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All posts by js

Below are all of js's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.

J
All free TV channels in the UK
Wednesday 4 December 2019 2:24AM

Freesat Diffs:

Freesat4 was renamed to Freesat Info and added to the test region with LCN 901 on SD, HD and G2 devices.

Freesat Info is not the same as freesat info, which appears on SD and HD devices on LCN 999 but confined to the test region on G2 devices:

SERVICE NAME TYPE EPGID SID TSID ONID FREQ.P ENC EIT PROVIDER BOUQUETS LCN
freesat info 12 07007 10530 2315 59 11427H 0 0 Freesat 111111111000 999


Comparing files List Freesat 02-12-2019 18 01.txt and List Freesat 03-12-2019 11 01.txt


************************ CHANGED ************************

SERVICE NAME TYPE EPGID SID TSID ONID FREQ.P ENC EIT PROVIDER BOUQUETS LCN

Renamed, Bouquet Change, LCN Change
Freesat4 12 00105 10528 2315 59 11427H 0 0 Freesat EEEE1EEE1111 1979
Freesat Info 12 00105 10528 2315 59 11427H 0 0 Freesat 1EEE1EEE1EEE 901

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J
Film 4 +1
Wednesday 4 December 2019 2:46AM

Chris.SE: It's effectively hidden.

It's shown on this page:

- 0 - - DigitalBitRate

Scroll down to BBCB-PSB3-MENDIP. It's listed as "NEW (sans nom - PID20160)" and links to:

- BBCB-PSB3-MENDIP - - DigitalBitRate



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BRIAN: The broadcast EPG is sent in tables with different table IDs for different types of data.

The Schedule data uses a possible 16 tables for up to 64 days, each table carrying 4 days worth of EPG data.

Only the first two tables are used in the UK, providing an 8 day schedule,

There are separate tables for "Now and Next".

More information is needed. What is the Model of the TV? What exactly does "only one day" mean? The more you can tell us the better.

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J
All free TV channels in the UK
Wednesday 4 December 2019 9:28PM

ASTRA/BSkyB Diffs:

An encrypted HD test named 52586 was added to the BSkyB service tables:

Comparing files List ASTRA 03-12-2019 18 01.txt and List ASTRA 04-12-2019 11 01.txt

************************ NEW ************************

SERVICE NAME TYPE EPGID SID TSID ONID FREQ.P ENC EIT PROVIDER BOUQUETS LCN
52586 25 1203 52586 2116 2 11427V 1 1 BSkyB 000000000000010 1031

At present, only the PMT and ECM streams belonging to 52586 are present. The video and audio streams advertised in the PMT are absent.

What makes 52586 of interest is the transponder it's on: 11427V.

11427V currently has four HD services on it, all of which are on Freesat:

S4C HD
FRANCE 24(ENG)
FreeSports HD
QUEST HD

Whilst looking at 11427V I noticed FreeSports HD had lots of missing packets.

Further investigation showed that the video and audio streams were dropping out for a few seconds every minute or so.

This is reflected in the bitrate measurement for 11427V:

Video Bitrate (Mbps) sampled at 32 <= dPCR <= 43 ms intervals over 17 seconds for 11426.50 V 29500 8/9 DVB-S2 QPSK (04/12/2019 16:46:51)
maximum | minimum | average | service_name
09.728 | 08.609 | 09.200 | QUEST HD
09.134 | 00.000 | 08.166 | FreeSports HD
08.185 | 08.067 | 08.126 | FRANCE 24 HD
10.325 | 10.195 | 10.272 | S4C HD
21.567 | 10.954 | 12.603 | Null Packets
04.660 | 02.924 | 03.743 | All Other Streams
52.110 | 52.110 | 52.110 | TS Bitrate

That was at 16:46 and it's still dropping out now at 21:20.

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J
Winter Hill (Bolton, England) transmitter
Thursday 5 December 2019 1:47AM

Digital UK (or is it just Freeview now) have some ZERO WIDTH SPACES on offer this week, courtesy of BBC 6 Music!

A short-form error summary follows:

Invalid Character Codes in the EIT off North West multiplex BBC A. Date: 2019/12/05 00:59:54

It has become apparent through observation that invalid bytes in the Freeview EIT text strings are the low-order bytes of the Unicode General Punctuation Block:

Of course only bytes less than 0x20 qualify as invalid codes in the context of EIT text strings.

Since about April 2018, the following invalid codes have been found in the Freeview EIT text items:

0x01, substitute: {0x01} -> Unicode Character: "EM QUAD" (U + 2001)
0x08, substitute: { } -> Unicode Character: "PUNCTUATION SPACE" (U + 2008)
0x0B, substitute: {} -> Unicode Character: "ZERO WIDTH SPACE" (U + 200B)
0x10, substitute: {-} -> Unicode Character: "HYPHEN" (U + 2010)
0x13, substitute: {--} -> Unicode Character: "EN DASH" (U + 2013)
0x14, substitute: {---} -> Unicode Character: "EM DASH" (U + 2014)
0x18, substitute: {L'} -> Unicode Character: "LEFT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK" (U + 2018)
0x19, substitute: {R'} -> Unicode Character: "RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK" (U + 2019)
0x1C, substitute: {L''} -> Unicode Character: "LEFT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK" (U + 201C)
0x1D, substitute: {R''} -> Unicode Character: "RIGHT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK" (U + 201D)

There are 976 invalid codes in the current EIT:
invalid code, count, percentage
0x08, 24, 2.46%
0x0B, 2, 0.20%
0x13, 4, 0.41%
0x18, 13, 1.33%
0x19, 887, 90.88%
0x1C, 23, 2.36%
0x1D, 23, 2.36%

There are 777 events with invalid codes in the current EIT.

The Culprits:
Format:
service_name, number of events containing errors

BBC 6 Music, 1
BBC Radio 4 Ex, 4
Blaze+1, 1
TCC, 1
ADULT Studio 66, 32
Planet Knowledge, 36
Sports Channel Network, 7
Sony Movies Action, 2
Ketchup TV, 47
RNIB Connect, 5
Sony Movies, 26
POP, 100
Al Jazeera Eng, 4
PBS America, 4
Sony Channel +1, 27
POP Max, 122
Sony Movies Christmas +1, 2
Tiny Pop, 72
Sony Movies +1, 10
Sony Channel, 31
Sony Movies Christmas, 3
Tiny Pop, 72
Sony Movies +1, 10
Sony Channel, 31
Sony Movies Christmas, 3
Tiny Pop, 72
Sony Movies +1, 10
Sony Channel, 31
Sony Movies Christmas, 3
PBS America +1, 8


Events with invalid codes in the eight-day EIT off multiplex BBC A at 2019/12/05 00:59:54:


#1: BBC 6 Music, Fri 06 Dec 21:00 - 00:00: title = "Tom Ravenscroft", description = "Tom chats to Ghanaian artist Bryte, and Ahadadream and SNW provide a guest mix. He released his debut album {}{L''}Too Good For You Liking{R''}{} last year, and has relocated to the UK.", description error bytes: 0x0B, 0x1C, 0x1D, 0x0B

#2: BBC Radio 4 Ex, Thu 05 Dec 06:30 - 07:00: title = "I Have a Dream - Dr Martin...", description = "...Luther King. 4 Extra Debut. Global figures celebrate the legacy Dr Martin Luther King by reading the words of his {L''}I Have a Dream{R''} speech. From 2013.", description error bytes: 0x1C, 0x1D

...

#777: PBS America +1, Thu 12 Dec 20:35 - 21:40: title = "Gold: The Story of Man's...", description = "...6,000 Year Obsession: Grant Williams looks at gold{R'}s role throughout history: how it became money and its path through the rise and fall of empires and civilisations. (Part 1 of 2)", Huffman coded, description error byte: 0x19

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J
Film 4 +1
Thursday 5 December 2019 2:56AM

Chris.SE: Thanks. Amazingly, my "dog nose" comment turned out to be entirely appropriate.

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J
Film 4 +1
Saturday 7 December 2019 1:13AM

Chris.SE: ... Khyber. Still not updated. I get the impression they don't care much about traditional transmission anymore. The BBC push iplayer in your face at every opportunity and ridicule people who don't want to use it, in their "iplayer: wasted on some" advert. Well, I for one, refuse to use it. They can stick it up their .....

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J
Film 4 +1
Saturday 7 December 2019 4:15AM

Chris.SE: Do you really want to lay yourself on a plate for the scrutiny of MI5TV?

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J
Film 4 +1
Sunday 8 December 2019 7:03PM

Chris.SE: Very funny. I wonder what the neighbours think.

The last time I accessed the BBC site, I was presented with a page about George Orwell, informing that he worked at the BBC, though no documentary evidence of it existed.

I wonder what Orwell's "Big Brother" was, that watched everyone.

That new "smart" TV you've got, are you watching it or is it watching you?

Incidentally, Orwell's real name was Eric Blair, the same surname as the pathological liar and blood-drenched war criminal whose wars, as with many others, were facilitated by the BBC.

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J
Film 4 +1
Sunday 8 December 2019 10:39PM

Chris.SE: Would that be a "Magic" remote for an LG?

I was thinking about that "watch this programme from the start" option, and how it might work.

It seems as though it requires a personal stream for every viewer, but that would be impossible if the number of viewers was large. Anyone know how it works?

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