I notice that on my Humax FreeSat tuner the “U” channels ..
U&Dave
U&Yesterday
etc
are still listed but when I try to play them I get “Station is not available or is encrypted” message.
Has something changed?
All OK on Sony ‘YouView’
Looking on www there are a lot of mentions over numbers of months about ‘U’ services down.
Maybe try again later or run a retune.
Thanks …
Your response was very helpful. I thought that maybe the channels had become pay-channels.
If I pick one of the channels I get a display saying what the program is but no picture.
I investigated some more (once I heard the channels were still working) and I found this on the internet ..
"…
The move to DVBS2 means that these channels are no longer available on SD satellite receivers, and are now only available on HD satellite receivers boxes, Sky HD, Freesat HD etc.
The channels affected are :
U&Eden
U&Yesterday
U&Dave
U&W
U&Drama
…"
I did a reboot of my humax box (unplugged it) but no improvement.
My box is quite old. I think I have it for over 15 years (I got it when I first got a satellite dish and that was 15? years ago. Can’t remember the exact date). I don’t know the model number but it has a 320G drive rather than the modern terabytes.
I can live without the “U” channels (but would prefer to have them).
Thanks again.
Probably time to upgrade and drop the satellite … it’s really old tech these days
My Sony with no add-on boxes gets all the U channels and about 170 ish other channels on terrestrial transmissions, plus unknown numbers more on web streaming.
We don’t have a separate Humax or other box, but having recently replaced our 10 year old TV, the new one supports a large number of Freeview channels - most of which were unavailable on the old one. It also lost support for online watch again serivices, and when it finally lost support for BBC iPlayer and Netflix we decided it was time to replace it.
We could have just added an Amazon Firestick or similar to the old TV instead. I guess it’s a bit like owning a (Naim) streamer - the old ones keep on working, but you need to either replace them or use workarounds if you want to keep them running the latest services.
Which is fine until your broadband connection breaks down. My Freeview satellite box meant I could get TV and most of the radio stations I listened to whilst I waited for BT and Openreach to stop blaming each other for the fault, and this was despite me telling them that the cable from the telegraph pole had broken. And to add insult to injury the 4G box they sent to get me back online whilst I waited for the fault to be fixed didn’t work. I had to get another one sent, which arrived a couple of hours before the Openreach technician eventually arrived.
That’s probably good advice for most people. But I’m actually thinking of buying a Freesat recorder.
On 1st May Virgin stopped broadcasting NHK World. I could switch to Sky, but I have 12 months left on my Virgin contract.
I’ve dug up an old sky box, connected it to the dish. I can watch NHK World in HD, unfortunately I can’t record.
I haven’t used the dish for 15 years, I’m surprised it is still working.
I was hoping I could use freeview. NHK is listed as channel 272, however when I use the freeview channel checker it is not available at my postcode, or any other postcodes I’ve checked.
Freesat must still be popular as there are plenty of new Freesat recorders available.
I have just bought one.
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On Saturday I took ownership of my late father in laws Samsung HD freesat box.
On Saturday the U channels didn’t work. Sunday they did work (I watched Allo Allo pilot). Today they don’t work.
BBC1 and 2 sometimes work, sometimes they don’t.
NHK World initially didn’t work, but it’s worked the last two days.
Have you tried rescanning the channels. Mine worked better after I did a rescan.
I have not tried a re-tuning because I have forgotten how to do it (and anyway it normally updates automatically). The machine is 15(?) years old. (I vaguely remember I needed to press the colour buttons in a certain order to do a factory reset and then enter my postcode to decide which BBC region I wanted). I tried a hard reset by unplugging it.
The last few times I tried the channels were not available.
Basically (as far as I can tell) they are transmitting in a new format that my box does not support.