Radio and Telly UK Digital TV News

Vintage TV is now live on Sky and Freesat. The channel, which launched on the 1st of September 2010,  is dedicated to the music, culture and fashions from 1940 to 1989.

Vintage TV promises an eclectic mix of music, classic and original programming and must-watch shows includes Me and Mrs Jones, a new take on the talk-show format fronted by veteran rock journalist Lesley-Ann Jones.  The channel also offers unique access to some incredible archive footage licensed from the BBC and Getty Images which will be incorporated into 500 brand-new music videos for songs which were recorded prior to the arrival of the video era.

An impressive line-up of famous faces will front the channel, led by legendary broadcaster and music expert Paul Gambaccini.  He is joined by David ‘Kid’ Jensen, YES keyboardist Rick Wakeman and Eighties pop singer Kim Wilde, as well as by Tony Blackburn and David Hamilton. See the Vintage TV website at www.vintage-tv.tv for details on their programming.

David Pick, former EMI executive and founder of Vintage TV said:  “Our content has been created using the latest tapeless technology.  There is consequently a wonderful back-to-the-future quality and feel to our programming which gives it a fresh, contemporary style.  The music we celebrate, from the fifty-year so-called ‘Golden Age’, was never intended to be here-today, gone-tomorrow entertainment.  Such music was crafted by some of the most legendary artists in history, and was made to last.  Their recordings have stood the test of time because people all over the world still want to listen to them.  They also set the impressively high standards for music being created today.  Thanks to Vintage TV, viewers will now be able to enjoy all the visual memories too.”

Vintage TV is available on Sky channel 369 and Freesat channel 515.

Disney-owned ABC will soon be launching an On Demand TV service in the UK. This will be the first such service that ABC has launched outside of the US.

The ABC On Demand service will launch on the 15th of September 2010, offering content such as Desperate Housewives, Private Practice, Criminal Minds, Lost, Ugly Betty and Cougar Town.

Content will be available as part of the £6.99 a month “TV Pack”, or programmes can be purchased on a pay-to-view basis.

More on BT Vision: BT Vision content

On the 3rd of September, free-to-view channel Virgin 1 gets a new name… Channel One.

The reason for the name change is that Sky recently acquired a number of Virgin Media-owned TV channels, including Living, Bravo and Virgin 1. Obviously, they have to lose their Virginity, and just as Virgin Radio became “Absolute Radio” when it was sold, Sky’s had to find a new name.

Channel One, under Sky’s ownership, will continue to run a similar mix of mostly US shows. One new addition to the programme lineup, is the recent re-make of the classic hamster-eating alien saga that was “V”. It’s already been shown on the subscription service SyFy, but will soon be free-to-air on Channel One too.

Sky Sports News will be leaving the Freeview lineup on Monday 23rd August 2010.

From this date, the Sky Sports News channel will be a subscription-only channel.

Sky Sports News HD also launches on Sky on 23rd August

The slot on Freeview will be replaced by Sky 3 + 1

Gems TV has re-appeared on Freeview. The shopping channel, on Freeview 43 identifies itself as “Coloured Rocks”, and is on from 1am to 11am

We’re conducting a short survey about sport on TV in the UK, and which service our visitors use to get their sporting action.

If you can spare two minutes of your time, your thoughts would be appreciated!

Take The Survey: Sport on TV Survey

One of the affected boxes from Inverto

A number of Freeview set-top boxes have lost their EPG, the Electronic Programme Guide.

Some set-top boxes made by DigiFusion, Inverto, Thomson and Sony get their programme information from a service provided by InView. Apparently their contract has come to an end and won’t be renewed – this means that users of these set-top boxes now no longer get their 14 day programme guide, causing major problems making advance recordings.

Here’s our list of the affected boxes:

• Digifusion: Digifusion FRT101 , Digifusion FVRT100 , Digifusion FVRT145 , Digifusion FVRT150 , Digifusion FVRT200 and Digifusion FVRT400
• Inverto: Inverto IDL-7000T and Inverto IDL-7000M
• Thomson DHD4000
• Sony SVR-S500

InView broadcast the programme guide service over-the-air on the Freeview ‘D’ Multiplex, known as 4TV, but InView is now no longer broadcasting this service.

According to the DTG, boxes that conform to the DTT standard should “fall back” to the standard 7-day Freeview  programme guide, but this does not appear to be the case for the boxes affected.

The advice appears to be to make do with the “Now and Next” feature – which is of little use if you want to record something on your Freeview PVR that’s being broadcast in the next 14 days.

Affected by this issue? You might want to look at the Re-instate the 4TV EPG Petition,which has over 750 signatures at the time of writing.

Looking for a replacement Freeview hard-disk recorder? See our Freeview PVR page

We’d also love to hear from you if you’ve lost your Freeview programme guide as a result. Please comment below

Placeholders for Sky Sports 1 and Sky Sports 2 have been added to the Freeview channel lineup today, the 5th of July 2010.

The channels, currently labelled BT 1 and BT 2, are placeholders for the Sky Sports 1 and Sky Sports 2 service to be offered by BT Vision from August 2010. They can be found on channels 41 and 42 respectively.

As a reminder, with BT Vision, you will be able to get Sky Sports from £6.99 a month, as part of their ongoing campaign to offer cheaper sports than Sky. Sports service ESPN is also on BT Vision (free on some packages)

For full information on BT Vision and Sky Sports, go to BT Vision’s Sports site.

If you’re after details of how BT Vision works, try our new 15 minute podcast review of BT Vision – Listen to our BT Vision Review

More on BT Vision at btvision.bt.com

It has today been announced that the BBC Trust has rejected plans to shut 6 Music.

In March 2010, BBC management put through cost saving proposals to cut 6 Music and the Asian Network, as well as scale back 25% of the BBC’s online content.

Following a series of concerted campaigns, Facebook protests and flash mobs, it seems that the BBC Trust don’t feel that the case has been made to axe the station, and 6 Music has a reprieve. The BBC Asian Network is not so lucky, and is set to close.

The public awareness of the plans to close 6 Music has had a massive effect on 6 Music’s listening. At the time of the announcement, 6 Music had 600,000 listeners a week – this has now risen to 1 million.

A number of small changes were made on the 1st of July 2010 affecting Freeview channels. Here is a summary:

• Dave Ja Vu and Big Deal have changed multiplex (rescan needed).
• Russia Today (channel 85) is now 24 hours a day
• Al Jazeera English has appeared on channel 89
• TV News and TV News 2 have been removed
• The DirectGov text service on channel 106 has been removed

For the revised list, please see our Freeview Channel List

If any of these channels are of interest, you’ll need to perform a channel recan to get the changes.

106 DirectGov – Mux 2 (D3&4) Also in Freeview Lite areas. This service has now been discontinued. Government advice is still available via the direct.gov website.
> DirectGov Discussion Thread

With the 2010/11 football season fast approaching, BT Vision has just announced pricing for their Sky Sports service.

Ofcom recently ruled that Sky has to offer their sports content to other TV services at reasonable prices, and this has allowed BT Vision to be able to offer the most popular sports packages at prices significantly lower than Sky’s.

If you’re happy to get your phone and Internet from BT, you could get Sky Sports from just £6.99 a month.

BT’s price announcement comes on the same day as Sky announced that Sky customers will now have to pay an extra £3 a month for the full sporting package – something that will make the BT Vision option all the more appealing to those looking to get footy at a lower price.

There’s another value offer to BT Vision customers – free ESPN when you sign up to a Vision pack (saving £10 a month).

OK – With Sky Sports on BT Vision, you won’t get Sky Sports in HD or the Sky Sports News (due to be removed from Freeview soon), but you will be able to watch all of the football action at lower costs than you’d pay to Sky, and you get access to hundreds of hours of on-demand TV, plus catch up TV from BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Five.

If you’ve discounted the BT Vision option in the past, now is definitely the time to take a fresh look, and we can help:

Our podcast team released a full 15 minute review of BT Vision on the 1st of July – Listen to our BT Vision Review

Also, check out the new BT Vision pricing for Sky Sports 1, Sky Sports 2 and ESPN at btvision.bt.com

A TV channel aimed squarely at the over 50′s is set to launch on Sky and Freesat in September.

The new TV channel, Vintage TV, will launch on the 1st of September 2010 offering unique content focussing on music and popular culture from the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s. The station will be fronted my music man and former Radio 1 star Paul Gambaccini.

Vintage TV plans to offer content from a number of TV company archives, as well as some home-grown content. Vintage TV will also broadcast new music videos for number of classic tracks that were recorded before the days of the music video.

Expect Vintage TV from 1st of September.

Educational TV channel Teachers TV is set leave Freeview in July 2010.

A message appearing onscreen on Freeview channel 88 states:

“We are sorry to announce that Teachers TV will stop broadcasting on Freeview from July. You can continue to view your favourite programmes, whenever you want, at www.teachers.tv

You can also access the latest eduction news and classroom resoucrces.

For more information about the changes to Teachers TV visit www.teachers.tv/online”

We’ve just had reports that Sky is planning to pull Sky Sports News from the Freeview lineup. The sports channel will be replaced by a “+1″ timeshifted version of the Sky Three channel.

The removal of Sky Sports News from Freeview is expected to occur later in 2010 (exact date not confirmed)

NME’s music channel is now available on Freesat.

NME TV can be found on Freesat channel 503. The channel can also be found on Sky channel 382.

This news comes days after the decision to close the NME Radio service, which has been broadcasting on Sky, DAB, Virgin and on Freesat channel 727.

Tech geeks – time to fire up your PVR, and set your series link to record the bytes transmitted by Channel 4 on the 25 of June 2010.

Series 4 of the cult comedy The IT Crowd, charting the day-to-day IT challenges facing the Roy and Moss, the basement-dwelling IT support nerds, that introduced the phrase “Have you tried turning it off and on again?” to a wider audience.

Series 4 of the IT Crowd goes out on Friday the 25th of June at 10pm on Channel 4.

A box set of Series 1, 2 and 3 of the IT are available for the daft price of £13 from Amazon

In 1920, what we now know the radio broadcast started. Radio pioneers at the Marconi works in Essex started the first broadcasts on station MZX in Chelmsford, and today marks the day that the first entertainment broadcast was made.

Few back in June 1920 had a radio set, but those that did were getting bored with the test messages being broadcast. The Daily Mail newspaper paid what was then a huge sum to secure the services of world-famous singer Dame Nellie Melba to perform the historic broadcast. The signals were heard as far away as Persia.

Ninety years later, in June 2010, a group of radio enthusiasts met in Chelmsford to remember this historic day, and Radio & Telly was there. We managed to secure an interview with John Bower, the chairman of the Chelmsford Amateur Radio Society, and asked John to explain just what happened all those years ago.

As well as discussing the history of radio, John shares his thoughts on today’s broadcasting, DAB and how to communicate with space.

If you’re interested in radio, please take a listen to this illuminating 22 minute interview. You can download the interview for free, or listen online, at the following address:

http://www.frequencycast.co.uk/historyofradio.html

We wonder what Mr Marconi would make of the broadcasts filling our airwaves today…

Music station NME Radio is set to cease broadcasting within the next couple of weeks. The station, a spin-off from NME Magazine launched in June 2008, and was operated by DX Media.

NME Radio will shortly cease to broadcast the music service DAB digital radio, Sky Digital, Virgin Media and Freesat.

Customers of the Virgin Media TV service will soon be offered Sky Sports 1 HD, Sky Sports 2 HD and Sky Movies  HD.

Virgin’s HD channel lineup needs a boost, and the addition of Sky’s premium sport and movies channels is something that Virgin’s customers have been calling for, for a while.

The deal between Sky and Virgin for the HD content forms part of a deal that sees Virgin selling off their TV channels Bravo, Virgin 1, Living and Challenge to Sky.

No news as yet on when these channels will be coming to Virgin customers, of how much extra Virgin customers will have to pay for Sky’s HD content. Sky customers currently pay a £10 a month premium to watch the 40 Sky HD channels.

We’ll update you here, and on our digital TV podcast when we have more.

In order to allow Virgin Media to concentrate on its cable broadband operation, it has sold off its TV channels to Sky.

In a deal worth £160 million, Virgin has sold the following channels to satellite operator BSkyB:

• Virgin 1
• Bravo and Bravo 2
• LIVING and LIVINGit
• Challenge and Challenge Jackpot

Sky’s announced that Virgin 1 will change to a Sky brand in due course.

The deal also brings good news for Virgin Media customers, as Sky will be offering Sky Sports HD and Sky Movies HD, which have preiously only been available to satellite customers.

The Chief Exec of BSkyB, Jeremy Darroch,  said: “We are pleased that, through commercial negotiation, we have been able to ensure wide distribution of our channels to a growing pay TV universe.”

The deal is still subject to regulator approval.