Virgin Media Community

[IanEdgar]

I live in Hampshire and my local news should be BBC South Today, I have asked about this and was told you get the news from were cable starts from, in my case Guildford Surrey !

I was told this was being looked into about a year ago, but still get London News which is of no interest at all 40 miles away.

Has anyone else got this same problem? or should I just glad my cable line did not start in Manchester! 

[Dale_H]

Hi IanEdgar.

In order to try and help you further could you PM your details to me and I will take a look at your region.

I will need:

Full Address including postcode

Landline phone number

Account number if you have it.

Thanks

[richc2005]

Same problem - I live and work in East Midlands but get Anglia on BBC and ITV and Meridian on ITV HD

[Dale_H]

Hi richc2005

Same as above, could you please PM your details to me an I will check for you.

Thanks

Dale

[richc2005]

Thanks Dale, I've sent a PM to you - look forward to seeing your results. Kind regards

[jimmyjgb]

How many more times is this going to be discussed on this forum? How many more times are Virgin Media/BBC etc... not going to come up with a simple answer why this is the case? Dual broadcast of two regions should be possible and does happen in some areas. BBC says it is a deficiency of the Virgin Platform, Virgin Media says it is a policy decision by the BBC. If Virgin Media can broadcast an extra 48 channels (24 HD) during the olympics then surely some sort of region selection could be made available, appreciating advertising/revenue issues that ITV may have. Are all regions now inserted at the national super head end and selected by software instruction to the box, or are they still inserted at the local head end?. I would have thought that now it would be easy to insert all regions at super head end level (national bandwidth permitting of course).

The ITV HD situation is a bit different - ITV1 HD has been only broadcast with a few regional variations, not matter where the viewer is, even on satellite - Granada, London and Meridian are three that I know of - I am fully not up to speed whether more have been added during the latter stages of digital switchover. This means that many regions have had or have no local ITV1 HD service, so the nearest available region is broadcast, so ITV problem, not Virgin Media.

[Andrew_H]

Hi IanEdgar & richc2005,
The issue is down to the channel providers themselves i'm afraid. Recently due to the digital switchover, the transmitters in which the local regional news are broadcasted from were replaced. With the replacement the borders deciding upon which region will give you which local news had also been changed & increased.

With this some people have found the local news they're used to is now different.


Please also be aware that BBC & ITV usually will only ever broadcast the news which is closest to your region on the SD standard definition channels, as for HD they're not the local news that you're used to.


I've run a check on both of your areas and found that you're actually setup on the correct regions for your area due to the new regions setup. If you have any issues with this & feel you're in an incorrect area, then please speak to the channel company.

More on transmitter changes: http://www.digitaluk.co.uk/how_do_i_switch/your_aerial/transmitters_explained



Thanks

[jimmyjgb]

With regard to the answer by Andrew H.

This is kind of on the right lines if Virgin Media/BBC etc.. keeps the same policy, however:

1. The regional feeds to Virgin Media I believe are line fed, so nothing to do with transmitters, apart from Virgin Media seem to select the local TV region that the local head end is in, even if a substantial part of an area served by a local head end is in another BBC/ITV region.

2. In both the cases referred to I believe that no regional changes were made - this is how it has been for years - the Brighton area did have a change from BBC South to BBC South East which did cause an anomaly as the "Sussex coast" regional head end is in the Brighton area, causing places such as Worthing to get the "wrong" news as Worthing is BBC south region, but is in the sussex coast (Brighton/BBC south east) Virgin Media area - as per original cable franchise provided by Nynex.

3. The BBC clearly blame Virgin's platform for this, VM blame the channel providers. Who's correct?

4. The original franchise areas which determines where the local head end is had absolutely nothing to do with regions - there has always been these kinds of anomalies though I do believe that dual broadcasts of different regions on VM were minimised in the switch from analogue to digital cable.

5. Judging by the "extra" bandwith to be used for the olympic HD/SD feeds, there seems to be no technical reason that VM could not have all regions provided to and selected by the user, or at least some of them on a 2 or 3 regions per area basis.

6. Here's a suggestion Virgin Media. Why not negotiate the supply of all regional news programmes to the on demand service - we already have BBC Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales news on on demand - why not the rest? I know there is some policy/rights reasons to be overcome as some of these will not be matching a service supplied "live", but we do have BBC Alba programmes on demand even though that channel is not carried throughout the U.K. on Virgin Media, and of course all regions are carried free to air on satellite.

7. Switchover is nearly complete - freeview reception is now good in most places - most tv's now have freeview built in.  In a lot of areas, simple antennas such as can be found in certain single price stores (you know where I mean!!), in many cases will pick up a good signal, so can be used easily to pick up the regional channel as required, so if you really want to see your local regions news if VM does not provide it, then it is getting much less difficult to do so via freeview.

[IanEdgar]

Sorry for delay, I have been away a while.

The problem has nothing to do with digital switchover, Virgin gives you the News where the cable begins, and seems incapable for giving you a 'Local' channel, you would think it could pick up a feed from the Hanington transmitter as well as the London feed in Guildford.

Could be back to SKY soon, where I could if I wanted to to see every BBC region!

I could send all my details but I know Virgins answer, Thanks  anyway

[nodrogd]

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IanEdgar wrote:

Sorry for delay, I have been away a while.

The problem has nothing to do with digital switchover, Virgin gives you the News where the cable begins, and seems incapable for giving you a 'Local' channel, you would think it could pick up a feed from the Hanington transmitter as well as the London feed in Guildford.

Could be back to SKY soon, where I could if I wanted to to see every BBC region!

I could send all my details but I know Virgins answer, Thanks  anyway

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As mentioned earlier in the thread, all Virgin's headends are now line fed and have no "off-air" reception capability. This is the reason all the local radio stations dissapeared from cable.

Getting all regions on satellite doesn't cost Sky anything, but it is a cost to Virgin.