jj20x

Nothing new there for Viceland, the video stream (PID 1601) and audio stream (PID 1611) are indeed carried across multiple networks on transport stream TSID 11 and have been for a long time.

This isn't unusual, as Viceland isn't in the NIT for the customer facing networks. It (the presence of hidden video and audio streams) is quite common on the regional transport streams, where local tv channels are sent out across all networks from the local headend but only defined in the NIT for the appropriate networks. E.g. Sheffield Live audio & video streams are carried across Barnsley 1, Barnsley 2, Barnsley 3 & Barnsley 4 networks but only present in the NIT for Barnsley 3 & Barnsley 4, which cover the Sheffield area. Sheffield Live is viewable on VM equipment on the Barnsley 3 & Barnsley 4 networks, where it is present in the NIT but ignored by VM equipment on the Barnsley 1 & Barnsley 2 networks, where it isn't defined in the NIT, even though the video and audio streams are actually present.

EPG data is carried across the entire network, repeated across each transport stream, so EPG data being present doesn't actually indicate that the channels are physically present anywhere on the network.

The fact that the Viceland video and audio streams were added across the national network some time ago but haven't been added to the NIT possibly indicates that there is a problem bringing the service to VM customers. The problem could be technical, contractual or just a reason known only to VM management.

As I've said previously, it isn't listed in the NIT for ANY network, not even the internal networks used for testing.

It only exists as a name defined in the Service Description Table. Indicating that it may have been tested at some point and the tests were subsequently discontinued OR it was added, at some point, but the active tests never actually started.