ITV Discussion Thread

We seem to be pretty lucky here in Granada, ITV1 HD and ITV1+1. Of course, not that the news is in HD anyway, but it's easier than having to turn over during breakfast TV.

Posting leaflets seems like an awful lot of trouble for what must surely be a handful of people who set series recordings for ITV1+1 in the Tyne Tees region!

Why would you record from ITV1+1 especially with a twin tuner!

One might want to record three things, obviously.

According to sky.com/itvrecordings some regions normal ITV 1 will be affected.



I assume, like some have said, that ITV must be adding some ITV1+1 variations. But unsure why ITV1 would be affected in any region?

That's strange. When I moved back from Scunthorpe to Sheffield (and so from BBC Hull to BBC Leeds) my series link on The Apprentice wasn't affected (although it continued to record from 97x BBC1 Yorks and Lincs rather 101 BBC1 Yorkshire). Would the same not have applied if I had series links on ITV1 and moved between regions?

People in flats which were built with a communal satellite but just one connection have to put up with it too. I've counteracted the problem by also using a Freeview+ box; rarely do we want to watch or record 2 things only available on Sky. The problem is exacerbated by ntl and Telewest's policy of not spending any money on wiring up these buildings in the 00s (even though they would have been very cheap and easy wins).

Well, WillPS. BBC and ITV are setup in slightly different ways on Sky. As you know, the BBC has all the regions and nations on the EPG in the 900s and they just map the correct one, based on the postcode that Sky hold for your account, to 101 (or some other EPG position that I forget if you happen to have an Irish postcode). Therefore, if you change region or nation, you will still have access to the BBC One from your old region in the 900s somewhere and therefore your series links will still be able to continue on that channel.

This is the same reason your reminders for programmes on Avago continued to work even after it moved from 235 to 181 sometime in 2004(IIRC) and again when it moved to 841 sometime after that. It was the same channel, it just happened to have changed EPG position.

In the case of ITV1, you only see your own region on 103 and London on 993 (unless London is already your region, in which case I don't think you do). Therefore, if you change region either by moving or due to an ITV region shuffle then the channel you set the reminders or series link on appears to no longer exist as far as the software is concerned.

Viewers not in the Tyne Tees area or who aren't moving can create all the fun of the above by doing the following (may not be available in the Central West region)...

1. Turn off your Sky box at the wall.
2. Remove the viewing card.
3. Turn the Sky box back on and wait for the channels to populate.
4. You should now have BBC One London on 101 and ITV1 Central W (IIRC) on 103. Turn to 103.
5. Put the viewing card back in.
6. Set a reminder and/or a recording for some programme(s) on 103 (which should still be Central)
7. Put the box on stand by, wait 10 seconds and take it out of stand by.
8. You should now have your 'correct' regions on 101 and 103 again but you should still have the reminders/recordings in the EPG for Central.
9. When you see the reminder appear, press select and your box will either crash or turn to 998. Recordings will just fail with a 'techincal problem'.
10. Have your dinner.

It will be 'interesting' to see what happens if you set a manual record on 103 when it has the wrong region assigned, either by using the method I outlined above or by living in a region which has received one of those ITV/Sky leaflets. Why not try it at home? And until next time, have fun.

Thanks David. The Avago event is certainly one I remember well. Thought it might have something to do with the lack of EPG numbers for ITV. Incidentally, how does the BBC justify having an EPG slot for every single region?

Indeed, I find it is helpful when explaining something to relate it to something else that everyone already knows about. I thought it was safe to assume that anyone reading TV Forum would remember where they were onTuesday 23rd March 2004
[media:f930738ada]http://up.metropol247.co.uk/davidlees/Avago_channel_move.flv[/media:f930738ada]

Here the TV Forum thread discussing this important issue. It ran to 1 page...
http://www.tvforum.co.uk/tvhome/sky-digital-epg-shake-23-9353/

EDIT : Here is another one for some reason. I guess the Mods weren't so hot on merging threads in those days.
http://www.tvforum.co.uk/tvhome/sky-epg-9376/


I guess it is so that the very small number of viewers with a Sky box but no viewing card can still see their BBC regional news programmes. I imagine this is such a small demographic that ITV don't feel they are worth bothering with.

It's more a case of ITV restricting out-of-region viewing to keep the advertisers happy AIUI. The BBC offer all their regions to cope with overlap regions where your postcode might not match your choice of region (or where you would point an aerial in old money) - whereas ITV have sold regional advertising based on a regional footprint, and don't want people watching other adverts in other regions.

I think it is more a case of ITV not wanting to cause advertising issues rather than them even considering local news.

Would it not be possible to have 3 or so 97x slots which are allocated to the 3 nearest regions (like Virgin Media will only add a couple of local regions at the headend, along with the nations). Surely that's 8ish nationwide EPG slots which could be sold straight up?