BBC News Multiscreen on Freeview

Finally got round to seeing it earlier. I don't always agree with those who say the News 24 presenters are robotic, but the one doing the headlines about 10 (Eve somebody) certainly needs to put a bit more oomph (or something) into her headline reading.

Have the 'titles' been like that for some time (i.e. on DSAT?). I got to see them run several times when the bottom loop was changing over from the paper review to the 'breakfast with Frost' extract with IDS. It occurred to me that this might be the way new titles for N24/Network News might head - more LDN-esque circles and the use of squares a la Breakfast.

Here I use Win-tv-nova-t usb using Sudbury & Bluebell Hill signal - they are both CR** ! with the N24 multiscreen (703)

Yep - though there are still safe areas in pure 16:9 and pure 4:3 production to allow for the 5-10% domestic cut-off that has to be allowed for in TVs. (This is caused by the TV "overscanning" so that the picture actually more than fills the screen...

I agree...space for a couple more channels instead of interactive gimmicks.
A cynic might say the Beeb had done this to stop more competition on Freeview.....no...not Auntie.....surely?

I wouldn't mind channels such as CNN to be on freeview, or a comedy channel...

Well UKTV could pull their finger out and arrange for UK Gold in some form to be on Freeview (it's surely not that hard to re-arrange broadcasting rights on 30 year old BBC sitcoms). A killer channel like that is badly needed.

Why is everyone obsessed with E4 and UK Gold? There not the best things since slice bread. They’re good yes, but not SO good. Freeview has good channels like ITV2. For a home that has never had ITV2 to all of a sudden get it via a £60 box will make a huge difference to there viewing, as they will never have to worry about missing Corrie and get access to POP Idol extra and lots of Extra stuff not on 'Normal ITV'

Anyway, UKTV only have a 12-hour daytime space on it. Putting UK gold stuff on during the day when everyone’s at work would be no good as when folk get home, it will be Ftn time. UK BI needs to get away from all the UKTV homemade shows and show more EX BBC Shows like UK Style.

703 is not the channel of the multiscreen. 703 is a service channel that allows for the use of the multiscreen and IIRC cross mux mheg.

The only way to access it is to press red on News 24 / a News Programme. Just changing to 703 will do nothing.

UK Gold is a good idea - it could work like how sky is using sky travel to make a sky one lite.

Perhaps a more generalised UKTV channel for freeview - a mixture of UK Gold, UK Style etc - call it UKTV.

BTW - my fantastic idea for BBC News Interactive - keep it the way it is.



http://www.rp-networkservices.com/tvforum/uploads/bbcinews.jpg

It's quite interested when I use it - I have a Nokia 221 Mediamaster (very nice).

...when you change the volume on the Multiscreen you see all three feeds and can thus tell where they are positioned, there's loads more room for a 4th one I reckon.

For some reason ever since I upgraded my GDB2 from 3.1 to 3.11 it's not letting me do that anymore.

There is space but I think if they do bring in another screen it'll be when the next version of MHEG (1.06 ?) is out as it will allow for screens to move about. Of course that does exclude the old ITVd boxes which are still considerable in numbers.

I don't deny that UK Gold has seen better days and it is a shadow of it's former self now (although somethings have improved - I remember the time when UK Gold used to routinely remove the credits of almost everything and stick 2 or 3 breaks into a half hour BBC programme - it's content may have been better in the past but it's treatment of it was certainly much worse than it is now) but the fact remains that to many it is still seen as a very desirable channel. It's one of the very few pay TV channels which non-pay TV homes will have heard of. Being able to say that UK Gold is available for free on Freeview may not amount to that much (although there is still a lot of good stuff on there, and having made the (forced) move from Sky down to Freeview, I would give my right arm to have it on here atm - endless QVC, Sky News, UK History and FTN does not make up for having Sky One, Paramount, The History Channel etc) but the image of having UK Gold available (and despite it's downfall, it still very much has an image of being a must have channel) would doubtless cause a significant increase in the popularity of DTT, and then make it more viable for other pay TV channels to investigate the possibility of re-negotiating their rights deals to have their channels carried free on DTT. Getting UK Gold up (it would either have to be UK Gold or Sky One, but it's much more feasible to get UK Gold on DTT than Sky One, due to UK Gold's material being much less lucrative) could be the catalyst for Freeview actually offering a feasible free alternative to pay TV, rather than just pretending it does but delivering very little more than shopping, news, and downmarket entertainment like FTN and ITV2.