Sky to swap SD and HD EPG positions

Its only for HD customers, thankfully. I suspect SD customers - and more importantly (for broadcasters) advertisers - would have gone crazy if it had been otherwise been the case.

...and instantly remove the value!

That's an idea straight out of a Karl Marx handbook!

What's your next one, value every house at £1 and make it for sale by public auction at the end of the street?

Some companies have paid for those positions, and/or traded them at great cost on the basis of their value.

Whats PSB about promoting HD?

I don't give a monkey's how much companies might have paid for their particular EPG position, perhaps if they're so concerned about capturing the maximum number of viewers they could think about investing their money in, err; decent programmes. The whole business of EPG positions needs to be subverted, and the viewer given the option to put what they want where they want, just like the presets on your car radio. Do you think I watch BBC News any more or less just because I've reallocated it on my TV from Ch80 to Ch8 ?

Quite right.

There should be a default - as effectively there has been for years on analogue (where TVs have automatically tuned BBC One to 1, BBC Two to 2, ITV1 to 3, C4 to 4, Five to 5 etc. using teletext or similar information). However most analogue sets have then let you re-order the EPG as you see fit - and delete channels you don't want to watch from your line-up.

We should be able to do the same on DSat, DTT, DCab. Of course Pay-TV operators don't want this - they want you to have to surf through all the channels you DON'T subscribe to, so that you can see what you're missing.

Of course it falls to pieces a bit when new channels launch - as they may default to EPG channel numbers that users may have allocated to existing services. However there could be ways round this.

Virgin did use to allow this in an old firmware version.

NTL did, not Virgin.

Would you like me to list all of the previous names? I was referring to that company, of course, not the name itself.

The fact remains that a market in EPG positions has been allowed to develop, and it's not for anyone to suddenly decide that it's meaningless because it doesn't suit them anymore, or trying to claim that it confuses the customer.

The vast majority of DSat channels have no PSB commitment, so whether they broadcast "err...decent programmes" is irrelevant. If nobody watches them, then they go bust; and what they spend on programming or an EPG position is of no concern to their viewers.

The EPG position trade is better regulated than the way BT used to sell their 'easy to remember' phone numbers at premium prices to companies who were willing to pay. I don't seem to remember people complaining about that.

Ofcom created the DSat EPG regulations to make sure that Sky couldn't control it. It's tied up tighter than a duck's arse for that reason.

Perhaps you'd all prefer it to be deregulated and allow Sky to pick and choose where they put channels?

I fundamentally disagree that any broadcaster or channel should dictate in what order they should appear in an EPG. Have a default one by all means, and in fact the vast majority of viewers would probably not change it.

I'll put a question to you, would you try to prevent Sony (for instance) from making the Freeview EPG listing editable on their receivers, and under what logic would you argue that case ?

No single broadcaster or channel is dictating what order they appear on the EPG.

Ofcom made the rules for DSat in order to create a standard. Either the standard exists or it doesn't, but the absence of one would create a rather confusing situation for viewers, and something of a 'free-for-all' for Sky as they would then be allowed to effectively sell positions for channels available to their 10m subscribers.

Why would Sony, for example, want to create their own EPG with different numbers on Freeview?

There is already the rather confusing situation that Freesat EPG numbers are different to those on Sky. I don't think it would be wise to create a similar confusion with a separate EPG on DTT as well, and certainly wouldn't be in the interests of a single manufacturer such as Sony.

Maybe we should have a non numerical EPG labelling system, using the remote control buttons like a mobile phone (already labelled on Sky) - perhaps a single letter to denote the broadcaster, or group of channels, then a number or letter to choose the channel from that group?