Watching BBCi on free-to-air satellite

Hi all

Does anyone know whether BBCi is streamed as a separate channel as highlights of the Ashes are being shown on it at 11pm German time?

Thanks
Aidan

The BBCi is a separate stream so you wouldn't be able to watch/record BBC1 or BBC2 while watching the highlights early at 22:00 GMT. The highlights are also shown at 23:00 GMT on BBC2 and, based on both of last night's transmissions, differ slightly from the version on the BBCi channel/stream in that around 4 minutes is trimmed from the actual cricket in the BBC2 show but there's a more extensive introduction, as well as a review of what the papers say and punditry from Richie Benaud and Geoff Boycott; the BBC2 show is therefore a bit longer (around 3 minutes). It's produced by Sunset + Vine who were also behind Channel 4's coverage and the recent highlights packages on Five.

I'm capping the latter as a Xvid avi file and putting it up for download on www.uknova.com every morning at around 7:30 German time; you'd need to register to join UKNova, which is a very handy bittorrent site for UK TV shows covering stuff that has been transmitted but is not commercially available (don't go expecting to find shows available on DVD). Hope this helps clarify what the BBC are doing to cover the Ashes.

Hi

Thanks for that - do you happen to know what the stream is called? BBCi I suppose?

Aidan

Sorry about the late reply. Yes BBCi is the BBC's interactive channel/stream. Basically press the red button on your digibox remote when on either BBC1 or BBC2 and you'll pull up the interactive menu from which you'll see Ashes coverage. The highlights stream is only on between 22:00 and 23:45 GMT (enough times to show the highlights package on a loop 3 times) before it is replaced by the interactive scorecard and Test Match Special audio feed for the next day's play. The advantage with BBCi is that you get to see the highlights an hour earlier and if you miss the first 10 minutes of the BBC2 transmission, there should be time to catch the third and final run of the slightly longer BBCi highlights program.

Thanks

The trouble is I don't have a digibox but a receiver and dish supplied in Germany. I wanted to know if BBCi could be found on one of these channels but trawling the menu it doesn't seem to be there.

Aidan

Ah, you need a digibox to get BBCi.

While BBCi is a bespoke service normally only available with a Digibox you should be able to pick up the video streams it contains with a normal FTA digital receiver. Simply re-scan and store transponders 45 and 47 on the Astra 2 satellite (10.773MHz and 10.883MHz, Vertical polarisation, Symbol rate 22,000 and FEC 5/6)

Thanks Yorkshire Lad

I'll let you know how I get on.

Regards

Aidan