Archive news 2005.
This is the news that was on the front page of the site in 2005. I've moved it here as it was taking up rather a lot of space.
28th November 2005: The ITVi
stream on Astra 2A is no longer carrying ITV1 Central.
If you have access to 5E, there is a TV1000 service testing on Sirius 2.
19th November 2005: If you are looking for Astra 2D dish sizes for Germany this site has some excellent information about required sizes.
17th November 2005: A quick tip for anyone wanting ITV but out of range of Astra 2D. Theres a temporary ITV1 on Astra 2A! Try 12422H and look for the service tagged "ITVi". This DOES NOT work with sky digiboxes - only with decent receivers. Its ITV1 Central West from Birmingham. Make the most of it - its unlikely to last long.
2nd November 2005: ITV3's new sister station ITV4 started fta on Astra 2 last night. Its on after 6pm UK time on 10758V SR 22000 FEC 5/6. (Tagged as 10072). ITV 4 will be launching onto sky epg 120 next Monday, at the moment you can only view it through ADD CHANNELS..
1st November 2005: Excellent news for everyone with a fta satellite reciver - All ITV services are now fta on Astra 2D. The encryption was turned off one tp at a a time over an hour or so this morning. I wont have time to update the frequency pages for a couple of days so put them onto your receiver using this page.
23rd October 2005: The fta French services on 5W have changed symbol rate. They are now on 11591V sr20000 fec 2/3. Ive been on holiday for a week, but I'll update the charts over the next few days.
9th October 2005: Ive added a new page - tracking the satellite arc using the sun in March and October.
8th October 2005: I watched the launch of ESA's Cryosat spacecraft on Astra 1 this afternoon. Sadly the launch failed due to a software glitch(!)
22nd September 2005: The Slovakians have ceased off 28E. Telenor have ordered Thor II-R to replace Thor II. Launch is expected in 2 years time.
9th September 2005: Hotbird 4 will be relocating to 7W mid 2006 and re-designated to Nilesat 103. It will be providing much needed extra capacity transmitting into eastern North Africa and the Middle East. Hottie 4 will be surplus to requirements at 13E once Hotties 7A & 8 are in service.
Useless Eurovision fact #1 - The bottom 4 this year were France / UK / Spain / Germany - the biggest 4 contributors to the Eurovision budget, and the only 4 countries safe from "relegation" to the semifinal.
Useless Eurovision fact #2 - This year had 39 countries voting - the most ever. Lebanon was supposed to be #40, but withdrew when TeleLiban were told they could not show adverts during the Israeli entry!!
21st May 2005: Its Eurovision Song Contest night, so dozens of channels will be carrying the annual festival of dreadful ditties and tactical voting :-)
8th May 2005: Most of the charts are more or less up to date again.
2nd May 2005: Im recovering from a computer failure, so updates have been a bit delayed. Things should be getting back to something approaching normal in the next few days..... The site counter on the front page passed 50,000 over the weekend!
17th April 2005: Ive been away on holiday in Derbyshire the last 2 weeks. The charts & Sky fta channel guides will all be updated over the next few days.
31st March 2005: Sky epg changes update the big change will be later in the year - radio services will be switched to 4 digit numbers, and new categories will be introduced to the guide.
A second forthcoming satellite move - Express A1R at 40E will be moving to 14W.
7th September 2005: Good news - ITV will be going fta in "the next few months" So sometime in the first half of 2006 we will be adding all the ITV sub regions onto the 28E chart :-)
You TV 3 has been pulled off the Sky epg due to technical problems.after just 3 weeks on air..... If its a permanent loss, it will smash the previous record held by "Mobile Crazy TV" in late 2003.
17th August 2005: Well Eutelsat W1 has been patched up, and is reported to have "depointed". Basically it lost lock due to a power supply problem. Its reported to be stable, although seems to have lost 2 transponders.
11th August 2005: 0830: Eutelsat W1 at 10E
suffered a failure yesterday and is currently off air.
Update 1830: Eutelsat successfully restarted services on W1 mid morning. At the
current time theres no reasons been given for the cause.
9th August 2005: ABC 1 have appeared on Astra 2D this afternoon. Proof here. They are testing on 10862H, SR 22000 FEC 5/6 (tagged as 9010). They are encrypted to Family Pack level, they are NOT fta, but Im including them on the site for all the folks who have been waiting months for them to appear.
Heres the predicted footprint for the forthcoming Hotbird 7A, and a selection of new testcards / information cards from assorted satellites around the Clarke Belt - including the Eri TV camel! :-)
28th July 2005 Over the last couple of days Ive spent sevaral hours having great fun re-aligning the 1m dish onto 26E. What a fascinating collection of channels. Mauretania, Djibouti, and Eritrea are all represented on Arabsat 3A. Eri.TV has a camel on its test card when its off air! Saudi Arabia 2 carries a reasonable amount of English programming.
Space fans take note - Sky New Active on 28E is carrying a lot of shuttle mission feeds at the moment :-) From Sky News channel 501, press red and once its loaded bring up Sky News Active (the top option). The Shuttle mission has been the 4th screen. Highlight it and press SELECT. Note - the link does drop out now and then..
A poor substitute for NASA TV but at least we get to see some coverage... If ANYONE from Sky reads this, please tell the channel marketing droids in Head Office that with the current interest in space missions, now would be a very goood time for you to provide us with NASA TV 24/7. You would make a LOT of friends.
27th July 2005, The long neglected 23.5E gets a new entry. Ive finally got round to looking at it again.
24th July 2005: The foreign channels on the Sky epg have been shuffled today. Details here. Two new fta channels on 28E - SET Max and You TV2
21st July 2005: A new satellite joins the site! Express AM 22 way round at 53E has been added after I managed to get strong signals off it on one of the old free standing dishes. This is the first new orbital slot to be added in a very long time.
2 more ITV sub regions have started testing. One is for Meridian, the second is currently unidentified but may be for Yorkshire.
19th July 2005: Just finished work for my summer break and after weeks of glorious weather here, its now raining! :-( Oh well instead of cutting the grass I'll have to make a start on updating the frequency lists instead ;-)
16th July 2005: Two new ITV channels launch later this year! ITV4 will start on November 1st, via Astra 2D, and ITV Childrens Channel will launch "in the Autumn" This one is reported to be time sharing with ITV4, so could well launch at the same time. I have compiled a long list of the forthcoming channels believed to be planning to start on the Sky platform in the near future. Read the list
Sont Max is testing on the Sky platform and is expected to launch in the near future - Have a look at 11973V SR 27500 FEC 2/3 (tagged as 7430). They will almost certainly go encrypted soon after launch.
Also 3 new ITV sub regions coming soon and are testing, details here They are for Anglia, Tyne Tees and Yorkshire.
South Asia World will encrypt on 1st August :-(
Indian religious service Aastha TV will be the next Asian to join the platform. Preliminary tests have started, although without video at the moment...
10th July 2005: Ive been seeing a few reports of folks losing channels during the current hot spell in the UK. It seems to be caused by the electronics in the lnb getting cooked by the intense heat being reflected off the dish.This causes the lnb internal osscillator to drift off frequency. The picture often returns as the day cools down. If you have this problem, trickle some cold water over the lnb to cool it. If the picture returns the lnb needs replacing. (They can be had for less than 20 UKP).
3rd July 2005: The Czech and Slovak services on 28E are reported to be leaving 28E for Astra 3A at 23E at the end of Jan 2006. ITV sub regions Anglia East and Scottish East appeared a few days after the Centrals appeared.
20th June 2005: ITV1 have launched 2 new subregions on Sky. Central South And East have appeared. Details here.
4th June 2005: Hate that blasted Crazy Frog ringtone advert?? Get your own back. See if you can beat my score of 91!
22nd May 2005: The 39
countries/broadcasting organisations taking part in this years Eurovision were:
Albania (RTVSH); Andorra (RTVA); Austria (ORF); Belarus (BTRC); Belgium (VRT/RTBF); Bosnia
& Herzegovina (JSBIH/PVSBIH); Bulgaria (BNT); Croatia (HRT); Cyprus (Cy/CBC); Denmark
(DR); Estonia (ETV); Finland (YLE); France (France 3); FYR Macedonia (MKRTV); Germany
(ARD); Greece (ERT); Hungary (MTV); Iceland (RUV); Ireland (RTE); Israel (IBA); Latvia
(LTV); Lithuania (LRT); Malta (MT/PBS); Moldova (TRM); Monaco (TMC); Netherlands (NPB);
Norway (NRK); Poland (PRT/TVP); Portugal (RTP); Romania (TVR); Russia (C1R/RTR); Serbia
& Montenegro (YRT/RTS/RTCG); Spain (TVE); Sweden (SVT); Slovenia (RTVSLO); Switzerland
(SRG SSR idée Suisse); Turkey (TRT), Ukraine (NTU); United Kingdom (BBC).
11th March 2005: On 28E - a big reorganisation of ITV frequencies has finally begun. Anglia and Tyne Tees have moved off 10891H and moved to the recently activated 10714H. Current tuning details for Sky digibox users are here
3rd March 2005: Many of the main French services have suddenly appeared in the clear on 5W! France 2 / 3 / 5 / Arte / LCP & Festival are on 11590V sr 19636 fec 2/3
28th February 2005: On 28E, Motors TV has joined the pay tv platform :( Its encrypted to Family Pack level.
17th February 2005: Teachers TV moving epg next week on the Sky platform - they are moving to 592 on 21st Feb. 6 new testcards and info cards added to the site. ITV service Grampian TV have been running an engineering announcement for transmitter work at 9.25 this week, prior to joining the network for "Trisha"
14th February 2005: On the Sky platform Life TV rejoins us on 160 after solving their technical problems. Smooth FM north west has joined on epg 878. Details have been announced of The Poker Channel launching at the end of March, and another epg shuffle on the 14th March. No idea how big this one will be yet, although I suspect it could be a big one as several sections are now out of space. Eezee TV launches on 659 on 1st March.
9th February 2005: Ofcom have published their official timetable for closing down the analogue terrestrial tv transmitter network:
TV Region Proposed Date
1st Border 2008
2nd West Country 2008
3rd HTV Wales 2008
4th Granada 2009
5th HTV West 2009
6th Grampian 2009
7th Scottish TV 2009
8th Central 2010
9th Yorkshire 2010
10th Anglia 2010
11th Meridian 2011
12th Carlton/LWT 2011
13th Tyne Tees 2011
14th Ulster 2011
15th Channel 2012
each region is expected to take 6 months to switch from analogue to digital.
5th February 2005: 28E update - Life TV removed from epg 160 after technical problems. Up on 837, NSAT have run out of money and ceased transmissions for the time being. They hope to return once refinancing has been put in place.
1st February 2005: Update to Channels coming to Sky soon - Teachers TV will be on 686 from 8th Feb. Gay Network 688 also launching on 8th Feb. If you are a football fan, & have access to 19E you might want to look at the newly fta Real Madrid TV on 11508V 22000 5/6
27th January 2005: Apologies for any downtime - My isp host (Betterwebspace) are having problems :(
25th January 2005: experimental addition, a satellite news feed from the Digital Spy site - will need a bit of tweaking yet.
22nd January 2004: Fta channels coming soon to Sky Digital. Vectone World (news channel) on 537, Fizz (music) 468, Look4Love (dating) 685, Reality+1 (timeshift) 187?, Kismat Radio (asian talk) 923, Teachers TV (for teachers obviously) epg not confirmed. Authentic TV (shopping) 687 Auction Heaven 649. Several more test cards added
16th January 2004: 5 new testcards added to the site. Babel fish translation tool added
12th January 2005: Ive figured out the error reports for the new server, and I see there are one or two gremlins still to be sorted. Theres a couple of images missing for starters :-( I will get the problems sorted out as soon as I can....... Ive made a start on updating the frequency charts again.
11th January 2005: Most of the glitches seem to be ironed out now. Details of the coverage of the arrival of the Huygens probe at Titan have been released. Astra 1 10832H (ESA TV) and 12552V (AstraVision 2) Both now carrying colourbar testcards with ESA TV on them. A couple of screenshots of the new SES-Betzdorf tests on 11436 on 19E can be seen here. I will make a start in updating all the charts again in the next couple of days.
10th January 2005: The site finally moved onto its new server yesterday. (there are some routing problems at the moment as the domain name servers are updated - I can see the site from work but not at home!!) Hooray - no more bloody Geocities adverts ever! Plenty of new content to add to the site in the next few weeks, and the charts will be updated as soon as I get all the gremlins associated with the change of server sorted out.
2nd January 2005: The site is FINALLY moving onto a proper server hosting :-) There may be one or two hiccups whilst things are set up, but I hope the transition will be fairly seamless.
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