Yes, it is possible. It has been done before. For example back in the day, going to cBeebies games on BBC text took you to a different channel on a different mux first. You then had to wait a while for it to load up the MHEG and then the games would appear. I don't know if this still happens or not.

Switching from Mux 1 (eg BBC1) to Mux B (eg 301) was certainly done in the past.

EDIT - beaten to it

Oh yeah that's easy, first time was when BBCi was on SDN in 2002. At that time they also switched video streams without changing channels, this allowed for fairly slick interactive video using the 2 streams.

With BBC Three being on the SD PSB-1 Mux rather than HS PSB-3, would such a message be technically feasible?

As for the possibilities of Red Button Text appearing on BBC One HD and BBC Two HD, why not ask on Alix's blog linked above?

Why is this extra HD stream being wasted on sport? There's already masses of sport available. An HD simulcast of BBC4 would make much more sense, there's some high quality programs shot in HD on there.

Also why always Red Button? A normal channel with a schedule in the Radio Times is much more useful, it's a lot easier to record things when you know they're going to be on. Red Button assumes you're watching live, which I almost never do (partly to get rid of all the annoying "Press Red" popups on the screen).

Thanks Sue, I think all the questions got answered that could be. I tend to avoid wasting my time reading the comments on the BBC blogs, you know that 90% of them are just ranting on their own pet peeve. If you want to contact BBC staff there are better ways if you have something sensible to say to them politely and constructively

This is for the summer only- they've been trying to get someone (eg Five HD) to take up the spare Freeview HD stream but have had no takers, so it is still spare. For satellite and cable they'll have done a short term contract for bandwidth, not a long term commitment. I assume the same for playout at Redbee. Can you imagine the state of the internet forums if we had BBC4 HD for the summer and then they took it away again? There'd be people in meltdown! Plus it isn't just sport - there is at least Glastonbury as well.


If you read the blog you'll see that Alix has posted the temporary EPG numbers for the red button streams, and (apart from Sky which hasn't appeared yet) they all have EPG entries so you can indeed treat them as normal channels and set things to record/remind. Whether the RT lists them or not would be upto the RT.

If they made it a normal channel, it would turn into BBC HD which they have only just got rid of to save money. As a red button stream, they can leave it empty when they don't need it and not have to worry about continuity announcers etc.

To get rid of the press red prompts, either press green each time they appear, or rewind live TV by a second or two to remove all MHEG.

So running a red button stream doesn't cost money but BBC HD did? Seems unlikely to me. And I'm not suggesting a return to BBC HD with it's own schedule, I'm suggesting BBC4 HD which just needs a note of its channel number in the listings. Simulcasts are a lot cheaper.

This really falls outside the scope of a discussion about BBC Red Button, but if we are discussing additional BBC HD channels, I suspect there is rather more HD-originated material on BBC Three than BBC Four and it gets higher ratings (1.4% vs 0.9% in Feb 2013), so why should BBC Four get preference? Personally I'd rather it did, but that's not the point.

Strangely enough, the BBC Trust would have to sanction a new "channel", with many things to satisfy (not least a Public Value Test and a Market Impact Assessment by Ofcom), whilst Red Button streams have the bar set to a much, much lower level

The most likely place for more HD channels to come from is the joint BBC C4 Arqiva bid for 600MHz spectrum - see http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/bin...l_4_Arqiva.pdf - further non-Red Button discussions are probably most appropriate in the thread for that: http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1822085

It also indiscriminately appears no matter which programme is on (times out quick though).

Anyone noticed they're using a very dated "press red" graphic on HD, looks like it is from the BBCi days?

And given the current relationship between Sky and the Beeb I wouldn't be surprised if they spent the whole summer squabbling over this too .

Indeed. If anyone happens to have any info on how that is going, there's a thread in the sky forum where I'd be interested to hear what you know: http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1836130

For something that is only visible for a matter of seconds, I doubt if too many people will be that bothered as to whether it appears dated or not.

You reckon? There was me thinking it might be worth mentioning on a geeky forum....jeez

What's with the attitude?

http://faq.external.bbc.co.uk/questi...ion/red_button has had a bit of a trim.

BBCi was still being used erroneously as the name of the service on the Travel News Disclaimer page the last time I looked.

I notice during the intervals on BBC Red Button, they are now inserting trailers every so often. The switch between the trailers and the holding screen is a bit rough.

This has now been updated to the current graphic.

I have a black screen now on 302.

It will; start broadcasting from June 24th till July 8th then close.