How to get ITV HD on a Sky HD box

There are times when we feel bad about giving ITV a verbal kicking, but they just make it so bloody easy. We can only withstand so much temptation. We’re just flesh and blood, dammit. Case in point - ITV are punting forward their new ITV HD channel as a great new innovation, but only making it available to Freesat viewers as part of their long-running feud with Sky. The same feud that, between 1998 and 2000, saw Sky Digital channel 103 broadcasting nothing but a message stating how you’d need to press ‘TV’ then ‘3’ on your remote to watch ITV through your analogue aerial, meaning a whole bunch of viewers with digital television (like us) simply stopped watching ITV, all for the sake of ITV plc unwilling to pay Sky’s EPG carriage fee.

The same applies with ITV HD, which isn’t available on Sky HD boxes. OR SO THEY WANT YOU TO THINK. There is a way to get ITV HD on Sky HD (providing you have a box running the new Sky HD firmware). And here it is:

What you will need for this hobby:

• A Sky HD set-top box
• The new EPG firmware (“sky+8.3.2”)
• A flask of weak lemon drink
• The internet

How to do it:

• Press ‘services’ on your Sky HD remote.
• Press ‘down’, then ‘right’ five times. This is the new way to get to the ‘add channels’ menu.
• Enter Frequency 11.427, Polarisation H, Symbol rate 27.5 and FEC 2/3, then press the button for ‘Find channels’.
• Add the channel named ‘10510’ to your ‘Other channels’ list.
• And there you go. Surf to your ‘other channels’ list, enter the sodding PIN for some annoying reason, and watch channel 10510. While watching ITV’s range of hi-def content, you may drink your weak lemon drink.

However, don’t be expecting to see a service up there with Channel Four’s HD service. Despite a flashy launch campaign that included this trailer -

- things aren’t progressing as well as you might like. We popped over to itv.com’s HD schedule page today to see if tonight’s Barcelona vs Chelsea Champions League semi is in HD (is is, we've checked Digiguide), that’s today, which is April 28^th. This is what we saw on the page of ‘forthcoming’ programmes:

Three programmes for the entire week. And the listings aren’t even for the correct week. Bad show, ITV. Try harder. One of the biggest football matches is on your channel, in HD, and you're not telling your own website. Bloody heck.

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