What We Do: Freesat Sport Multiscreen and "When's The Sailing On?"
Now you can search TV and Radio schedules by genre as well as by channel, writes Tom Scott on his personal blog :
To help you find programmes, no matter which station or channel they are broadcast on, we've started publishing schedules for all our genres (sport, music etc.). These views are being used as part of the - specifically to drive the and individual sport pages. But as you might be able to guess a little bit of URL hacking gives you more....
Meanwhile over on , senior producer Andrew Bowden is with his team's success in getting Freesat Sport Multiscreen onto the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ red button:
I can now breathe a huge sigh of relief as the Freesat Sport Multiscreen arrives on the old ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ red button just in time for the Olympics! Press the old red button on any ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ channel, select Sport Multiscreen, wait a few seconds, and lo, you'll get up to six different sports to chose from at any one time... To say I'm glad to get this one out of the door, is an understatement...
Zoe Kleinman is Features Editor, Ariel.
Comment number 1.
At 12th Aug 2008, gottago wrote:Is "³ÉÈËÂÛ̳i" being phased out?
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Comment number 2.
At 14th Aug 2008, Andrew Bowden wrote:Yes, it is. ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳i's becoming "³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Red Button" - although on screen we'll just be using the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ logo (like the website is doing)
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Comment number 3.
At 14th Aug 2008, JeFurry wrote:(Although this comment is only peripherally related to the post above, it's still relevant to the area in general.)
This is great stuff - useful and a joy to use, and I thank you! However, you mention scheduling, and that reminds me of another issue.
Ever since 2001 I've used a TiVo PVR, and the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳'s schedule was unreliable. The "official" scheduled times for programmes were usually rounded to the nearest three or five minutes, whereas the actual broadcast timing allowed for small inserts such as 60-second news, trailers, weather and the like. Additionally, for reasons that I understand but which are too complicated to repeat here, it's quite common for a programme to start a minute or two before the stated time, and/or end a minute or two later. Two of the biggest offenders I notice are "Casualty" and "Have I Got News For You".
Nowadays, TiVo use in the UK is dwindling (which is a shame, as it's considerably superior to Sky+ or most other PVRs in many ways). However, I notice that the same issue still applies on Sky+ and on two other recorders I use (EyeTV Diversity on the Mac, and a rather old VCR which imports programme timings form Teletext). This means that recordings need several minutes' padding at both ends to ensure that the programme is not truncated. In addition, if I wish to record two consecutive programmes, I almost always run into trouble. Even with 2-minute padding on recordings, these timings occasionally chop off the cliffhangers on Casualty, or the pre-titles sequence of "Doctor Who".
Given that these are all digital systems which can handle accurate timings at least to the minute if not the second, might it be possible to reconsider the viability of releasing accurate electronic schedules for these automatic devices (even if the magazine timings remain as they are)?
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Comment number 4.
At 13th Jun 2009, U14033173 wrote:Thank you for the post.
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