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[BillyM]

I'm in Manchester (Northwest region). In the 800s I get BBC1 and 2 Wales, ITV Wales, S4C. Also 3 Welsh radio stations.

[tweetSP0RT]

@ozsat yeah I could but ideally I want to keep West as channels 1/3. To be honest I’ll just use my TV even if for some they are only SD for now. I’ve got my two main regions in HD via BT.

The loss of radio is the bigger issue due to local football rights.  I quite often flick around between BT/Sky and the radio stations on a Saturday afternoon.  Now with BBC Sounds flicking between stations on BT TV takes far too long even if the commentaries were available online.

[ozsat]

The BBC streams have football removed in most cases - so even lost football on the channels you keep.

[tweetSP0RT]

Exactly and even if you could get commentary to go from one station to another you have to either navigate through the Sounds interface which takes a while or come out completely change station and press red.   Going from say BT Sport 1 to 5 Live to Radio Solent back to Sky Sports Main Event then to BBC Somerset would just take forever.  Being able to just punch in channel numbers/press channel up/down was much simpler. 

It's easier actually now to bring up the side by side view (LG call it multiview) on my TV with BT TV on one side and Freeview on the other, although you lose a lot of screen real estate.

I recognise this is probably an 'edge use' case but this along with the really restrictive recording changes are the biggest downsides to the change for me.

[SoupDragon57]

If I were to summarise the views soon far...

Good

- More HD Channels (Inc regional BBC in HD)

- Channels 1-5 now have the HD versions at the top of the guide

- much improved picture quality on SD channels

- some channels that were not previously available to all

Bad

- Missing ITV regions

- Guide suggests your local ITV region programming, only to discover another region. (Result: having to switch from BT TV to the TV to access the SD version of your region)

- Restricted radio offering and BBC Sounds UX

- Sometimes the Freeview IP channels don't want to load, requiring you to change channel and back again for it to work.

- BBC football issues (see previous post)

- Lack of some key channels, e.g. UKTV - Dave, W etc. (Not bothered by the lack of shipping channels)

Real shame this couldn't have been implemented as a hybrid offering, replacing terrestrial channels where the better IP version existed, whilst retaining the terrestrial channels not available over IP.

Have I missed anything? 

[tweetSP0RT]

The other 'bad' thing is the recording.  If it was two Freeview IP channels at once and two pay channels at once that would be acceptable, the current way is really restrictive and requires quite a lot of planning for me i.e. setting Plex server recordings to optimise how I use BT TV for recording.  

[NigelB72]

@tweetSP0RT from what I understand the box has 2 actual tuners and 2 virtual/software tuners. The virtual ones are used for IP channels and the physical ones for terrestrial/aerial channels.

Given that the terrestrial channels are now delivered via IP, the box will use the virtual tuners for recording purposes. 

Maybe this can be adjusted via software in the future....

[tweetSP0RT]

@NigelB72ah ok thanks that explains it.  If it could be a hybrid solution as suggested that would improve things a bit.  I think I may end up investing in another Freeview box purely for recordings.   Catchup options from the FTA channels (baring iPlayer) are almost all awful in terms of adverts unless you pay,

EDIT just remembered I've still got an old BT box gathering dust in the loft do they work for recording Freeview without a subscription?  If so that's my problem solved.

[Kimbrich6]

Yeah they do

[tweetSP0RT]

@Kimbrich6 cheers, looks like I'll be going up in the loft tomorrow! Again not an ideal solution (and yet more cable management behind the living room TV!) but at least I'll be back to as many recording options as I had before.