Virgin Media Community

[_VM_6_Viewer_]

These channels have been removed in past few days, meaning the content I've recorded on these channels is no longer avaialbe. Is this intended, if so how can I recover and watch my recored programmes

[nodrogd]

Its the BBCs decision to remove their SD versions from Virgin. With these being removed the Metadata that supports any recordings has also been removed, hence they are now listed as unsubscribed channels & will no longer play. The same happened with the English BBC1 SD regions earlier this year.

[ozsat · Accepted solution]

The recordings should be playing OK now - can you re-try?

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@_VM_6_Viewer_ wrote:

These channels have been removed in past few days, meaning the content I've recorded on these channels is no longer avaialbe. Is this intended, if so how can I recover and watch my recored programmes

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[_VM_6_Viewer_]

Yes, thank you for fixing this so quickly, I can view them now

[nodrogd]

Just to point out they will not be viewable permanently. They could be available for as much as a year or as little as 3 months.

[urkerab]

So that's the last of the SD versions of BBC1 and BBC2?

Annoyingly the change happened half way through a recording, of which the other half is just missing of course. I've also had to update my series links to record in HD which makes them three times larger (according to the info screen).

I also don't remember seeing any announcement of this anywhere; the best I could find was a third party site which pointed out that BBC1 HD now supports audio descriptions directly through the settings. (The channel guide web page hasn't been updated yet for instance.)

[japitts]

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@urkerab wrote:

So that's the last of the SD versions of BBC1 and BBC2?

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HD is fast becoming the norm for the mainstream channels, yes.

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@urkerab wrote:

I've also had to update my series links to record in HD which makes them three times larger

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If you're running a TiVo or V6, then SL's set for the old BBC1-HD (108) automatically carried over to the new BBC1-HD on 101. Equally SL's set on the old BBC1-SD carried over on the new BBC1-HD 108.

With the newer MPEG4 encoding, HD recordings generally take up the same amount of space as an SD recording did under MPEG4. A 1Tb disk, that's standard on V6 & 360, can hold around 180hours of HD recording.

[urkerab]

My series links were set to record in SD and had thus found their way to 851 as that was the last SD channel and needed to be manually switched over to HD. Having done so, the TiVo info screen shows that the new recordings take up three times as much space as the old ones did. (Although strangely some other HD recordings don't take up nearly as much space. Odd.)

[nodrogd]

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@urkerab wrote:
My series links were set to record in SD and had thus found their way to 851 as that was the last SD channel and needed to be manually switched over to HD. Having done so, the TiVo info screen shows that the new recordings take up three times as much space as the old ones did. (Although strangely some other HD recordings don't take up nearly as much space. Odd.)

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HD recordings will take up more space than SD. The change to MPEG4 took place a while ago now, & all channels were converted to the new format. Hence every new recording will now take up less space than its equivalent before the changeover. There is a variance with bitrates between HD channels to get a "best fit" for VMs frequency spectrum use.

[urkerab]

That's very interesting. If I've understood correctly, then for a given length of recording:

• HD recordings always take up more space than SD
• Different HD channels will take up different amounts of space
• The same HD channel will take up less space nowadays than it used to

So although it's unfortunate that I can no longer record BBC in SD, at least it won't be as space-hungry as it used to be. I guess I can live with that. Thanks!