Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with TV and UK

Help me get my Sky TV working again.

Nufkin — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 08:16:27 -0800

My Sky+ box only receives some channels, others now display a error 25 'No satellite signal is being received'. Sky want to send an engineer at a cost of £65. Is there anything I can do to fix this? Some channels (like Sky 1) show perfectly; others, such as channel 4 are intermittent; some I can't get at all (all flavours of BBC).

What can I do to try and fix this?

Help Jenni Be Awesome

By The Grace of God — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:52:27 -0800

Good source for wigs for transvestites in the UK? What to look for and think about when getting a wig? So a friend of mine is exploring his long time interest in cross dressing, awesome! He's looking for a wig, or maybe several wigs. He wants to look nice - not cheesy or tacky, but to express a gentle feminine side.

Where's a good place to get a wig? How much to pay? He's willing to pay for quality. Anything else he should consider?

Slightly less drama than The Bill

Anonymous — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 11:34:44 -0800

UKLawFilter: I don't watch TV. My housemates do. What legal defence do I have? I think it's necessary to expand a little I come from a house without a TV. There are few shows I'd watch, but I can quite happily live without it. My housemates however, cannot, and for various reasons (big trouble with student loans for one) have not stumped up their portion of the license fee. I've had my part sat on my desk for the past 3 weeks waiting for them to get their act together, and once I realised they weren't going to bother paying any time soon, I stopped watching even the little I had been before.

I'd love to be altruistic and say that in the (admittedly unlikely) event of this being caught and fined, my housemates would be honest and say I had not been watching TV, but I doubt they would. So let's hypothesise that this situation ends in a worst-case scenario and that I, on principle, decline to cough up. Will I have any grounds for acquittal in the eyes of the law?

Help me find a UK 60/70's fim from some sketchy memories

merocet — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 16:53:32 -0800

UK Late 60's/Early 70's Film/TV filter: I'm looking for a film or made-for-TV drama I remember seeing on TV as a kid in the mid/late 70's. It was set in the UK, possibly in a high rise block in a city and there's It featured as the main character a schoolboy who must have been around 11 or 12 years old. Main thing I remember is that he got into trouble when his mum or his teacher found a drawing he'd done of a topless woman (possibly his teacher). The feel of the thing is very similar I think to Ken Loach's Kes but there's a lot of fog in my memory separating then and now! There may or may not have been bullying in it and it's not Kes, If... or Ptang Yang Kipperbang. Any ideas?

Name this children's book and TV series from the 80's

ticktockdoc — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 11:18:49 -0800

Name this children's book and TV series from the 80's...? It's Lord of the Flies meets Follyfoot. Kinda. Plot: Three (?) children [definitely two boys, maybe a girl too...] are living in their grandfather's/stepfather's/some dude's(?) massive house and estate/lands. For some reason(?) they decide to run away, but instead of actually going anywhere, they instead hide out in the land/forrest of the estate. They manage to hide out there for YEARS, within sight of the massive house all the while. They evade many search parties [something about a hollow tree...?] and it becomes rather Lord of the Flies, with them making clothes out of animals and eventually their escapade ending with one of the boys [dark-haired one] returning home to the big house [can't recall if he rats out the other two]. Maybe the dark-haired kid got sick, so that's why he had to go back...?

This was a book , but was also a TV series shown in the UK in the late 80's with similar production values as 'Famous Five' and 'Follyfoot'. I remember it being full of awesome. The closest I can come to remembering the actual title is: 'The Boys of Brendan Green'. But fruitless Googling and Amazon-ing(?) prove useless.

Television over internet

alby — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 09:26:51 -0800

I just moved. I have terrible TV reception and 24 megabit internet. Any ideas? My house (in the UK) has terrible television reception 'cause it has a crappy aerial and is badly positioned. I'm pretty sure that I can't change the aerial without a bit of fuss (it's rented) and I don't really watch much TV - in a "sit down and watch whatever's on" way - anyway.

I do however, have 24Mbit internet access; the router says I'm getting 16 and Speedtest says just over 8. I've certainly downloaded at at least 1.5 megabytes per second via good ol' HTTP, probably higher via Bittorrent.

So what's the current tech for getting television programmes over the internet? Bittorrent and set-top boxes? What free/fee-paying options are there?

I'm not particularly interested in computer-only services - I want to watch TV on my TV, not on my laptop.

Can UK TV Licensing authorities actually tell if you're watching TV or not?

6am — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 03:05:33 -0800

Can UK TV Licensing authorities actually tell via some special ray gun if you're watching TV or not? Because I suspect they can't. If they're slapping a fine on you, presumably they have to be able to prove it?

UK DIY IPTV PDQ?

Nice Guy Mike — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 05:27:09 -0800

How can my parents get English TV in Italy? Now that my parents have retired, they're going to be spending more time dual-basing between Italy and the UK, probably a couple of months at a time in each place. They'd like the ability to watch english TV in Italy, and being the family's tech-head I've been tapped for potential solutions.

-------- Longish explanation, skip to bottom for actual questions ---------

The most obvious answer is British satellite TV, ideally via the Astra constellation - the problem is, they're too far south to get a signal without a huge dish (2.4m, according to this page), which is not feasible.

Next up is TV streaming using e.g. a Slingbox, streaming from my parent's home in the UK to Italy. Luckily, I own one that I use on my home LAN, and we were able to conduct a proper test at a friends' place there. The quality was OK, but only for a small window on the computer in question - ideally they'd like to watch on a full size TV.

Torrents are not an option, as the type of TV they'd want to watch will not be torrented (british TV, some soaps).

Due to the small upload bandwidth available, the best solution I can think of is to record in the UK with a DVR of some description, then download (after recordings, i.e. non-real time) from said DVR to my parent's computer in Italy. This would allow better quality than streaming, albeit with slower download times.

So, how to do it?

I figure the following components:
- Server machine with TV card, based in the UK and hooked to a UK TV source and the UK broadbanc connection
- Client machine, laptop with media centre software, taken to Italy and hooked to italian broadband connection, connected to TV
- Server software capable of being controlled via web interface

Ideal, but not required, would be the option of automated (e.g. overnight) downloads from the server to the client. My parents are somewhat technophobic but can do basic operations in Windows (e.g. go to website, click TV shows you want to download, leave the laptop on overnight, watch shows the next day via Media Centre).

--------- Questions: -----------

- Server software:
I'm looking for a recommendation for software running on a media PC (actually, a media server) that can:
- record from TV
- be controlled via a web-type interface (as opposed to VNC)
- can appropriately compress TV show files e.g. using XviD, H264, etc
- can be remotely administered (administration being a separate function to merely "using", ie setting recordings and aquiring TV shows)

- Client software
Windows MCE should provide the majority of user-side interaction, but an automated method of logging in to the above server and downloading e.g. all files in a selected folder structure would be useful.

- For those who have read the lengthy speil above, any comments on feasibility? Any better ideas would be welcome.

Sorry about the length, if any more details are required, please ask.

Looking for a copy of a 1950s advert

rongorongo — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 05:11:08 -0800

How might I go about trying to locate a copy of a 1950s British TV advert (brand known but agency unknown, a websearch reveals nothing)?

Writing for TV? Am I crazy?

Orange Goblin — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 04:37:01 -0800

How can I get into writing for (British) television? I'm currently studying Maths at university, but I'm coming fairly close to thinking "hey, I don't want to actually earn any money, I want to write for TV!" I've been making short films for 4-5 years now, entered a few competitions and even managed to win one, so although my degree might not be relevant, I do have some experience. Would the fact I'm not doing some sort of writing degree be a disadvantage, or would the maths help me stand out from the media studies crowd? Or does it not matter at all?

I've read this previous thread as well as Jane Espenson's blog, but this (along with most of the other advice I have found) is fairly US-centric, and I was wondering if anyone could give a more British perspective.

Law and Order UK theme

matthewr — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 16:05:08 -0800

What's the music used as the theme for Law and Order on five in the UK? It's also used in a trailer for one of the Matrix sequels - here ^[WMV], music from 1:41 — 2:14.

Good UK TV forums?

smackfu — Fri, 12 May 2006 07:26:59 -0800

What are some good message boards to discuss British TV? I'm really looking for something popular with Britons, since sites with mainly US members like TWoP tend to follow BBC America timing, or ignore shows altogether.

UK will condition

dash_slot- — Fri, 30 Dec 2005 13:45:21 -0800

I am watching ITV's Midsomer Murders at the moment, wherein Detective Chief Inspector John Nettles just heard that a 20 year old student Aidan is told he will inherit £100,000 if he reaches 21 as a non smoker. Are these Will clauses legitimate in UK law? Or are they a convenient dramatic device, long superceded in legal practice?

I live in the UK and I want a TiVo-like device, but I can't get Sky+. What are my best options?

yankeefog — Mon, 24 Jan 2005 06:51:46 -0800

I live in the UK and I want a TiVo-like device, but I can't get Sky+. What are my best options? (Oops--should have had a "MORE INSIDE." The more follows:)

My landlord won't let us install a Sky dish, so no Sky+ for us. (We can get Telewest broadband, and they say they are developing a PVR, but they haven't announced any details.) Having done some googling, I've found a couple of freeview PVRs, but it seems as though most of them are missing the single feature we most want out of a PVR: a "season pass" type feature that lets you record all instances of a single show, no matter how many times it changes time slot. Are there any PVRs in the UK that have that feature? Or is our best bet to buy a used TiVo on ebay.co.uk and hope it doesn't crap out on us?

(I should mention that I travel back and forth to the US a fair amount, so if my best bet is to buy a miniMac or an modded XBOX or a cheap PC and use it as a media center, I can do so at US prices, providing I won't have any PAL/NTSC problems. But I'm hoping it won't come to that, since I'm not too confident of my abilities to hack together a homebrew PVR. )