UK Television
Incomplete, needs to be expanded. Please help to fill the gaps or discuss the issue on the talk page
Contents
Providers
- Analog Broadcast (BBC1,2,ITV,C4 and Channel 5) - being phased out by 2012, earlier in some areas.
- Freeview (DVB-T) - SD content, trialing HD in areas.
- Sky Satellite (DVB-S/S2) - Provides SD and HD content.
- Virgin Media Cable (DVB-C) - merged NTL/Telewest, SD content trailing HD.
Listings
tv_grab_uk_rt
UK listings are best served by using the tv_grab_uk_rt grabber (Uk_xmltv), which uses a dedicated xmltv feed on the Radio Times website.
EIT data
Another option is to use the EIT data available in the DVB streams, this would be a usable solution for Freeview users, but for Sky/Virgin Media it may prove unreliable as EIT data is sometimes transmitted on seperate program id from the a/v.
Hardware
DVB-T/Freeview
The UK is made up of 6 multiplexes. As you can see below, with only 6 tuners you could have quite an incredible MythTV recording platform.
Standard DVB-T cards work fine for receiving Freeview broadcasts, Haupaggue Nova-T cards seem to be the most popular and are well supported within MythTV.
Mux 1 | Mux 2 | Mux A | Mux B | Mux C | Mux D |
BBC ONE | ITV1 | abc1 | 301 | E4+1 | Film4 |
BBC TWO | ITV2 | bid tv | 302 / Community | Sky Sports | Ideal World |
BBC THREE / CBBC | ITV3 | Five | 305 | Sky Sports News | ITV Play |
BBC NEWS 24 | CITV | Five Life | BBC FOUR / CBeebies | Sky Three | The HITS |
Channel 4 | Five US | BBC News Multiscreen | UKTV History / smileTV | TMF | |
E4 | price-drop tv | BBC Parliment | UKTV Bright Ideas / f tn | ||
More 4 | QVC | ||||
Quiz Call | Teachers' TV |
In addition, there are a large number of radio stations.
The full list can be found here: [1]
DVB-C
Warning: Accessing Virgin Media services via a DVB-C card is possibly a breach of their Terms & Conditions.
Virgin Media broadcasts standard DVB-C over their network. Most of the channels are encrypted with Nagravision and could be decoded with a standard CI and Nagravision CAM. Unfortunatly, Virgin Media lock their Nagra cards to only work with the built-in CAMs in their STBs. Theres no way to (legally) access encrypted channels from the Virgin Media network using this method, Capturing these channels via the STB with a analog card (PVR150 and it's ilk) is legal.
Virgin Media do broadcast a number of channels which are unencrypted, via DVB-C and in some areas analog, all the BBC channels (1,2,3,4), ITV and Channel 4. Using MythTV with these channels is legal, however VM terms and conditions do not allow any equipment other than that they supply to be connected to their cable network so by doing this you will be breaking their terms and conditions.
DVB-S
A selection of channels is also available for UK_Television via Sky Digital satellite. These channels are likewise multiplexed.
The Free TV channels that can be received with a DVB-S card (ie no Sky box required) note that the EIT data for these channels only appears to contain now and next.
Eurobird 1 & Astra 2A/2B/2C/2D at 28.2°E
Note especially the BBC HD
tp 41 | ITV 2+1 | ITV 1 | |||||
tp 42 | FILM4 | FILM4+1 | |||||
tp 44 | ITV 1 | ITV 2 | CITV | ITV 4 | Men & Motors | ||
tp 45 | BBC One | BBC Two | BBC News24 | BBC Four | CBBC | CBeebies | BBC Three |
tp 47 | BBC One | BBC Two | BBC Radio | ||||
tp 50 | BBC One | BBC HD | |||||
tp 54 | Channel TV | STV | ITV 3 |
tp 14 | Zee Music UK | |
tp 26 | Sky News UK | Sky News Ireland |
Sky/Sky+ Box
For remote controlling a Sky or Sky+ box - the first two are a wired solution so do not have the usual unreliabily/fiddly setup issues associated using infrared to control the STB:
- D-I-Y Sky rflink lirc mini howto
- prebuilt USB Sky rflink hardware / software
- prebuilt infrared option
There is also a script to update the sky frequency numbers afer the recent (28th Jan 2006) change.
Virgin Media STB
This page for the cable box control: [2]
Configuration for Virgin Media box control can be found in the LIRC remotes archive, The DI4000N config file will work for Samsung boxes, the older black Pace boxes have a seperate configuration.