UPC and Northern Ireland feeds

mike65

Can anyone tell me if there is a particular reason why UPC only use NI feeds for BBC and "ITV" channels?

The arrival of the autumn/winter schedules has seen the return of major series like Spooks and HIGNFY however these are shovelled away in obscure slots so "local" product can be screened at prime time. I really doubt more than a handful of UPC subscribers actually want to watch The Blame Game or Nolan LiIve!!!!!!!!!!, while Spooks is on at 10.35 pm

It would seem to make sense for UPC to at least offer an alternative feed.

Mike

Solair

I assume that UPC have just followed in Cablelink's long tradition of taking NI feeds. If you were receiving from terrestrial sources, this would be the most logical way of doing things.

Cork Communications traditionally used BBC 1/2 Wales and HTV Wales, although it also meant that it was stuck with S4C (Welsh language opt out version of Channel 4). This was due to the availability of off-air overspill reception at the top of the Comeragh mountains in Co. Waterford. Cork Communications actually ran the longest independently owned coax link for its day to feed those signals back into their head end in Cork City. At the time they couldn't get a licence for a microwave link to feed the channels back!

I know quite a lot of people in Cork who preferred HTV and BBC Wales to their Northern Irish counterparts as they were 'more cheerful' i.e. welsh news is generally pretty tame compared to Northern Ireland local news which is intensely political and pretty grip and violent.

I would assume that UPC has some kind of agreement to carry BBC Northern Ireland. They do pay an on-going royalty fee to the BBC.

BBC NI also does make more references to the Republic than BBC London or Wales would. At this stage, their carriage on cable and satellite in the Republic could almost be seen as a north-south outreach programme of some sort.

Is RTE / TV3 carried in Northern Ireland on Virgin Media ?

With regard to UTV, I would expect that they would fight tooth and nail to be kept on UPC in the Republic. They sell ads here as does Channel 4.

Mossy Monk

There really should be no excuse for them to not carry another version of BBC One and Two. I wonder if they get requests for it.

Solair wrote: »

Is RTE / TV3 carried in Northern Ireland on Virgin Media ?

RTÉ One, RTÉ Two and TG4 are carried with various programmes blocked out.

barneyeile

mike65 wrote: »

Can anyone tell me if there is a particular reason why UPC only use NI feeds for BBC and "ITV" channels?

The arrival of the autumn/winter schedules has seen the return of major series like Spooks and HIGNFY however these are shovelled away in obscure slots so "local" product can be screened at prime time. I really doubt more than a handful of UPC subscribers actually want to watch The Blame Game or Nolan LiIve!!!!!!!!!!, while Spooks is on at 10.35 pm

It would seem to make sense for UPC to at least offer an alternative feed.

Mike

Maybe we should start a campaign to get the London feed of both the BBC and ITV from UPC! Most of the people I know would prefer this. I am fed up getting NI programmes instead of the main ones. We should all email UPC with this suggestion.

Rosser

Really good thread, I'd happily swop Buzz or one of the unnecessary number of Eurosport variations for ITV 1 and BBC London. Having TV3 and UTV both effectively regional variations of ITV is over kill

Clareman

It was always my thinking that we always got the NI channels cause they were just repeated from mast to mast from the north, now that they've satellites they haven't changed

icdg

Essentially the reason was that historically, BBC Northern Ireland/UTV was the favoured region for Cablelink.

The companies that comprised Chorus used BBC Wales/HTV Wales for a long time. However, after the MMDS network was completed, Irish Multichannel (precursor of Chorus) installed a microwave link network that allowed them to feed the MMDS network with the NI versions. Cablelink also had use of this network.

Nowadays, its simple enough for them to pick up any BBC or ITV region. But there are a number of reasons to stick with NI:

1) It is the regional variation given most prominence in Irish newspapers. In fact ITV plc issued an ban on Irish newspapers carrying any other ITV region at one stage.

2) It is what has always been there in most case, and what people are used to.

3) It is the easiest to argue politically Irish people should have access to (in the name of Cross-Border Co-Operation)

4) It is quite likely that the carriage agreements specifically refer to BBC Northern Ireland and UTV in most cases. ITV plc have taken a Channel 5-like harsh stance in relation to their channels being carried here unlike the BBC's softer stance and UTV and Channel 4's outright enthusiasm for being carried in the South.

mike65

Hardly cuts the mustard in the real world of programme schedules though.

Mike

barneyeile

icdg wrote: »

Essentially the reason was that historically, BBC Northern Ireland/UTV was the favoured region for Cablelink.

The companies that comprised Chorus used BBC Wales/HTV Wales for a long time. However, after the MMDS network was completed, Irish Multichannel (precursor of Chorus) installed a microwave link network that allowed them to feed the MMDS network with the NI versions. Cablelink also had use of this network.

Nowadays, its simple enough for them to pick up any BBC or ITV region. But there are a number of reasons to stick with NI:

1) It is the regional variation given most prominence in Irish newspapers. In fact ITV plc issued an ban on Irish newspapers carrying any other ITV region at one stage.

2) It is what has always been there in most case, and what people are used to.

3) It is the easiest to argue politically Irish people should have access to (in the name of Cross-Border Co-Operation)

4) It is quite likely that the carriage agreements specifically refer to BBC Northern Ireland and UTV in most cases. ITV plc have taken a Channel 5-like harsh stance in relation to their channels being carried here unlike the BBC's softer stance and UTV and Channel 4's outright enthusiasm for being carried in the South.

In this day and age with so many ways of watching television you would think ITV would not care less if their channel is shown on UPC rather than UTV. People can get ITV through Freesat and SKY with a bit of tweaking so a small player like UPC Ireland should not bother them so much! I also don't think the cross-border issue cuts the mustard either! We live in a globalised world and having UTV is an annoyance rather than the main ITV.

barneyeile

Having to watch the NI local news is rather depressing as well! Also the NI made programmes are sub-standard nonsense most of the time when we could be watching the real deal on ITV and BBC London.

Infoanon

Is there something in the Good Friday agreement about the NI channels being carried ??? in the same way RTE is carried on NI Networks and TG4 has a transmitter from Divis

BBC NI & C4 NI are also the defaults on Sky

As for ITV being carried on UPC - thats more to do with TV3 and legal threats over the years and thus no ITV2,3 or 4 on Cable

barneyeile

Infoanon wrote: »

Is there something in the Good Friday agreement about the NI channels being carried ??? in the same way RTE is carried on NI Networks and TG4 has a transmitter from Divis

BBC NI & C4 NI are also the defaults on Sky

As for ITV being carried on UPC - thats more to do with TV3 and legal threats over the years and thus no ITV2,3 or 4 on Cable

I don't think the Belfast agreement has anything to do with it. I think it is a UPC decision. They think we would rather have the NI feed than any other one.

leninbenjamin

have always hated this, going back to the days when BBCNI wouldn't show some of the original top gear shows due to various other obscure random crap they showed. must be about 10 years or so that i've found myself pissed off at this everynow and then.

Solair

Because of the political situation up there, the programming does tend to be a bit grim and fixated on politics.

At least upc carries BBC's digital content in the EPG where as you have to use the clumsey extra channel menus on sky to access them so you can't use sky+ features with them.

MisterAnarchy

BBC NI's scheduling is appalling.
Last night for instance they shoved Match of the Day back from 10.45 to 11.55 to show some minor interest drivel.Ridiculous.

endaob

MisterAnarchy wrote: »

BBC NI's scheduling is appalling.
Last night for instance they shoved Match of the Day back from 10.45 to 11.55 to show some minor interest drivel.Ridiculous.

Absolutely. MOTD, which would have a massive viewing audience was pushed back til nearly midnight in favour of some godawful BBC NI productions. This on a night when 18 of the 20 Premiership teams were playing. Surely it wouldn't be too difficult to shove on BBC London or BBC Northwest as well as BBC NI?

barneyeile

endaob wrote: »

Absolutely. MOTD, which would have a massive viewing audience was pushed back til nearly midnight in favour of some godawful BBC NI productions. This on a night when 18 of the 20 Premiership teams were playing. Surely it wouldn't be too difficult to shove on BBC London or BBC Northwest as well as BBC NI?

With digital tv it should be easy to offer the choice. Put BBC London and ITV on instead of Buzz or some other crappy channel and let the people decide! I think the London feed would win hands down. BBC NI's days on UPC would then be numbered!

MisterAnarchy

barneyeile wrote: »

Put BBC London and ITV on instead of Buzz or some other crappy channel and let the people decide! I think the London feed would win hands down. BBC NI's days on UPC would then be numbered!

BBC London is what I watch on my satellite dish in the other channels,its very good.

byte

For any cable headends getting the Uk channels terrestrially, there is the advantage of having Ceefax (which, IMO, is still better than their new BBCi Text service)...

barneyeile

MisterAnarchy wrote: »

BBC London is what I watch on my satellite dish in the other channels,its very good.

Some people have all the luck!

byte

byte wrote: »

For any cable headends getting the Uk channels terrestrially, there is the advantage of having Ceefax (which, IMO, is still better than their new BBCi Text service)...

The odd thing I noticed about UPC's digital feeds of the UK terrestrial channels is that they have teletext. Is it inserted from the analogue feeds or something?

stevethesatguy

Why do you not just have a satellite tv system installed, fully installed systems are cheap and then you can watch all the main UK channels and the regional variations if you like, satellite gives you channel choice whereas UPC gives you what UPC pay for

mike65

Yeah but that sort of misses the point of this thread which is to consider if an existing service can/should be improved.

Mike

Rosser

Just spent a few days at a hotel in Wexford where I was treated to ITV1 and non BBC NI feed and what a change for the better it was over the UPC feed in Dublin. Definitely something that should be an option as should the US version of CNN (and while they're at it wouldn't mind MSNBC and France 24 over the language variations of Euronews)