Virgin Media have finally removed the placeholders for Sky Two, Sky Sports News, Sky News, Sky Travel, Sky Travel Extra and Discovery Kids. The Sky channels were previously displaying a title board, since they ceased broadcasting on Virgin Media earlier this year. Discovery Kids has been closed down on all platforms for some time. You might need to reboot your set top box for the changes to take effect.
Monthly Archive for July, 2007
ITV4 now has an earlier start time on weekends, to make way for sport coverage. ITV4 now starts at 12.30pm on Saturdays and Sundays. This change means the CITV channel stops at 12.30pm on Freeview and Virgin Media every weekend. Weekday hours remain unchanged.
Virgin Media customers on the XL TV package now get the Music On Demand section for free. Press On Demand on your remote and go into Music On Demand for tonnes of free music tracks. They haven’t updated the page on the Virgin Media site yet though, so I’m still a bit wary whether this is actually free yet (although, when going into Music On Demand on screen it does bring up a message saying it is free on XL).
According to reports, Five Life and the CBBC Channel will both be extending their hours. Five Life will be running until midnight (instead of 11pm) and the CBBC Channel will probably extend to 9pm (instead of 7pm). It’s not known if these changes will occur on Freeview or just on the other platforms they’re on - as it would have knock-on effects on Freeview. For example, the CBBC Channel timeshares with BBC THREE’s bandwidth on DTT, so it would mean either BBC THREE would have to change its hours to start at 9pm instead of 7pm, or they would have to do some changes to their channel space on the DTT platform. Five Life has a similiar issue - whereby Television X shares with Five Life on DTT (Television X starts at 11pm when Five Life ends at the moment). More info is available at Broadcast Now.
Channel 4 +1 will launch on the 20th August, it has been confirmed. The channel is likely to replace either Film4 +1 or E4 +1 on Freeview.
Virgin Media have confirmed rumours of receiving a takeover bid - of which is thought to be from a private equity firm. Virgin Media said - in a press statement - “Virgin Media Inc. announced today that it has received a proposal to acquire 100% of the common stock of the Company. The Company has not engaged in negotiations with the offeror”. More news on this as it develops.
A couple of new channels were added to Virgin Media a few days ago - Animal Planet +1 and Discovery Home & Health +1 - on channels 216 and 276. Also, the Performance channel has been closed down where it was available in ex-Telewest areas.
