BBC satellite changes: radio, BBC ONE HD, Red button reduction 12-15 October 201

After the recent cut in the funding for the BBC, the Delivering Quality First review decided that BBC Red Button would be cut to one screen on all platforms. This will cause a few changes in the use of the BBC satellite transponders.

^{Brian Butterworth published on UK Free TV 3rd October 2012 at 09:56}

During the coming months, BBC ONE HD will launch separate services for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. At the moment BBC ONE HD is a UK-wide service, showing the England schedule, with a caption shown during the regional news slots. The BBC ONE services in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have both local presentation and different schedules.

To provide these changes on Freeview is reasonably trivial, in terms of costs and capacity. However, on satellite each of these versions requires a separate transmission.

To provide this the BBC is taking on a new transponder on the Astra 1N satellite, transponder 61. This transponder will run in DVB-S2 8PSK 2/3 mode, as transponder 50 (10847MHz Vertical) has since Changes to BBC HD transmissions on Astra satellites on 20 September. To provide for this new transponder on the UK-focused satellite, the European-wide (and Sky owned) transponder 13 on Astra 2A will close.

Red Button

The Delivering Quality First required that the BBC Red Button video stream on all services should be reduced to a single stream. The first stream (which is 301 on Freeview) will move from transponder 13 on Astra 2A to Astra 1N transponder 45 (10773MHz Horizontal) on Friday 12th October 2012. All the other video streams will close, but the text services will remain.

Also moving on Friday 12th October 2012, BBC ALBA and BBC One North East & Cumbria will move to transponder 47 (10803MHz Horizontal), to be replaced on transponder 48 (10818MHz Vertical) by BBC three/CBBC from transponder 45 and BBC News from transponder 47. Also moving from 47, but to 45 is BBC Four / CBeebies.

Radio

On Monday October 15th, the radio services will move. This means sharing the stations between transponders 46 (10788MHz Vertical) and 47. This will means that BBC radio will no longer be receivable over the whole of Europe with a small dish.

You may need to retune your equipment on 15th October 2012 -- see below.

Closure of Astra 2A transponders 13

Following the radio moves on Monday October 15th, the BBC will no longer use Astra 2A.

Launch of BBC ONE HD in the Nations, and BBC TWO HD

The BBC ONE services will start later in 2012, with BBC HD becoming BBC TWO HD in 2013.

Retuning

Freeview users will not see any changes, and cable uses will not have to take any action, but will be reduced to a single red button.

If you use Sky or Freesat-from-Sky your box should not require any action. If you are unable to watch the changed channels on that date, turn the Sky box off at the mains, wait 30 seconds and turn the power back on. After a few minutes the box should be able to show the channels again.

If you use Freesat, you may have to "soft reset" the box on 12th or 15th October 2012. To do this, put the Freesat HD box or Freesat HD TV into standby for 30 seconds and then switch it back on again. In some rare cases, this will not work and you will need to do a "first time install" on the receiver.