Channel4 on Sky - Blocked Programming

Aepos

Hi all,

went on to CH4 last night on my Sky+ box (Full Irl Sub) and a movie was supposed to be on, but nothing but a blue screen.

Went and checked my FTV set up (UK Card) in another room and movie was on no problem.

Have sky done some wierd stuff where they can kill some content to Irish viewers on CH4, Or have I got an LNB & Sky+ box which decides what is suitable for me to view?

Cheers

Aepos

mustang68

Yes, some channels have not negotiated the rights to show certain films or programs in Ireland (probably because an irish station has them exclusively here). With the analogue service it seems to be just ignored, but with the digital its possible for them to filter out on a program by program bases.

Aepos

Thanks Mustang68,

That is very interesting.

CH4 are then making a false claim by advertising "Sky now includes CH4" if they do not state that some programmes will not be broadcast.

"Sky now includes EDITED CH4 output" would not sound as good in the ad I suppose.

Cheers

Have a nice day.

Ae

dougal

I have noticed that it happens on "Friends" on C4 but not on E4 and was wondering why since that show is so old it hardly seems worth it.

Headshot

the mod should make a sticky about ch 4 prob

byte

OK, Stickied for the time being, with thread title changed.

wil

yes I have noticed same occasionally with the normally unencrypted free channels, cant remember, maybe Zone or Film4 when certain movies are shown. came up "insert viewing card"

enrique66_35

Same thing happened to me last night for My Name Is Earl :mad: luckily i was able to watch it on my FTV carded box or i'd have been much more p'd off.... is even worth pointing out the fraudulent adverting sky are putting out to the broadcast authorities..no doubt they have some size 0.5 font type in the contract protecting themselves....rant over...

redman

enrique66_35 wrote:

Same thing happened to me last night for My Name Is Earl :mad: luckily i was able to watch it on my FTV carded box or i'd have been much more p'd off.... is even worth pointing out the fraudulent adverting sky are putting out to the broadcast authorities..no doubt they have some size 0.5 font type in the contract protecting themselves....rant over...

SOD that - I went to watch Earl last night too and it was blocked - !!!!!:mad: :mad: :mad:

mustang68

Could be worse, you could have recorded it and have been sitting in work looking forward to it, blissfully unaware that the recording had failed.

yabadabado

mustang68 wrote:

Could be worse, you could have recorded it and have been sitting in work looking forward to it, blissfully unaware that the recording had failed.

thats wot happened to me been busy the last few weeks so had my name is earl set up on sky+ .came home last night got ready to watch it and then blue screen 4 a min and then programme over notice comes up was mighty pissed off

Rippy

yabadabado wrote:

thats wot happened to me been busy the last few weeks so had my name is earl set up on sky+ .came home last night got ready to watch it and then blue screen 4 a min and then programme over notice comes up was mighty pissed off

Same happened to me GRRRRRRRRR:mad:
Searching the EPG though I discovered it is also on E4. Set this to record, have not had time to check it yet, I hope it is the new series and available to ROI.
Also on Channel 6 though probaly old ones like the rest of their s#ite.

Dodge

Rippy wrote:

Also on Channel 6 though probaly old ones like the rest of their s#ite.

Channel 6 ahead of e4 and C4 for showing My name is earl

PRman

Yeah was ragin last night over this - was looking forward to watchin the film 28 days later. the dirt of it. very low. The lads at lunchtime were sayin that maybe sky movies had an exclusive on this film? It's low at the end of the day - u either show a channel in it's entirity or don't show it...

byte

There are probably many who are happy with having a lot of Channel 4, than none at all. All C4's homegrown programming is available.

enrique66_35

byte wrote:

There are probably many who are happy with having a lot of Channel 4, than none at all. All C4's homegrown programming is available.

Thats not good enough though..do u think british subscribers would accept it if Sky offered Rte 1&2 and then blocked the programmes that were also owned by another channel? Sky don't give a crap about Ireland and i think they already proved it with their "roll-out" of broadband that didnt quite roll all the way here...we get sky+ cheap for 6 months instead..big whoop!

watty

It's eircom, Fianna Fail and Comreg's fault. not Sky's that there is no Sky BB here.

C4 will probably be FTA not part of Sky next year (Still on Sky box like BBC)

byte

enrique66_35 wrote:

Thats not good enough though..do u think british subscribers would accept it if Sky offered Rte 1&2 and then blocked the programmes that were also owned by another channel? Sky don't give a crap about Ireland and i think they already proved it with their "roll-out" of broadband that didnt quite roll all the way here...we get sky+ cheap for 6 months instead..big whoop!

Well, I think it IS good enough for some, who like shows such as Countdown, that thing with Noel Edmonds, C4 News, Dispatches, Big Brother, etc.

The imported stuff will be available on other channels anyway.

In Northern Ireland, where RTE is on cable, RTE do block some programming due to rights clashes. So the issue isn't unique to Channel 4.

Even the BBC had to block football etc to even their own license fee payers when they went FTA on satellite. People had to use their terrestrial aerial to pick up the sport. Can't remember what sports they were, think maybe Scottish football on BBC Scotland and GAA on BBC NI.

Pat Gleeson

byte wrote:

Can't remember what sports they were, think maybe Scottish football on BBC Scotland and GAA on BBC NI.

That's exactly what they were.

Mayo Exile

Originally posted by byte: Scottish football on BBC Scotland

Scottish Cup football used to be blocked. Not anymore though.

norbert64

the current message on both CH4 & CH4+1 is just a technical hitch, right?

Pat Gleeson

norbert64 wrote:

the current message on both CH4 & CH4+1 is just a technical hitch, right?

I would assume so.

I had'nt noticed that, how long is that going on ?

Mossy Monk

I'd imagine so, unless the news became a rights issue, very unlikely.

norbert64

started sometime around 1/4 to 6, I think

DigiDec

Still not available at 19.25, come on CH4 and Sky, get it sorted.

Pat Gleeson

Mossy Monk wrote:

I'd imagine so, unless the news became a rights issue, very unlikely.

VERY unlikely

The Simpsons is on +1, and that was'nt blocked before.

There may be a rights issue with the +1 channel, as C4 changed their minds a few years ago, as they were told they had to negotiate any rights twice with a +1 channel.

The same thing happens regularly on (admittedly FTA) ITV 2 and 3's +1 channels.

DigiDec

CHL4 news is currently blocked on the main channel, it never usually is, just spoke to Sky, they basically aint got a clue what I was on about, very nice man, very polite but hadn't a clue!!

Got the usual "we'll re-send the signal and if its not back in 72 hours ring back and we'll get someone out to look at your boxes"

I said thanks very much and got off the phone.

MACHEAD

enrique66_35 wrote:

Thats not good enough though..do u think british subscribers would accept it if Sky offered Rte 1&2 and then blocked the programmes that were also owned by another channel? Sky don't give a crap about Ireland and i think they already proved it with their "roll-out" of broadband that didnt quite roll all the way here...we get sky+ cheap for 6 months instead..big whoop!

Already happens up here in 'The North' any time there's a good movie or live sports on RTÉ, the 'This program is not available' banner pops up. And TV3 & Channel 6 are not available at all, only way round it is to get an irish sub.
As I type this Ch 4 is blocked now (10 Years Younger), I won't exactly fret over not seeing that one though.

p.s. when I say blocked I mean the program is unavailable, I was'nt trying to infer copius consumption of alcohol!

PacMan

I still have the channel 4 plus 1 testes stored in my "Other Channels" and guess what... No programmes are blocked...
Me thinks someone forgot to push the button for us folks here in the Republic.

Pat Gleeson

C4 back an hour ago, just checked C4 +1 back as well.

MACHEAD

PacMan wrote:

I still have the channel 4 plus 1 testes stored in my "Other Channels" and guess what... No programmes are blocked...
Me thinks someone forgot to push the button for us folks here in the Republic.

PacMan, First of all sorry to be pedantic about spelling, but that sounds EXTREMELY painfull!!

piskins72

this is happening a lot lately channel 4, happens a lot in the morning times especially if Friends is on early for some reason, and earlier on this evening was jst channel surfing and before My Name is Earl it vanished, has any 1 contacted Sky about it as to what it is? jst wondering out of curiousity, had thought it was a signal problem but evidently not!!!

piskins72

i actually think its been doing it since Sky put C4 on the system earlier on this year!

norbert64

it seems as though they were mucking about with getting CH4+1 on freeview, before it went off.

Mossy Monk

piskins72 wrote:

this is happening a lot lately channel 4, happens a lot in the morning times especially if Friends is on early for some reason, and earlier on this evening was jst channel surfing and before My Name is Earl it vanished, has any 1 contacted Sky about it as to what it is? jst wondering out of curiousity, had thought it was a signal problem but evidently not!!!

What exactly is the mystery? Why would you contact Sky? I will solve this for you seeing as you didn't read the thread you posted on, Channel 4 don't have the rights to broadcast these programmes in the Republic of Ireland on satellite.

piskins72

Mossy Monk wrote:

What exactly is the mystery? Why would you contact Sky? I will solve this for you seeing as you didn't read the thread you posted on, Channel 4 don't have the rights to broadcast these programmes in the Republic of Ireland on satellite.

evidently i didnt

maximus02

What exactly is the mystery? Why would you contact Sky? I will solve this for you seeing as you didn't read the thread you posted on, Channel 4 don't have the rights to broadcast these programmes in the Republic of Ireland on satellite.

Mossy.

But why would they have blocked Cannel 4 news as it did for me last night and as stated earlier in this thread?

mustang68

maximus02 wrote:

But why would they have blocked Cannel 4 news as it did for me last night and as stated earlier in this thread?

That seems to have been, as stated earlier, because of a technical glitch. Access to the news has not yet become a copyright issue.

Mazzer

happenned me last week rang SKY and they re-setup the channel

watty

That's just scripted nonsense. They don't do any such thing. Other favorites are "Boosting the signal", or even the possibly card damaging "take out the viewing card and wipe it"

ciscokidder

I suppose if you really want the channel on digital that bad obtain a yellow house card? Then swap as necessary - but painful.

DJ_Spider

Has anyone had trouble watching T4 at the weekends? It happened to us the other day when the g/f wanted to watch charmed. She recorded it and we could then watch it! Also the other night we had recorded 2 episodes of stargate, one after another, we watched the first one, then when we went to watch the second one it wouldn't play. We could get to the start playback screen, but it wouldn't play either from the start or any time set by us. (thought might be able to start at 2 mins into it and rewind it!)

The signals were getting to the box from the remote as the lights were flashing, but the only way to get out of it was to press the epg button. We called sky and they told us to rebuild the epg list, nothing, then told us to reset the box, but we would lose any recordings we already had and any recordings set for the future.

Well it worked but we lost the episode! Lucky for us it was repeated the next day so we set it to record. But we had to redo our series recordings and wait for sky anytime to set up again.

Has anyone else had this problem? We have only had sky+ for about 6 weeks and it looks good apart from this.

Mossy Monk

What has this to do with programmes being blocked on Channel 4?

microgirl

Got Sky+ about 6 weeks or so ago now. Before getting it, I read as many of the stickies as I could before my brain melted, so it's that long ago I read this thread so might be forgetting something.

Basically, we don't get Channel $ in the mornings, and it's occasionally blocked in the evening too. I have tried explaining to my (not-young) mother that this is because of rights issues, that certain programmes are blocked because Irish channels have exclusive rights. She replies that she was able to get them with NTL, and I point out that we had NTL analogue as well as digital, so maybe it's harder to do with analogue (although to be fair, this wasn't when we were watching on the telly - we had complete Ch4 when watching through the digital box too, so I don't know)

She is adamant however that it's specific times, rather than specific programmes, that are being blocked. As in, an hour later both Ch4 and Ch4+1 are available, and the programmes she couldn't see on Ch4 between, say, 8-9am she can see on Ch4+1 between 9-10am, so how it could it be specific programmes blocked for rights issues.

I have no answer to this.

Can anyone shed any light on this for me? Not that it'll probably make much difference. She wants me to get on to Sky and complain that we can't see all of Ch4 and to fix it, regardless of me telling her that that's simply the way it is. (Oh, and no, ordinarily just watching said programmes at 9-10am instead of earlier doesn't work, as 8-9am, while having breakfast, is when she watches telly. Too many other commitments during the day)

Much thanks.

Arthur Ryan

Somtimes removal of sky card, wiping of same and re-insertion gets over this loss of pic.

CRAIG07

if i got a ftv viewing card from uk would this stop the channel4 being blocked ?

byte

CRAIG07 wrote: »

if i got a ftv viewing card from uk would this stop the channel4 being blocked ?

It would, however you'd need to swap cards whenever you want to watch unblocked version of C4, and allow EPG to reload with differing channel listings each time.

CRAIG07

just went to watch ''with out a trace'' on c4 and i get a message saying ''this program is not available'' ? are all non channel4 non home grown shows blocked

matikala@gmail.

Hi!

About Channel 4 ,here and there is rumours,that it will come up as Free To Air Channel. Being honest - I heard this rumour sence 2006 spring .
Anybody have more useful information about it ?


Ciao!

Our man in Havana

I am amazed that Sky in their adverts for the ROI, they do not have to declare that it is a restricted version of C4 that you will receive.

celticfc

matikala@gmail. wrote: »

Hi!

About Channel 4 ,here and there is rumours,that it will come up as Free To Air Channel. Being honest - I heard this rumour sence 2006 spring .
Anybody have more useful information about it ?


Ciao!

Yes, it is the most likely outcome now especially with Freesats imminent launch, It is widely believed it is in Channel 4's interest to become FTA.

The only barrier to this is the current encryption contract they have with Sky, which expires in the summer. (It is rumored to be in August)