Word reached us today that UPC will no longer be carrying the ITV2, ITV3, ITV4 channels.  Funnily enough it’s April 1st and we thought it was a joke at first.  Unfortunately it’s not.   If you select the appropriate channel on your UPC Digital TV box, it will simply come up Channel no longer available.

UPC Lose the Rights to ITV2, ITV3 & ITV4

This is a huge disappointment for the many UPC customer who regularly watch these channels.   The extra ITV stations carry a varied content with many old series and classic films being shown on them. By losing the rights to broadcast these channels it add to the fiasco surrounding their price increase at the start of the year.

Allied to the fact that there are hoardes of people across the country that are unhappy with their service already and don’t get me started on their customer support, it really is a body blow for UPC. 

Anyway the basic fact is that now more then ever the UPC service is getting to be less and less value for the average punter.   That is why in the last couple of years, more and more people have been moving to free to Air TV services. ITV2, ITV3 & ITV4 are still being broadcast on these Free Satellite TV systems.

With regard to this you have two options really.  You could go for a Free to Air system which would give you all the free UK satellite TV channels.   These free to air systems are relatively inexpensive and can even do recoring of TV programmes (with the addition of an external hard drive) and some even have media players built in for playing your movies and music.  You can even get HD Receivers that will allow you to receive the likes of ITV HD, BBC HD, BBC Once HD & Channel 4 HD. 

The other option is to get something like a Freesat receiver.  These are more expensive than generic free to air boxes but they are the closest thing to a SKy+box out there on the market at the moment.   All of the above info regarding channels etc about the free to air receivers is also true of Freesat.  The additional cost is because  the recording can be done with it’s own internal hard drive, the freesat boxes automatically retune them selves when new channels added and they of course have a 7 day EPG.   There are cheaper and more expensive models in the Freesat range of receivers but there is something for everyone’s pocket.

All in all, it’s no wonder that the free to air and freesat market in Ireland today is over 10% of the TV viewing population and growing at a huge rate every year, especially in these harsh economic times.   In a nutshell, why should you pay for something every month, when you can get pretty much the same or in some cases (ITV2, ITV3, ITV4) sometimes even better.

As someone once said on another free to air channel, ‘you know it makes sense’ !!!

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Example of how to tune the channels in manually

Press ‘Menu’ button

1. Scroll down and select ‘Installation’ option
2. Enter Password ‘0000′
3. Select ‘TP Scan’

4. Channel	Frequency	Polarity	Symbol rate
   ITV 1, 2, 4	10758	Vertical	22000
   UTV, ITV 3, ITV 3+1	10906	Vertical	22000
   ITV 4+1	10832	Hor	22000
   ITV 2+1	10891	Hor	22000

5. Type in Frequency, Polarity, Symbol and Specify ‘Free’ Channels only
6. Select Search
7. Additional channels are added to the end of the channel list.

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See what UPC have to say for themselves below;