TV Channel Codes

But surely you could avoid the discrepancy between platforms by calling the channels by their proper names? You've pretty much shot yourself in the foot there.

All of these you could knock of bits and most people would understand. "Let's watch Overseas Property" would sound stupid to anyone who has never watched it.

Paramount 1 +1 OR Comedy 1 +1
Civilisation OR Discovery Civil
Animal Planet
Crime and Investigation
Documentary


Discovery 1.5
Sony Asia OR Entertainment Asia
Record TV
North East and Cumbria


Animal Planet +1
Documentary +1
TVE Europe
East Yorkshire (Sorry Lincolnshire) or BBC One East Yorkshire
Five Live Sports Extra

It's hard to shorten National Geographic Wild

Actually Sony Entertainment Televison Asia is the correct version of "Sony Entertainment TV Asia", making it 12 letters.

The reason why I got into TV Channel Codes is explained here, in the CBeebies presentation thread. In order for me not to have to fully repeat it here, please check out the said link, but come back here to reply.

Basically it all boils down to this. If the other person hadn't walked into the classroom during the said programme, the teacher wouldn't have started the conversation, and hence I wouldn't have got into doing codes for BBC1, ITV and Channel 4 in 1986, or gone on to extend it to as much as possible of DTT and Sky in 2006 and 2007 (or set up the threads on Digital Spy Forums and TV Forum).

So it all started at primary school? About time you grew out of it then and realised it's pointless, uninteresting and has turned you into a laughing stock.

Well yes and no is the answer to your question.

YES Primary school spring term 1981 (a Friday morning in February). We were watching a schools programme on BBC2 that Friday morning - one which should have been on BBC1 the first week of term but for some reason didn't get shown - hence its rescheduling on BBC2. I thought I heard the teacher say " It's on B2 today " during a conversation with someone else during the programme, and thought she meant "the programme is on BBC2". I definitely remember hearing a pause between the B and the 2.

Now PLEASE don't blame the rescheduling, that in itself is NOT the cause of me going into TV channel codes. If anything, it's thanks to the other person walking into the classroom part way through the programme, and the teacher starting talking to her.

NO I did NOT go on to extend it to the other two channels (BBC1 and ITV) at the time. It was over five and a half years later, autumn term 1986. By then I was in the fourth year (year 10 in todays lingo) at secondary school. I could still remember the said moment from February 1981.

It occurred to me that if B2 = BBC2, then B1 should be BBC1. Likewise I1 should be used to represent ITV (regardless of regional franchise), and I2 should be Channel 4. As you know I've revised that since, Channel 4 has since been C4 and now 4C. On the other hand, when the real ITV2 launched in 1998, that took the code I2.

It's only in the last 18 months that there's been the explosion in codes. I went public with it for the first time in February 2006, by setting up "TV Channels: A Shorthand Code" on Digital Spy. That had a couple of idle periods in the first few months, then a long gap with no postings between July and December 2006. You see, the problem was up until Xmas 2006, codes were still all one letter followed by one numeral.

That created a problem for coding the UKTV family of channels. It took me until 29 December 2006 to decide to move away from one letter - one numeral, and realise that sometimes it would be necessary to use two letters, or perhaps two letters and a numeral. In the case of UKTV, start them all with U, followed by letter H for History, BI for Bright Ideas, Dr for Drama, G1 for Gold, G2 for G2, etc. Hence why it was then (29 December 2006, in the afternoon) that I suddenly posted a list of codes for the UKTV family of channels, thereby bumping a thread that hadn't been replied to for five months.

Since the start of this year, I've coded all the Sky TV, Discovery, Virgin, EMAP and Chart Show channels. The annoying thing about the Sky Digital EPG is that the lineup changes so often. Look how Sky rebranded their movies channels this year, from numbers (one, two, three etc) to genre (Premiere, Family, Classics etc). The replacement movie channels needed new codes. Discovery Kids (DK) and Discovery Wings (DW) were both axed and replaced with Discovery Turbo (DU). Chopping and changing like this annoys me as it means changing codes.

You would have the advantage of learning channel codes as one channel comes along, where if anyone else tried to use them, the would have to learn 50+ codes for Freeview, and many more for Sky/Virgin. Unless anyone uses the codes every day, much like channel numbers, (unless you use the TV guide all the time) which probably have less cohesion to the names than the codes, they are not going to be remembered and is going to be a hindrance rather than a solution.

These codes seem to be useless - you couldn't use them as a replacement for channel numbers as it would take longer to type in and it would be no good as shorthand - the names are presented to everyone as full or slightly shortened names. I am taking neither side, but I am simply saying that it is inconvenient to most.

http://jrothwell97.googlepages.com/whatcat.PNG

jrothwell97, I dunno how you put up with TW, his codes are just brain aching stupid.

I've been through three boxes of stress pills today and it's only 5 o'clock!

I think I want to drown myself.

I shall jump from a boat.

It will have a stupid code number, consisting of the first and last letter of the name of the town in which it is registered, followed by a few numbers.

will that be a C/ST(G:2)(INST:SUIC/DR(BOAT))(42865)?

Do you have any idea what the programme was or why it wasn't shown on B1?