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Its been confirmed today that Alba Group Freesat boxes (Grundig, Goodmans & Bush) do have manual tune capabilities, but is yet to be launched as an option in the freesat digital box menu.
The manual tune, which is currently held in an undisclosed hidden menu, allows access to hundreds of FTA channels presently not listed on the Freesat EPG (electronic programme guide). In accordance with European Union legislation, all receivers must allow the consumer to manually tune available FTA channels. At present only the Humax FOXSATHD allows this.
Alba have said manual tuning was “already technically possible via an undisclosed menu”, so we don’t expect the release of this facility to be too far away.
June 3rd, 2008 at 7:38 am
Lets hope access of the FTA channels is smoother than the Humax way, it would be nice if all the channels could integrate into a single EPG rather than having 2 EPGs and changing between them.
Maybe they could be listed together within the favourite channel listings? or a the end of the Freesat EPG.
June 5th, 2008 at 8:31 am
Hi,
Does anyone have a list of the extra channels available by manual tuning? Are these the same ones that are available via Sky freeview? I’m particularly interested in Russia Today. Thanks!
June 5th, 2008 at 8:45 pm
Theoretically you should be able to manually tune any channel that is free to air, including Russia Today.
For a list of FTA channels, see here :-
http://www.ukfree.tv/allchannels.php
June 6th, 2008 at 8:15 am
Thanks Kev!
June 6th, 2008 at 9:37 am
Nice to see my emails to the BBC Trust and Freesat had the desired effect.
Now if only Channel 4 would make Channel 4 HD FTA.
regards
Martin Curry
June 8th, 2008 at 3:56 am
Why does my Bush HD Freesat box show some channels in 4.3?
I have the box and the TV set to 16.9 so I thought the picture would fill the screen as it does on my Sky box.
June 9th, 2008 at 4:27 am
I have the same problem as Anne, Im using the Goodmans HD Box, the screen can go from 16.9 to 4:3 and on some broardcasts even sizes ive never seen before! even on the HD channels all along the bottom of the screen there is a black bar about half inch high and down the sides a bar but it doesnt have a clean “edge” to it. Along the top is the only part that is filled. Ive been running Sky on this tv and never had any problems so i know its not that.
This is what i did find, when using the HDMI connection it does what ive explained above but if you use the Scart connection it doesnt! Can anyone explain why this is happening? and maybe if there is a soloution to this?
July 23rd, 2008 at 1:35 pm
I notice also when looking at Al jazera that there are black unfilled sides to the picture and this is not the case on Sky. I wonder why?