The BBC News channel “countdown sequence” has this week has a revamp – new graphics, and a change to the iconic BBC countdown theme that rolls in before the hourly news bulletin on the 24 hour rolling news channel. The change of theme tune and graphics co-incidences with the move of the BBC News Centre [...]

Happy 2013 everyone, and welcome to a new year! 2013 promises to be an interesting year for digital TV and radio in the UK, and as it’s the first day of a new year, it’s always good to take stock and see what’s happened in the last twelve months. Rather than present you with a [...]

The five year Digital Switchover is now complete – Last night, the final analogue TV transmitters in Northern Ireland were taken out of service, and the UK’s TV service is now fully digital. Bye Bye to Analogue So, that’s it for analogue… the TV system that the UK has been using for the last seventy [...]

Show number 80 of the FrequencyCast podcast, has been released today. FrequencyCast is produced by the Radio and Telly team and covers the latest news on all things TV and radio related, as well as news from the tech world. In show number 80, we look at the following topics: News and listener comments on [...]

Finally, YouView boxes are now available, but at £299, we’re not sure how many folk will be dashing out this weekend to buy one. The first box to be released is the Humax DTR-T1000, and here’s what it offers: Humax DTR-T1000 Humax DTR-T1000 is a combined Freeview receiver, HDD recorder and Internet TV box. As [...]

Broadband provider TalkTalk is set to re-enter the digital TV market, offer a combined Freeview plus Internet TV service. After having suspended its last TV service (originally Tiscali TV) to new customers last year, TalkTalk has unwrapped details of the new offering. As one of the partners of the YouView project, they will be offering [...]

A new channel from Channel 4, launched this evening (4th July 2012) at 7pm 4seven essentially runs re-broadcasts of very recent shows, for those that missed a Channel 4 show. Given that many of us now have a PVR hard disk recorder (such as Sky+ or Freeview+), recording shows and series is now pretty easy [...]

Launch plans for the combined Freeview and Internet service YouView have been announced today, Wednesday the 4th of July 2012.   What will YouView offer? The new box will let you watch and record the existing Freeview channels, and let you access catch-up TV over Internet from BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5. Sound [...]

Entertainment magazine Heat is set to launch a new music TV channel on the 3rd of July 2012 The new channel is set to appear on both Sky and Virgin’s digital TV platform , giving Heat a magazine, website, radio station and TV channel. The channel will carry a mixture of rolling celebrity news and [...]

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 [...]

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 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 [...]

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, [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

The BBC is set to close the BBC HD channel, as part of proposals for cost-savings. The BBC HD service launched as a trial service in 2006, and was the first free-to-view HD channel in the UK. As part of the BBC’s cost-cutting proposal “Delivering Quality First”, the HD channel is set to be scrapped [...]

The Competition Commission has been looking at Sky’s dominance in the UK movies market, and ruled that  it is non-competitive, and costing UK viewers far more than it should. As you know, Sky has gambled heavily that being king of Sport, Movies, and now HD channels, will make it the number one choice for those [...]

Up to 760,000 homes in the UK may find that they start to experience interference to Freeview from 2013, according to a report from OfCom. As you’re probably aware, the UK Digital Switchover is set to be complete by the end of 2012. Once this has been done, a part of the spectrum that was [...]