Just been scrolling through Digiguide and the NTL EPG and it appears that between the hours of around 4am-6am tomorrow morning (2nd December) that a few of the UKTV network channels will be off the air for "essential maintenance"... Wonder whats going to happen... could mean the appearance of a test card!
Set your alarms and get your capture equipment ready!
Last edited by James Vertigan on 3 December 2003 5:17am - 2 times in total
Just been scrolling through Digiguide and the NTL EPG and it appears that between the hours of around 4am-6am tomorrow morning (2nd December) that a few of the UKTV network channels will be off the air for "essential maintenance"... Wonder whats going to happen... could mean the appearance of a test card!
Set your alarms and get your capture equipment ready!
I don't thing it would be anywhere as big as a normal BBC Transmission shutdown, probably just a black screen for about 2 hours then they start up again at 6.00am. To be honest you probably won't miss anything except an announcement and a bad picture.
If the engineering work is drastic enough to pull all channels for 2 hours with the subsequent loss of advertising revenue..... then it's probably the case that they won't be able to broadcast a caption card either. If they can put out a still image, then they can put out programmes.
It's probably either work on the uplink or an inorbit test on the satellite - Astra do regular tests on their transponders
Hmm.. maybe a caption or an announcement over an ident, a quick bit of Kenny G-esque music(!) and then a blank screen, couple of clunks and then the PM5544 test pattern maybe?
Interesting - Channels affected:
UK Gold
UK Gold +1
UK G2
UK Drama
UK Horizons
UK Horizons +1
All other UKTV channels are dormant from 4-5am anyway.
Worth note also - BBC Three and BBC Four are also closing early [I have seen them go on until 5am at least on occasions] - instead both closed by 3:55am. BBC1 will be with BBC News 24 by that time, and BBC2 will be with The Learning Zone -which is all on a single DAT machine afaiirc?
Well for those who were tucked up in bed, you didn't miss much! at 3:59 we cut straight to the UKTV slide with no announcement, but during the downtime the picture shifted to one side slightly and there were a couple of coloured dots on the screen - nothing to write home about really and with the cricket delayed it wasn't really worth getting up early!
(UK Gold +1 are showing a timeshifted version of the tests, hence why they will sort of end at 6am).
Worth note also - BBC Three and BBC Four are also closing early [I have seen them go on until 5am at least on occasions] - instead both closed by 3:55am. BBC1 will be with BBC News 24 by that time, and BBC2 will be with The Learning Zone -which is all on a single DAT machine afaiirc?
The Learning Zone runs from a single DAT machine!?
What are you talking about!?
Quote:
So this could be maintence to TVC's main genny.
Doubt it, if it is it's not connected to Fridays problems which were in the News centre (and weren't to do with a generator)
Worth note also - BBC Three and BBC Four are also closing early [I have seen them go on until 5am at least on occasions] - instead both closed by 3:55am.
Er... this is perfectly normal. To go on to 5am would be highly unusual.
Just found out that the "essential maintenance" will be taking place up until Thursday... so topic title and subtitle changed accordingly.
No doubt there won't be much difference to this morning's tests? Anybody actually know what they're testing? It can't be anything too big as they were still able to generate the UKTV caption (with all the station logos on) during this morning's tests.
If the engineering work is drastic enough to pull all channels for 2 hours with the subsequent loss of advertising revenue..... then it's probably the case that they won't be able to broadcast a caption card either. If they can put out a still image, then they can put out programmes.
It's probably either work on the uplink or an inorbit test on the satellite - Astra do regular tests on their transponders
Do they show adverts between 4-6am? Anytime I've watched they have been those fake breaks that ITV Nighttime have with just promos. On which subject, how annoying are ITV Nighttime for breaking from a film just to show promos?
