With the Formula 1 season only weeks away, I was keen to see if there was any possibility to be able to remote record the Friday practice sessions which air on the BBC Red Button channel 301, because I might forget to set a recording via the local EPG on the 8320HD before leaving for work.
As some of you may know, channel 301 is present on the 8320HD's EPG, but bizarrely missing from Fetch TV's Web-based EPG (the one that lets you remote record). I lodged a ticket about this with Fetch TV's support, but got this unsatisfying response:
"Unfortunately the EPG data providers who supply the programme guide do not include the red button channels as the BBC doesn't provide the programme information for them. So even if we added the channel itself in the listings it would have no programme information."
So what they're saying is that the Web EPG has a different data source than the 8320HD's EPG (the former is collated by non-geniuses TV Genius and the latter is taken from the Freeview on-air signal). Surely there are two obvious ways to fix this - the first is to get TV Genius to supply the channel 301 data (I find it difficult to believe that the BBC wouldn't supply it to TV Genius if asked) or secondly, simply add the "missing" channels by merging the TV Genius EPG data with the on-air signal data.
It's disappointing that Fetch TV haven't even thought of considering either course of action, especially when channel 301 isn't the only missing channel in their Web EPG. As it stands, you can forget ever Remote Recording anything on the BBC Red Button - another thumbs down for the Web EPG/Remote Recording facility then.
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