers, but from now until [...]

Some Freeview channel news to report: Channel 5 HD to launch on Freeview In the recent bidding for the fifth HD channel on the Freeview platform, only one channel submitted a bid, and that was Channel 5. It appears that regulator OfCom has granted Channel 5 the licence, and we can expect Channel 5 HD [...]

We understand that plans may be afoot to extend coverage of the UK TV licence to cover Internet-based catch-up TV services, such as the BBC iPlayer. Currently, it’s law that those in the UK pay £145.50 a year to be able to watch (or record) broadcast TV shows. In addition to TV sets and recorders, [...]

SeeSaw, the video-on-demand Internet TV service that promised “a great place to watch TV”, has closed. The service launched in 2010, offering a mix of TV content from the BBC, Channel 4 and Channel 5 that could be viewed over the Internet. SeeSaw was originally formed from a proposed service codenamed Project Kangaroo, which was [...]

In the UK, the BBC is our “not for profit” TV and radio broadcaster. In the US, the equivalent non-profit TV service, is PBS (Public Broadcasting Service). From the 1st of November 2011, it will be possible to get PBS over here in the US. PBS UK will be available initially on the Sky and [...]

Ho, Ho, Ho!  To help you get in the festive mood, Smooth Radio will be launching a national Christmas radio station, Smooth Xmas. The station will be going live on Tuesday the 1st of November on the national DAB multiplex. The station will be running nationwide until the 27th of December 2011, alongside the existing [...]

The end is in sight for the UK Digital Switchover. And that end happens in October 2012. With well over half of the UK now switched over from analogue telly, Digital UK has announced the date that the last analogue TV transmitter will be taken out of service, and it’s only a year away. Northern [...]