I am very new at Freesat, but have had Freeview for many years, and I notice one thing immediatley and that is I cannot connect to a BBCi channel directly as I can with Freeview.

For example on Freeview I can go to 302,303,etc without having to press the Red button. On Freesat, I cannot find the channel with pressing the Red Button.

Can anyone enlighten me.

One more thing, what format do the files have to be in order to play from a USB drive?

Many thanks

Unlike Freeview, the BBCi red button does not have its own dedicated channels, so you can only access the service via the red button. Consequently, you cannot record them, either.

An external usb drive must be formatted as EXT3 in order to copy to and play back from it. Normally, the formatting is done under Linux. There are other threads on this board which explain how this is done.

Geoff

Not entirely true. Fat32 format works fine for files smaller than 4GB.

The file needs to be a .TS file (transport stream) and it is accompanyed by two 'sidecar' files.

There is a piece of software available (I don't have the link to hand) that will convert AV files and create the 'sidecar' files to work with the HDR

edit: link here

True, but I took the OP's reference to a "USB drive" to mean an external HDD.

Incidentally, is it possible to play back a (sub-4Gb) file from a usb pen?

Geoff

Yep pen or Hdd, as long as under the 4GB limit of the format or over if you reformat to ext3. You can even attach a usb hub and increase the number of attached storage devices. If I remember correctly you can have the internal drive plus 3 externals.

Edit: I've just plugged in 1 external Hdd (FAT32) and 3 pen drives, 2 are FAT32 and the other EXT3. so thats internal plus 4 externals.

What disppointment ! I do enjoy the sports on BBCi and record them to view anytime. I suppose I will continue to use my Freeview system and enjoy the benefits of FreeSat, which are now fewer. Seems a step backwards.

Complain to the BBC about the reduced Red Button service on Freeview. And they will tell you to use iPlayer. So where is MotoGP Xtra on iPlayer, says I? Deafening silence.

Thanks much for this, I shall give it a try and see how I get on.

Just some feedback for you. I have converted 2 files, one an mpg, but the audio was broken up. The second a VOB with ac3 audio and it worked perfectly ! I will try and find out why the mpeg audio didn't convert. However thanks again for the link and info.

I don't have a Freesat box but watch the chanels using a satellite card in a PC using DVBViewer software.


I access the red button channels on the following transponder:

Frequency Symbolrate FEC Stream ID
12441 V . 27500 .....2/3 2038

________PID: Video . Service. Audio. Text . PMT . PCR
STREAM-0 ..... 5000 .. 6880 ... 5001 . 5007 . 256 . 5000
STREAM-1 ..... 5100 .. 6881 ... 5101 . 5103 . 257 . 5100
STREAM-2 ..... 5200 .. 6882 ... 5201 . 5203 . 258 . 5200
STREAM-3 ..... 5300 .. 6883 ... 5301 . 5303 . 259 . 5300
STREAM-4 ..... 5400 .. 6884 ... 5401 . 5403 . 260 . 5400
STREAM-5 ..... 5500 .. 6885 ... 5501 . 5507 . 261 . 5500
STREAM-6 ..... 5600 .. 6886 ... 5601 . 5603 . 262 . 5600

The BBCi streams can be accessed with any receiver other than a freesat receiver it seems, not sure why the freesat boxes lack this ability, but like the above poster said, it's freely available to watch.

They are broadcast as data streams and not channels. Neither freesat nor Sky boxes can tune these streams seperately. If the BBC were to broadcast these as channels with a seperate EPG entry then they would require a new license for each channels (which the BBC trust have said no to) and to pay seperate EPG fee for each. Most generic receivers can tune these channels as they not restricted to EPG data and can also be set up to ignore the data stream flag.

Bump - forum bug

Not true, Technisat boxes can, as can Panasonic Freesat TVs.

Given the above info, I assume there's therefore no way to record the red button streams on the Humax HDR box - correct?

Correct!