Half Baked Proposal:
DTT / DTR Channel [Re]numbering v3.0

Notes

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This is a third attempt at a semi-logical numbering system for the UK's Digital Terrestrial Broadcast system. Channels and Stations are roughly correct as of 2007-04-16.

It is suggested that the EPG is sorted in the order implied here. i.e. 1, 2, 1x, 2x, 3, 3x, 4, 4x, 5, 5x, 6, 6x, (7, 7x, 79x), 8, 8x, 9, 9x, xy0, 1xx, 2xx, 6xx, 7xx with special attention paid to the location of the xy1 channels.

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TV

Group # Channel Name Subgroup
1, 1x : BBC Primary
2, 2x : BBC Secondary 		1 BBC ONE BBC's "Big Four"
2 BBC TWO
13 BBC THREE
14 BBC FOUR
(15  301) BBCi Video Streams
(16  302)
18 CBBC Channel x8
19 BBC NEWS 24 x9
(25  303) BBCi News Multiscreen
(26  305)
28 CBeebies x8
29 BBC Parliament x9
3, 3x : ITV Channels 3 ITV 1 / Channel TV / UTV / STV / Grampian

ITV's "Big Four"

ITV2 +1 (xy1) will become ITV Movies
32 ITV 2
321 ITV 2 +1
33 ITV 3
34 ITV 4
35 ITV Movies x5
38 CITV x8
4, 4x : Channel 4 4 Channel 4 / S4C (Wales)
(41) Channel 4 (Wales) /
Tele-G (Scotland) 		Regional Only
(42) S4C2 (Wales)
43 E4
431 E4+1 xy1
44 More 4
45 Film 4 x5
451 Film 4 +1 x5, xy1
5, 5x : five 5 Five
52 Five Life
53 Five US
6, 6x : Other Organisations 6 ftn Why 6 and 61?
61 abc1 (not Wales)
62 Thomas Cook TV coming soon
63 Sky Three Sky
64 UKTV Bright Ideas UKTV
65 UKTV History
66 Sky Sports News Sky
67 Community Channel
68 Teachers' TV x8
69 Sky News Sky, x9
7, 7x : TopUp TV Channels (see below).
8, 8x : Music Channels
8 TMF
82 The Hits To be taken over by a C4/eMap music channel
9, 9x : Telephone Interactive Channels (Shopping and Quiz) 9 bid tv sit-up shopping
92 price-drop tv
93 QVC
94 Ideal World
95 smileTV
  • x5 : Movie Channels end with 5, but ending 5 does not necessarily mean a Movie Channel
  • x8 : Children's / Education Channels
  • x9 : News Channels
  • xy1 : Timeshift +1 Channels. The first two digits - xy - match the channel that has been timeshifted. The second digit - y - should ideally never be a '1' as that may eventually conflict with rules for radio station numbering. See the Radio notes for more info.
  • Sky : Sky channels are on multiples of 3, meaning they're all down one side of a regular remote control keypad. It also means that Sky News can end in '9' to fit in with the above "x9 is news" idiom and Sky Three can end '3' like other tertiary channels.
  • BBC TWO is an exception to the channel sorting, as it should follow BBC News 24, but instead has been placed between BBCs ONE and THREE (which makes more sense).
  • The BBCi services are on x5 and x6 respectively
  • A single digit is used for the first channel in each group, rather than a number of x1. This allows the viewer to jump to the first channel in any category with just one button press.
    • Digits 1 to 5 have been left attached to their usual analogue stations:
        BBCs ONE and TWO, ITV1, C4 and five.
  • Why 6 and 61? : Ideally abc1 would be on 6 as that channel (generally) has higher ratings and (allegedly) better programming than ftn. However, since abc1 is not available in some areas of the UK and a single digit channel is required to start the 6, 6x block, ftn has been placed on channel 6. As a concession and also due to space requirements, abc1 has been placed on 61, which would otherwise be left unused as an alias for 6. Note that there is the happy accident that abc1 and 61 both end '1'.

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TopUp TV

Group # Channel Name Subgroup
7, 7x : TopUp TV Channels 7 UKTV Gold UKTV
72 UKTV Style
73 Setanta Sports Sports
74 Eurosport UK
75 TCM x5
76 TopUp Anytime 1 TopUp Anytime Streams
77 TopUp Anytime 2
78 TopUp Anytime 3

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Adult

Group # Channel Name Subgroup
79x: Adult Channels 795 Television X Pay Per View, x5
  • The channel number here has three digits that are relatively hard to hit by accident. (Also - 79 is telephone code for 'SX'...)
  • No special consideration has been given to whether a channel is TopUp TV or not.
  • The Prev and Next columns indicate where these channels should be inserted with respect to each other, the TopUp TV channels and the ordinary digital channels.

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Text and Data

Group # Channel Name Subgroup
xy0 : Text and Data Streams 110 BBCi
310 Teletext Teletext Ltd
320 Teletext Holidays
330 Teletext Cars
340 Teletext Games
410 Teletext on 4
420 Tecst Gaelige not yet confirmed
630 Sky Text
710 4TVinteractive Data Only
720 tvtv DIGITAL
  • 1x0, 3x0, 4x0 and 6x0 have each been chosen as a 'reasonable match' to the TV channels with the same first or first two digits. i.e. 110 is associated with BBC1, 310 with ITV1, 410 with C4 and 630 with Sky Three. The other numbers simply follow on from these.
  • 7x0 have nothing to do with TopUp TV, and are merely datastreams.

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Radio

Group # Station Name Subgroup
1xx : BBC Radio
2xx : BBC Radio Ancillaries 		111 BBC Radio 1 BBC's "Big Seven"
122 BBC Radio 2
133 BBC Radio 3
144 BBC Radio 4
155 BBC Radio 5 Live
166 BBC 6 Music
177 BBC 7
188 BBC Asian Network
199 BBC World Service x9
211 BBC 1xtra Radio Extra
255 BBC 5 Sports Xtra
(277) BBC Radio Ulster / Scotland / Wales Regional Programming
(288) BBC Radio Foyle / Gaidheal / Cymru
6xx : eMap Digital Radio
611 The Hits Radio popular programming
622 Smash Hits
633 Kiss
644 heat (not Wales)
655 Magic
666 Kerrang! offbeat programming
677 Q
688 Mojo (not Wales)
7xx : Other DTR
711 oneword
722 smooth FM
733 Virgin Radio
744 Heart FM
755 talkSPORT
766 U105
777 Premier Christian Radio
788 RadioMusicShop
799 Clyde FM
  • Channel numbers are chosen to end with a pair of identical digits
  • BBC channels are assigned to begin with '1' and '2' - as elsewhere
  • Channels ending 11 risk colliding with +1 TV channel numbers if there is an instance of a channel beginning with the same two digits. At the moment this is not a problem; As a rule x1 TV channels are not allocated, but even so 611 is a collision with a potential abc1 +1 TV channel. This could be easily alleviated by swapping abc1 to say, 68, thus making its +1 channel 681.
  • 711 chosen because 'one one' sounds like 'one word'
  • 755 chosen to match BBC's 155 and 255
  • 666 and 777 chosen to balance the forces of good and evil ;)

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