Lol! Its a declining listening method for the radio stations so I guess cutting costs. Maybe it's a sign of what the new compression technology does - who needs a Freeview2 when our multiplex owners do such a great job of adding more channels. Lol

Also notice Motors TV is now on the Freeview TV guide on their website.

I wonder why they're choosing to launch Pop+1 and not one of their other kids channels.

They might as well take all the radio stations off freeview if we have to listen to crap like that

Maybe Chart Show TV to come next and share with it?

Think all these channels are getting in before the retune so as to be picked up on more sets when people do the retune that has been widely advertised?

I'd have expected them to add that at the same time if they were going to.


Obviously, yes. But why break it up into two separate changes before the "big one". Why not do it all on the same day? Adding POP+1 on 76 when it is going to move in two days and most likely before it starts broadcasting is just weird. Why not hold out for two days and do the mux move combined with the new LCN? TBA on 136 - why add it a week before the changes on the new LCN, when they clearly can't even use the real name?

There's not a single change there (and last week) that couldn't have waited until the 3rd.

Not very encouraging to find that Bauer appear to consider this to be acceptable audio quality when they are one of the joint bidders for the Digital Two DAB multiplex. Possibly a sign that Digital Two will join Digital One and bring further poor quality audio channels to the market.

Yep, they have added 2 language descriptors for a single audio stream. I guess they will fix that at some point. At least it is better than earlier when it was carrying the audio feed for Smooth,

I agree. Given that channel numbers can be allocated but not activated for a while (eg TBN), they did not need to add the services until tomorrow morning. (eg stage 1, 11:00 activate placeholders for new channels on 69, 90, 126 and 136, stage 2 at 1:00, change news and children's channel numbers. Where capacity is available, start activating the new services shortly thereafter.)

And a timeshift having greater coverage than its main channel is difficult to explain to audiences.

But it is interesting to see how the last two waves of changes have occured in the afternoon, rather than the 10:45-11:45 timeframe that has previously been used. Is this an indication of when the hopefully final set of changes are made?

Also to note is that COM6/ArqB was configured to have enough null packets to allow two services to launch shortly after BBC RB302 was closed, before the null packets were reduced. Therefore I think we should expect a new stream to activate there shortly.

Although I suppose some changes yesterday may have been driven by carriage contracts put in place before the September retune date was announced?

Whenever I peek at these sort of threads, I'm always surprised by the number of changes to the platform that seem to be constantly occurring, most of which go entirely unnoticed by most of us...

I was hoping to find a definition of "mid-afternoon", this being the time on September 3rd after which I am told I should retune my Freeview receivers. Is it safe to assume that everything will be done and dusted by 15:00?

[While I'm here: a week or so back I noticed that my PVR recording schedule was getting shorter and shorter, despite my having quite a few things on series record. A quick check confirmed that most of these series had not come to an end, but the PVR had simply not scheduled the following week's recording, despite the programmes still showing as being selected for series recording. I had to reselect them from the EPG. Was this some weird glitch in my PVR, or did something in the EPG change that would account for this behaviour?]

Since this has little to do with the September 1st changes, why not start a separate topic while you are here?

Well, it no longer really matters, since the problem has been resolved. I just thought that people who take a keen interest in changes to the Freeview platform might have an explanation.

It is more likely that those with a digital stream unit who have played with padding after setting series links would have an explanation. Posting in a digital stream thread may have turned up some suggestions.

The DSO event being broadcast is for 15:30. This was viewable on a hidden timer event on a Humax recorder that the Humax set in response to what is being broadcast from its transmitter. It is possible that the event beening broadcast is identical on all transmitters. This would means that the target completion for all transmitters is for 15:30. There will be some allowance for delays but if you want to be 'safe' then stick to 15:30 or later.

Regarding ITVBe, what they may do is what they did on a previous occasion they needed space for a new channel on SDN - cut ITV2 +1 back to evenings-only timeshared with CITV (if you recall, it was part-time for a bit 'til they wedged in an extra video stream to bring it back full-time) and use the current ITV2 +1 capacity for ITVBe. If they want to keep LCNs alive for ITV3 +1/ITV4 +1 placeholders, there's 3am-6am spaces to keep them going in the interim - one after Jackpot247 airs on 39 (the current ITV4 +1), and IIRC there's another space 3-6am in the Jewellery Channel/True Entertainment/Xpanded cluster (unless that's changed and TJC or TE has returned to broadcasting 3-6am content)...

No padding used. Anyway, whatever this never-seen-before occurrence was, it's gone away, so I won't bother thinking about it any more!


Thanks for that. My main interest was finding a time to retune and set up the recording schedule again before a time when I might want to be actually watching or recording something, but after all the changes had taken place. "Mid-afternoon" seemed unnecessarily vague.

It just gets worse and worse. Why anyone would buy into DVB-T or DAB is beyond me. All the "going digital" adverts for DAB annoy me because they brazenly lie.

If you want the best quality radio at least there's the option of listening online (including via other internet-enabled devices like PVRs and TVs) or via satellite. For TV the options are rather limited.

Well, I suspect that won't happen until this mooted 2nd national commercial MUX actually comes to fruition.

Who knows; perhaps that'll herald DAB+ as well as more capacity for existing and new services...

I fully agree with you, Freeview was meant to be a TV service and not a Radio one

What is happening today is nothing to do with DSO. The DSO period totally finished on 24 October 2012 when the last of the analogue transmitters closed in Ulster.

Today's event is a rearrangement of some of the numbers and may be ignored completely if you are happy to stick with the existing numbers.

Apart from some channels that are swapping muxes of course.

Are there any? (or if there are, are they worth being bothered with?)

This retune will help Local TV get onto many more screens.

Mostly radio channels, LCN712-717.

They did say on Look North (Yorkshire) that viewers in Sheffield and Chesterfield will lose some channels completely, including BBC1, if they do not retune/rescan.