FIRE HIT TV has indeed appeared on channel 60 on the Manchester mux this morning. Barker video is running - "fire coming soon" "soon a new music TV station playing hits just for Manchester + Cheshire" "fresh hits" "famous hits" "Freeview ch. 60" "a bigger variety of hits". Audio: "This is fire".

Interesting that they are targetting Manchester and Cheshire - not Trafford or Salford who should also stand a chance of getting it - and arguably a better chance than most of Cheshire!

Any chance of it national or Mancs only? Anything to replace shite like 4music and Viva.

Few if any people in Cheshire will get it due to its low power, the decision to go 16 QUAM and its directional aerial. Picture quality on this multiplex is poor especially the movie channels which are appalling.

A music channel just targetting one area (but not a local music channel per se; I believe their base for TV operations is either Cardiff or the south coast) - I'd be surprised if they didn't expand from that.
Given the launch time and the fact they are already working with Canis, I'd expect them to roll out along with the local muxes. That gives them a slow and steady increasing cost/coverage whilst they are starting out.

It's what I'd do if I was running Fire Hit TV

Leaves LCN/Ch. 55 blank. Could be used for Heart TV, as associated with Capital TV on 56.

Travel Channel could also be a contender as associated with Food Network on 48, but would more likely benefit from a possible shuffle down when 41, 42 and 34 are re-assigned (e.g. to local TV, Film 4+1, perhaps C5+1, which would allow 44 and 45 to go to Food Network and Travel).

I like how some places in the UK get more choice in the music tv market than others.

Is the Vault not broadcast on DTT in Ireland?

https://twitter.com/FireHitTV

Fire Hit have been showin 'blue screen of death' for the past few days now.....prior to this it was their annoying 15 second promo on loop.

Considering Aug 2nd is not too far away they need to sort this blue screen out, or no bod will nbother to tune in thinking the channel shows nothing, so not bother looking at ch.60 again.

Blue screen - yes, bsod - no - you got me interested at that, wondered what on earth they'd be doing to get one of those - cashpoints yes, airport departure boards yes, but I've never seen one accidentally broadcast!

I wonder if they are reading this thread - if not, I suppose someone could tweet them.

I've seen reports of the Amiga's Guru Meditation* being broadcast in the past.

* For those who don't know, this is effectively the Amiga equivalent of Windows' BSOD.

Thats unfair.

Why does Manchester get everything? There are two huge regions being ignores here...the South West and the Midlands. Cant we have a local mux?

https://twitter.com/FireHitTV

In the approach to DSO there was a need to keep the last remaining analogue local tv licences on air - local TV multiplexes for Manchester and Cardiff were then awarded, neither made it to air in time for DSO. Only Manchester made it to air, then the government came up with the idea of having local TV, but learnt from the previous mistakes and around 50% of the population (including Birmingham, Nottingham, Bristol, and Cardiff) will have local TV within the next 12 months. Alas just 3 extra channels - the new local service and two which will be same across the UK. Manchester will probably remaining as a playground for new services to test the water.

The line "with Manchester exclusive shows" would lead me to believe its a national launch. Am I correct?

No, it's Manchester only (on terrestrial ast least, and I don't think it's on satellite or cable).

I'm expecting it to roll out natonally with the local mux, but that's just a hunch - I don't have anything to back it up.

Interesting situation that it won't cover the area it broadcast's from, at least not until the Solent region gets a mux.

I prefer Viva, but agree 4music is inadequate these days - technically most of it is a mish-mash, which consists of 10 hours of music - with ads every 15-20 mins, old Channel 4 shows, and boring Teleshopping - which bears no resemblance to the channels name whatsoever.

Can anyone confirm that Fire Hit TV is now broadcasting on freeview.

Plain blue screen at the moment I'm afraid. The barker video was running again a couple of days ago, so it's not just a continuation of the previously reported blue screen - it's a new one!

Lets hope there get everything in places by 9/9/13.

They seem to be getting some data through now - but not all of it! Audio is very bursty/choppy and the video is a very colourful smeared effect updating every second or so, with occasional glimpses of part of a picture that look about right. I checked movies4men and that is fine, so it's not the mux as a whole having problems.

Have they launched yet? They were due to go live on the 9th September. Seeing as it's nearly the 9th October I was hoping to read reports of the service. Any news?

Still showing a blue screen, EPG entries are alternating between hour long entries of "The Biggest Hits Soon" and "TV for Manchester".

Just took a look- slight change, now they have an error screen up with vertical colour bars behind it- "Video Lock Error" and then scrolling beneath is "Encoder_1", white text in a semi transparent blue box with a white border. The bottom 40% of the screen is red.

Thanks Greebo. I guess the September launch didn't happen then.