Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris
In the analogue days if you weren't a subscriber, but your cable was still connected at the cab, you could plug the cable directly in to your TV and receive, at the very least, the 5 PSB channels. A number of others were often also there. We used to get BBC3 and, bizarrely, Live! TV. Analogue cable used a wider frequency range than terrestrial but, in Hemel Hempstead at least, the PSBs were within the range a TV's analogue tuner could receive.
IIRC In some of the new towns the local cableco was obliged to provide a basic free service.
However to answer the original question, you can't do this with digital and a Freeview TV or box must be connected to an aerial, not Virgin Media cable.
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The ones originaly in the UHF range in Hemel were BBC1 & 2, ITV London, ITV Anglia (a legacy from the British Relay cable system), Channel 4, West Herts TV (the first local cable channel in the UK) & the channel guide. When channel 5 was launched, this replaced WHTV which was then only available via the converter. The reason BBC3 & Live TV appeared was mainly due to capacilty running out on the Band III (VHF) channels the converter used. Hence remaining "gaps" in Bands IV & V (UHF) had to be utilised meaning you could recieve the channels direct as well as when selecting them on the converter.