We’re getting a number of reports that Freeview viewers in North West of England have lost their regional programmes after rescanning their set-top boxes. BBC North West has been replaced with Welsh regional programmes.

We’ve had messages from Freeview viewers in the Liverpool and Manchester area, and it seems that those in range of the Winter Hill transmitter are being affected.

We’ve found the reason for this – at the end of October, the North Wales TV region completed part of the Digital Switchover, meaning that the power from the Welsh Moel-y-Parc transmitter is now stronger than the Winter Hill Transmitter for some viewers.

Viewers in the North West that have been affected, may find that their regional channels have been shifted to a set of channels reserved for regional “duplicate channels”. If you’ve lost your regional programmes, take a look at channels starting with number 801 – your missing regional channels should be hiding there. As an example, one viewer tells us that BBC1 North West has moved from Freeview Channel 1 to Channel 805.

Our tech team has the following advice for affected users:

If your Freeview box or Freeview TV allow it, manually retune BBC-A and D3-4 (the two multiplexes that carry BBC and ITV programmes) to the UHF channel numbers for your local transmitter. Here’s how to find the UHF channel numbers:

1. Go to http://www.digitaluk.co.uk/ and enter your postcode into the postcode checker.
2. Click on the pink box labelled “Full reception forecast”
3. Select “How do I retune?”
4. There, you’ll find advice on how to do a manual retune, and also the UHF channel numbers for your nearest transmitter (see example below). “Group 1″ is the BBC multiplex and “Group 2″ is the ITV multiplex.

By doing a manual retune, you should be able to get your local regional programmes back to their rightful place in the Freeview channel lineup. There’s a handy page instructions on how to retune at digitaluk.co.uk/retuning

If you need help with retuning, please ask in our Freeview Help Forum, or if you need help over the phone, call Digital UK’s helpline on 08456 505050.

Affected by this issue? Please let us know in our comments section.

Originally posted 29 Oct 09. Updated 16 Dec 09

Sky has just announced details of a new offer for those looking to sign up to the satellite TV service.

Sign up to any Sky Digital package before the 17th of December 2009, and get a £50 Marks and Spencer voucher. The voucher will be sent within 30 days of your Sky service being activated.

To take advantage, go to http://packages.sky.com/offers/skytv/

Fans of the BBC Red Button service using Freeview may notice that something’s missing.

By pressing the red button on your Freeview receiver, it was possible to access the BBC News Multiscreen service – mini streams with different news and weather feeds… that was until Tuesday the 27th October.

Sadly, the service has had to be removed from Freeview, in readiness for the upcoming launch of Freeview HD. The space taken up by the multiscreen video streams is needed for the new high definition TV service.

BBC News Multiscreen continues from those little red buttons on Sky and Virgin remote controls up and down the land.

Sky has launched its tenth HD Movies channel.

Sky Indie HD is now available on Sky Channel 334.

More: Sky HD

TMF, The Music Factory, on Freeview Channel 21, has today relaunched as “Viva”. The new channel, Viva, is part of the MTV brand, and the channel has been repositioned from a music channel to an entertainment channel.

On the 16th of November, some of the Zone TV channels will be re-branded as CBS channels.

Zone Reality becomes CBS Reality
Zone Romantica becomes CBS Drama
Zone Thriller becomes CBS Action

Zone Horror remains unchanged – presumably because CBS Horror just sounds wrong…

Zone channels can be found on Sky, Virgin and Freesat.

Two minor changes in the 90 adult channel range:

Television X changes from Channel 98 to 93

New channel TMTV (Tease Me TV, from Bang Media) joined on Freeview channel 98.

From the 27th October 2009, the BBC News Multiscreen and the interactive stream (Freeview channel 302) will no longer be available. This is to make room for Freeview HD.

It’s been announced that from ‘early 2010′, a number of Sky channels will be available on Freeview… soft of.

You may remember “Sky Picnic”, which was Sky’s proposed way of getting their pay-TV channels available to Freeview users. Picnic died about a year ago after trouble with the UK regulators.

Now, Sky over Freeview is back on the table, but this time through a link-up with UK firm IP Vision.

IP Vision are the firm behind the TV-over-Internet service Fetch TV. Their Smartbox 8000 (pictured) is a Freeview PVR that has an Internet connection. Fetch TV already offers a small selection of on-demand content, including content from the BBC iPlayer, and this week’s announcement will see Sky add their content to the Fetch TV offering.

Fetch TV 8000 Smartbox

According to Sky, Sky Player will be a standalone service on the Fetch TV box, offering a range of live TV channels (including Sky Movies, Sky Sport and entertainment channels). Existing Sky TV customers will be able to access a range of content for no extra cost based on their core subscription, whilst non-Sky customers will be able to sign up to a choice of TV packages via a monthly subscription paid directly to Sky.

More on Fetch TV on our Fetch TV section.

We’ve previously reported that ITV’s text service Teletext was to close in 2010. It seems that the plan to shut down Teletext has been advanced, and ITV’s Teletext service is set to cease in two months.

Teletext Page 139 on analogue and digital is reporting the following:

“Teletext’s news and information service is switching off in December 2009. Owner Associated Newspapers confirmed the decision, saying the service had been loss-making in recent years and no viable business model could be found.”

Teletext Holidays, presumably still able to generate some revenue, is set to continue beyond December 2009.

This Saturday, the 10th October, England play Ukraine as part of the 2010 World Cup qualifiers.

So, which TV service do you need to watch the match? BBC? ITV? Sky Sports? ESPN?

Answer – None of the above.

Setanta Sports had originally bought the rights for this England away match, but after Setanta’s collapse, the rights were up for grabs again. Rights agency Kentaro now hold the rights, and couldn’t come to an agreement with any of the UK broadcasters to show the match on UK.

The upshot – this Saturday’s match won’t be on any UK TV service, or available in pubs. Instead, the Rights holders will be offering the match on the Internet only, complete with analysis from Sven-Goran Eriksson.

To watch the match, you’ll need to pay a one-off £4.99 for a live stream of the match. To get Saturday’s match, go to www.ukrainevengland.com

A placeholder for a new channel, simply called “News”, has just appeared on Freeview Channel 89.

At this time, we have no information on the plan for “news”. Watch this space.