How to deal with Football

[Muttley]

No. Sports is very important. It needs be on its very own channel. Somewhere far, far away.

Yep I totally agree, us sports fans should pay £35+ a month so you guys can watch endless repeats of 70's sitcoms and aussie soaps. After all we only pay a fraction of the licence fee compared to real TV addicts..

[AlanC]

Having just had a load of recordings cocked up by the BBC due to the overrun of the FA Cup final, how about some logic to deal with *any* football match........ I complained to the BBC who pretty much said "We can't help it if the match over runs,...

Getting back to the issue, on Analogue TV the BBC broadcast a program delay signal, that a VCR can pick up and use to change the recording times. I don't know if any PC hardware makes this available to the PVR but perhaps you should ask the BBC to update the EPG on digital channels in a similar way, then all GBPVR would have to do is check the DVB EPG before starting to record.

[bgowland]

I don't know if any PC hardware makes this available to the PVR but perhaps you should ask the BBC to update the EPG on digital channels in a similar way, then all GBPVR would have to do is check the DVB EPG before starting to record.

I used to know a fair bit about TV theory but I'm not sure I ever found out where in the signal the PDC information is - it's possible with analogue cap. cards with MPEG2 encoders, that the information might not be exposed. There is a 'Status' component somewhere in the streams of DVB which effectively says what is playing now and could, in effect, be used for the same thing.

That said, however, this is a subject which pops up from time to time in the Wishlist and it's not a feature that sub ever intends to add to GB-PVR. It would take a reasonable amount of work just to change the recording logic to handle this and the systems vary around the world which makes it all the more difficult. sub also points out that this stuff can be very unreliable and, in the case of the DVB status info., often just tells you what 'should' be showing and not what actually is showing.

From my own experience I know that PDC on ITV1 is either non-existent or is unreliable. The BBC and C4 seem to be pretty reliable though, but at this point I'm talking the analogue side of things. I have no idea how accurate the dvb status info is.

Cheers,
Brian

[stefan]

Swedish Public Service tv experimented with PDC for a while about 5-10 years ago, but they ditched it. Don't quite know why, but... They were the only who tried here, the commercial financed stations never even declared they were interested of looking at it.

[bgowland]

the commercial financed stations never even declared they were interested of looking at it.

Before the introduction of PDC in the UK, there was talk that it might even be used to send a different signal during advert breaks (allowing VCRs to pause etc). The commercial companies weren't happy about that, I can tell you.

As it is, that feature was never introduced and, ironically, it was Channel 4 (a commercial channel) that was the first to introduce PDC here. Their delivery is pretty much rock-solid.

Cheers,
Brian

[wannabepvr]

Yep I totally agree, us sports fans should pay £35+ a month so you guys can watch endless repeats of 70's sitcoms and aussie soaps.

We don't want the soaps back. You HAVE to keep them. PLEASE

[bdgbill]

Yes, I think I might consider stopping my direct debit to the BBC for my licence fee

Do you still have to buy a license for your tv's over there? I used to work for a guy who was from Kent and he told me stories of special tv detecting trucks that would drive down the street from time to time. Apparantly if these people detected a working tv in your home and you were not licensed they had the authority to search your home and issue heavy fines.

This would be unthinkable in the states and I only half believed him.

[bgowland]

Hmmm.... and those detection vehicles work by detecting radiation of the IF frequency from the TV's tuner. This wont work with modern digital tuners. Wonder if they've got a way around that little problem?

Yep. They have a database of every address in the UK which doesn't have a TV licence.

You think I'm joking? They advertise this as a reminder to get people to renew their licence.

Kinda hard to avoid...

If you have satellite TV you need a dish. They don't work well in lofts and are easy to spot when bolted to the side of your house.

If you have cable, the cable companies are legally bound to submit your address to the authorities when they install it.

If you buy any device that is capable of receiving TV signals (TV, VCR or even PCI/USB capture card/box), again, the company that sells it to you has to take your address and pass it on to the authorities.

Do I care? No. My licence costs me £120 a year (or there abouts, can't remember). That's less than one-tenth of what it cost me to build my PVR and the money (or at least what's left after the fat cats cream off their share) goes to fund the BBC. No adverts - nice! Generally good programmes. BBC local radio stations across the whole of the UK (you don't need a licence to own a radio), plus the BBC World Service.

Hmm - sorry, that last bit wasn't meant to sound like a political campaign. I just don't have a problem with the setup. I dread the day when the licence issue goes up before parliament again - if the BBC lose the right to charge for it, they'll have to go commercial. Urrrk.

Cheers,
Brian

[djtaylor]

Yep I totally agree, us sports fans should pay £35+ a month so you guys can watch endless repeats of 70's sitcoms and aussie soaps. After all we only pay a fraction of the licence fee compared to real TV addicts..

Actually, i'd be interested to see PPV for *all* programmes. Just a tiny amount, in the pence or fractions of but it would sort out the crap programmes from the ones that are actually worth watching.

I loathe the Christmas repeats which usually take the form of "well we got good ratings last year so lets just do it again this year".

So PPV on all channels but lose the commercials. The notion that here are a load of programmes that we've put together and you're going to have to watch them or go elsewhere sucks. Media delivery will move towards an on demand system and that's where the future should lie.

David.

[djtaylor]

PVR but perhaps you should ask the BBC to update the EPG on digital channels in a similar way, then all GBPVR would have to do is check the DVB EPG before starting to record.

Which might work for BBC but what about the rest?

I would have thought that picking up the "what's on now/next" type info would acheive the same. You'd think that a digital stream would be identifiable in some way easily enough.