TV listings for UK Freesat
It's a lot of palaver to go look at TVGuide.co.uk or Freesat.co.uk when you want to check specific channels rather than seeing a small EPG-style grid (which means neither of those links will work on NetSurf 😉).
So I wrote a little bit of code to pull the necessary information from the Freesat website and show it in simple text form.
The first time you use it, run fsg (fsg = freesatguide) for a list of available channels. It'll reply something like this:
*fsg
Syntax: fsg <channel ID>
The available channels are:
560 BBC ONE London HD 700 BBC TWO HD 10005 ITV1 HD
1540 Channel 4 HD 1547 Channel 5 HD 818 BBC THREE HD
819 BBC FOUR HD 712 BBC ALBA HD 710 BBC Scotland HD
1011 ITV1 1030 ITV1 +1 1118 ITV2 HD
1101 ITV2 +1 1119 ITV3 HD 1103 ITV3 +1
1120 ITV4 HD 1107 ITV4 +1 1121 ITVBe HD
20002 S4C HD 1525 Channel 4 +1 1510 E4
1511 E4 +1 1515 More4 1516 More4 + 1
28010 E4 Extra 28009 4seven 1541 Channel 5+1
28007 5USA 28008 5USA +1 28005 5STAR
17013 5ACTION 4017 5SELECT 27000 TRUE CRIME XTR
27003 TRUE CRIME 4010 TRUE CRIME +1 27001 LEGEND
27004 LEGEND XTRA 27002 LEGEND XTRA +1 28006 5Star+1
20028 Sky Mix HD 4013 Challenge 20026 Sky Arts
7009 Food Network 7010 Food Network +1 5007 DMAX
5008 DMAX+1 17011 PBS America 24004 W
5005 Dave 5003 Drama 26000 Yesterday
19012 Really 4027 BLAZE 4015 Together TV
9008 HGTV 18008 QUEST HD 18005 Quest +1
18006 Quest Red 18007 Quest Red +1 18004 Quest
4034 Court TV 21259 That's TV 21262 That's TV 2
820 BBC NEWS HD 711 BBC Parliament HD 20014 Sky News
2005 Al Jazeera English 7016 FRANCE 24 (in Englis 3020 Bloomberg TV
15005 NHK WORLD-JAPAN 4036 CNBC HD 4026 Arirang TV
21257 TRT World 8005 GB News 21261 TalkTV
20027 SportyStuffTV 1520 Film4 1521 Film4 +1
21013 Talking Pictures TV 3022 4Music 3021 The Box
12001 KISS 14005 Magic 12002 Kerrang!
822 CBBC HD 821 CBeebies HD 5004 DAYSTAR HD
8003 Revelation 8004 GODTV 20012 Sonlife TV
837 BBC Radio 1 831 BBC Radio 1Xtra 838 BBC Radio 2
839 BBC Radio 3 840 BBC Radio 4 841 BBC Radio 5Live
830 BBC Radio 5 Sports E 844 BBC Radio 6Music 845 BBC Radio 4 Extra
842 BBC Asian Network 849 BBC Radio 4 LW 846 BBC World Service
834 BBC Radio Scotland 835 BBC Radio nan Gaidha 836 BBC Radio Wales
843 BBC Radio Cymru 847 BBC Radio Ulster 848 BBC Radio Foyle
833 BBC Radio London 4001 Capital 4004 Capital Xtra
4002 Classic FM 8001 Gold 25000 Radio X
21008 talkSPORT 20011 Smooth RadioUK 9000 Heart
13000 LBC 97.3 832 BBC Radio Cymru 2 23007 Virgin Radio
19002 RTE Radio 1 19003 RTE 2fm 19004 RTE Lyric fm
19005 RTE RnaG 3003 BFBS Radio 21006 TWR
951 BBC Information 18009 QVC HD 18001 QVC Beauty
18002 QVC Extra 18010 QVC Style HD 8002 Gems TV
11006 Jewellery Maker 21258 TJC HD 21260 IDEAL WORLD
4032 Create and Craft 105 Freesat Info
137 channels are available.
*
The numbers shown are the internal ID numbers of each channel. You'll need to remember the number(s) for the channel(s) you want listings on.
When you have picked the channels you want listings on, simply run the program again giving the channel number as the parameter, like this:
*fsg 1520
Today's programmes:
04:00 Teleshopping (120 mins)
Teleshopping.
06:00 Teleshopping (300 mins)
Teleshopping.
11:00 Baby's Day Out (115 mins)
(1994) Comedy starring Joe Mantegna, Joe Pantoliano and Brian
Haley. Inept criminals kidnap a millionaire's baby. But when the
boy escapes, there's mayhem as they try to track him down. [S]
12:55 Ice Age: Collision Course (110 mins)
(2016) Animated comedy. Scrat the sabre-toothed squirrel
accidentally reactivates a buried spaceship, with catastrophic
results. Voices include Ray Romano, Denis Leary and Queen
Latifah. [AD,S]
14:45 Megamind (115 mins)
(2010) Animated adventure. There are unexpected consequences when
a blue-skinned, large-headed alien supervillain outwits and
defeats his superhero enemy. With the voice of Will Ferrell.
[AD,S]
16:40 The Chronicles of Narnia: The... (135 mins)
...Voyage of the Dawn Treader: (2010) Fantasy. Lucy, Edmund and
their annoying cousin Eustace are transported back to Narnia,
where they make a scary, perilous journey to save the land.
[AD,S]
18:55 Home Alone (125 mins)
(1990) Classic family comedy starring Macaulay Culkin. A boy's
parents forget to take him on holiday with them. Then two inept
burglars turn up. Can our resourceful young hero outwit them?
[AD,S]
21:00 Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (160 mins)
(2015) Part five of the Tom Cruise action-thriller franchise. The
secret agents must bring down a terrorist group, but that's not
easy when the CIA are hunting you down... [AD,S]
23:40 The Masque of the Red Death (110 mins)
(1964) Horror with Vincent Price and Jane Asher, based on an
Edgar Allen Poe story. Satanist Prince Prospero treats people
like puppets. But he can't escape the coming plague. [S]
01:30 Sleepy Hollow (130 mins)
(2000) Supernatural horror. Johnny Depp and Christina Ricci star
in Tim Burton's blood-curdling Gothic tale of a headless horseman
who's going round lopping folks' heads off. [S]
03:40 Teleshopping (140 mins)
Teleshopping.
11 programmes listed.
*
The program will attempt to fudge the times so that they always appear as the British times regardless of the timezone settings on your computer (this is important for me as I am on European time, and while TVGuide gets the time right, Freesat does not. Neither does Cisana's TV Listings app. Given that my satellite receiver picks up its time from Astra, and is therefore on UK time, it's quite a problem if the listings are out by an hour when wanting to watch or schedule a recording.
Obviously, this hasn't been tested with summer time as yet, but it should work...
You can also provide a channel by name but with caveats. The first is that it'll take longer to provide listings as it first needs to get the channel list, and the second more important caveat is that it is an exact channel name match.
For example fsg cbbc will not work as there is no channel called "CBBC" (the matching is not case sensitive). So you have to specify fsg "cbbc hd" (in quotes so it is correctly given as the name). It's simpler for "Legend", and "Film4"...
As an alternative possibility, you can simply end the channel name with a star, in which case you'll get listings for the first channel that begins with the given string. So a quick way to get the listings for BBC ONE would be fsg bbc*, and fsg talking* for Talking Pictures TV (you can't use "talk*" as that would match TalkTV).
You'll need the URL fetcher (version 0.58 or later), AcornHTTP (version 1.09 or later), and AcornSSL (allegedly 1.06, but we've had innumerable version 1.06 releases for YEARS).
If you stick it into !Boot.Library, it'll be available as soon as you open a TaskWindow.
Before you ask...
- No, it won't show tomorrow or next Tuesday.
This will be done at some point.
- No, it won't show you when the programmes are on in your local time (if not UK).
Get in touch if this is something you'd be interested in.
- No, you can't specify channels using the Freesat channel number.
Get in touch if this is something you'd be interested in (it uses the system internal number as
that's the quickest way, and since I don't have a Freesat receiver my channel arrangement is
different...).
- No, it doesn't cache the channel list, so if you're looking up multiple channels by anything
other than the ID number, it'll need to refetch the list each time.
This is an optimisation to be looked into, certainly.
- No, it won't show Freeview (UK Terrestrial) channels.
Nor will it show what's on Sky. Or Canal+. Or Amazon Prime. Or...
- No, it doesn't run on Windows/Linux/Mac (unless you run RPCEmu maybe? ☺).
Your comments:
Please note that while I check this page every so often, I am not able to control what users write; therefore I disclaim all liability for unpleasant and/or infringing and/or defamatory material. Undesired content will be removed as soon as it is noticed. By leaving a comment, you agree not to post material that is illegal or in bad taste, and you should be aware that the time and your IP address are both recorded, should it be necessary to find out who you are. Oh, and don't bother trying to inline HTML. I'm not that stupid! ☺ ADDING COMMENTS DOES NOT WORK IF READING TRANSLATED VERSIONS.
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| jgh, 25th February 2024, 19:53 |
Ooo, that's useful in an unexpected way. I've been toying with getting a TV service, and that list shows that NHK World is available. I've found that with so many services you can't find what's actually avaialble until you actually start using (and paying) for it. |
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Last read at 19:00 on 2024/12/03.
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