As far as I know, the Sky Guide music is created and use exclusively by Sky, is it not? Well, I thought that. However, I was watching Hogan Knows Best on MTV One earlier, and one of the backing tracks was a track used on Sky Guide. I have no clips but I am definately sure it was from Sky Guide.
Do Sky now release their music or am I wrong about the exclusiveness of the backing music?
I was on an XL Airways flight recently when Robert Powell came on the in-flight entertainment screens scrounging for money on behalf of those "We've just made you pay £500 for a pretty crappy flight, but give us money for headless rabbits or you'll go straight to hell" airline charities, and he was accompanied by one of the (now recently replaced) Sky Guide tracks.
I always assumed they were just plain old library...
Anyone know any different?
Until recently (or it may still be ongoing) the Sky EPG music, or one track at least, was used on the Sky Sports trailers.
I'd argue the music isn't exclusive, its the same sort of stuff that appears in most other TV programmes, therefore it's probably library music. If the EPG didn't mute the signal audio when you browsed it, there would be no need for the music.
I'd argue the music isn't exclusive, its the same sort of stuff that appears in most other TV programmes, therefore it's probably library music. If the EPG didn't mute the signal audio when you browsed it, there would be no need for the music.
Sky boxes couldn't continue playing the audio of the channel you were tuned to when you go into the full EPG, as the full EPG is carried as a datastream on a separate transponder (along with the EPG music), rather than duplicated on every transponder in the EPG. As soon as you press TV GUIDE the Sky box tunes away from the channel you are watching to the EPG transponder - and thus can't stay playing the audio of the channel you were watching. When you leave the TV GUIDE the Sky box has to re-tune to the channel you were watching again.
I'd argue the music isn't exclusive, its the same sort of stuff that appears in most other TV programmes, therefore it's probably library music. If the EPG didn't mute the signal audio when you browsed it, there would be no need for the music.
Sky boxes couldn't continue playing the audio of the channel you were tuned to when you go into the full EPG, as the full EPG is carried as a datastream on a separate transponder (along with the EPG music), rather than duplicated on every transponder in the EPG. As soon as you press TV GUIDE the Sky box tunes away from the channel you are watching to the EPG transponder - and thus can't stay playing the audio of the channel you were watching. When you leave the TV GUIDE the Sky box has to re-tune to the channel you were watching again.
Ah, so that explains why Sky+ stops the EPG music and info when you're recording two simultaneous programmes. It can't tune to the EPG transponder because it is already being used to full capacity with the two recordings.
Incidentally, I'm not fussed on the new EPG music. I think I preferred the old stuff.
I'd argue the music isn't exclusive, its the same sort of stuff that appears in most other TV programmes, therefore it's probably library music. If the EPG didn't mute the signal audio when you browsed it, there would be no need for the music.
Sky boxes couldn't continue playing the audio of the channel you were tuned to when you go into the full EPG, as the full EPG is carried as a datastream on a separate transponder (along with the EPG music), rather than duplicated on every transponder in the EPG. As soon as you press TV GUIDE the Sky box tunes away from the channel you are watching to the EPG transponder - and thus can't stay playing the audio of the channel you were watching. When you leave the TV GUIDE the Sky box has to re-tune to the channel you were watching again.
Ah, so that explains why Sky+ stops the EPG music and info when you're recording two simultaneous programmes. It can't tune to the EPG transponder because it is already being used to full capacity with the two recordings.
Yep - if the two tuners are both in use it can't tune to the transponder with the EPG and music.
Freeview works differently - as it broadcasts the full EPG on every mux - but it populates a bit more slowly, and covers far fewer services.
Sky boxes couldn't continue playing the audio of the channel you were tuned to when you go into the full EPG, as the full EPG is carried as a datastream on a separate transponder (along with the EPG music), rather than duplicated on every transponder in the EPG.
That's not strictly speaking true. it is just the music on a seperate transponder. Most of the EPG info is carried in the SI streams across all transponders - IIRC this is required for dynamic EIT to work correctly. However the box does have a 'default transponder' that it loads the channel list from on boot up and will prefer to get the EPG data from if it can - which is the same transponder as the EPG background audio. If a box cannot see the default transponder and gets rebooted it will be pretty much useless - no channel numbers and no EPG.
A couple of years ago I was setting up a sky box in Spain with a dish that was only big enough to get the south beam on Astra 2. Since the default transponder is on the north beam I picked a transponder at random on the south beam (I used the BBC one that carries the radio and interactive video) and reset the default transponder to that - and the box then booted up fine with channel list and full EPG - just no sign of the background music and only half the channels working.
One of the challenges of Freesat has been to broadcast the Freesat SI alongside the Sky SI on the same transponder without confusing the existing Sky receivers.
Sky boxes couldn't continue playing the audio of the channel you were tuned to when you go into the full EPG, as the full EPG is carried as a datastream on a separate transponder (along with the EPG music), rather than duplicated on every transponder in the EPG.
That's not strictly speaking true. it is just the music on a seperate transponder. Most of the EPG info is carried in the SI streams across all transponders - IIRC this is required for dynamic EIT to work correctly. However the box does have a 'default transponder' that it loads the channel list from on boot up and will prefer to get the EPG data from if it can - which is the same transponder as the EPG background audio. If a box cannot see the default transponder and gets rebooted it will be pretty much useless - no channel numbers and no EPG.
A couple of years ago I was setting up a sky box in Spain with a dish that was only big enough to get the south beam on Astra 2. Since the default transponder is on the north beam I picked a transponder at random on the south beam (I used the BBC one that carries the radio and interactive video) and reset the default transponder to that - and the box then booted up fine with channel list and full EPG - just no sign of the background music and only half the channels working.
One of the challenges of Freesat has been to broadcast the Freesat SI alongside the Sky SI on the same transponder without confusing the existing Sky receivers.
Ah - my understanding was that the current Sky EPG implementation only carried a couple of hours of Now and Next information on every EPG transponder (as used by the Search and Scan banner - which runs out of after a few hours) - with the full 7 days and Synopsis content only available by retuning to the TV Guide transponder which carried the full data stream.
AIUI the Sky EPG is compressed using a proprietary Sky scheme (that has been reverse engineered - Ciel Plus interfaces using TSReader can decode it, as can some enthusiast solutions) - whereas the freesat EPG will be open using a similar EIT system as Freeview - but again requiring an EPG transponder to deliver the volume of information required by a PVR quickly, rather than trickling on a low bit rate stream.
I'll dig out my DVB-S card this weekend and have a look at the various streams knocking around!
