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Sony iDTVs and BBC Interactive and Multiscreen Services
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With the help of Digitalspy forum members, I've managed to get the BBC Interactive and News Multiscreen services working on my Sony IDTV, and it is, in my opinion, a general problem with Sony IDTVs rather than my individual problem, so I've just emailed this to Sony and am waiting for their response.
Re: The BBC Interactive and News Multiscreen Service on Sony IDTVs.
With the help of people on online forums, I've found the reason for this problem, and the workaround. You might want to forward this to the relevant engineers for consideration for the next IDTV firmware update.
The BBC Interactive and News Multiscreen services are dependant on channels 701, 702, and 703. Because the Sony IDTV channel numbering runs from 0 to 99, it can't use these actual channel numbers and will try to assign them to channels numbers in the upper range of its available channels. (I'm not sure of the actual range, but online opinion is that it's 60-89 for first generation IDTVs and 70-99 for second generation IDTVs). However, radio stations now occupy most of this upper range of channels, leaving about 10 free for "extra" channels.
If during the tuning scan, the IDTV comes across duplicate multiplexes that are transmitted from another transmitter in addition to the local transmitter, the extra channels are added to that small upper range of channel numbers, and can easily fill up the allocation for extra channels. If after that, the scan comes to the multiplex containing channels 701-703, there is no room for them, so they get discarded.
The workaround is to select three channels numbers like 61-63, and to use the manual tuning facility to assign channels 701-703 to these numbers. This will bring the BBC Interactive and News Multiscreen Services to life, so I'd recommend that this be the advice to anybody else that asks about the problem.
A better solution would be to modify the firmware with an over-air-download so that it can accept a greater range of channel numbers. If that is not possible, another solution is to give priority to non-duplicate high-numbered channels like 701-703 over duplicate channels that are already in the upper range of available channel numbers, i.e. if duplicate channels are already in the upper range, then the tuning scan should eject them and put in the non-duplicate channels.
Re: The BBC Interactive and News Multiscreen Service on Sony IDTVs.
With the help of people on online forums, I've found the reason for this problem, and the workaround. You might want to forward this to the relevant engineers for consideration for the next IDTV firmware update.
The BBC Interactive and News Multiscreen services are dependant on channels 701, 702, and 703. Because the Sony IDTV channel numbering runs from 0 to 99, it can't use these actual channel numbers and will try to assign them to channels numbers in the upper range of its available channels. (I'm not sure of the actual range, but online opinion is that it's 60-89 for first generation IDTVs and 70-99 for second generation IDTVs). However, radio stations now occupy most of this upper range of channels, leaving about 10 free for "extra" channels.
If during the tuning scan, the IDTV comes across duplicate multiplexes that are transmitted from another transmitter in addition to the local transmitter, the extra channels are added to that small upper range of channel numbers, and can easily fill up the allocation for extra channels. If after that, the scan comes to the multiplex containing channels 701-703, there is no room for them, so they get discarded.
The workaround is to select three channels numbers like 61-63, and to use the manual tuning facility to assign channels 701-703 to these numbers. This will bring the BBC Interactive and News Multiscreen Services to life, so I'd recommend that this be the advice to anybody else that asks about the problem.
A better solution would be to modify the firmware with an over-air-download so that it can accept a greater range of channel numbers. If that is not possible, another solution is to give priority to non-duplicate high-numbered channels like 701-703 over duplicate channels that are already in the upper range of available channel numbers, i.e. if duplicate channels are already in the upper range, then the tuning scan should eject them and put in the non-duplicate channels.
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Hope Sony think of a "fix" now:)