search

Library

Computing

Television

Dining menu

Formal Hall bookings

Accommodation

DCSA equipment

Room bookings

Maintenance

Emergencies

TV Licensing

Viewing of broadcast television in the UK requires a TV license, as described on the TV licensing web site: "You need a TV Licence to use any television receiving equipment such as a TV set, digital box, DVD or video recorder, PC, laptop or mobile phone to watch or record television programmes as they're being shown on TV. " This requirement extends to students wanting to view television in their rooms in College. Further information is available from:

Terrestrial Television

Analogue and digital terrestrial television signals can be received in College but reception may vary between rooms. Rooms in the more recently constructed parts of the College may have an aerial socket for connecting an analogue TV or Digital Freeview receiver to a roof-top aerial. In rooms without such a socket, the Freewire service described below may be a better solution than trying to receive a signal with an indoor aerial.

IPTV

The Darwin College Network is currently configured for access to two separate IPTV services which can be used to view live TV in a manner which does not cause bandwidth or charging issues (Note that any other IPTV services may be prohibited under the terms and conditions of your connection, especially if they use p2p technology which causes excess traffic costs to the College). The two services are:

Freewire

This is a 3rd party service delivered by Inuk Networks offering a range of UK digital channels normally available on terrestrial Freeview plus a handful of foreign language channels. To use the service you must download the free Freewire client (Windows/Mac versions available) and complete a simple registration process where selecting Darwin College from the list of institutions will enable you to receive the free 25 Channel package. For more information on this service please consult the Freewire FAQ

Language centre

The University's Language Centre provides live satellite television in 11 languages accessible over the University and College data networks using a technique called multicasting which, unlike Internet streaming, makes it possible to offer a high-quality service with low impact on the network at little cost. The channels are selected by the Language Centre to assist learning, and the College has no influence on which channels are made available.

To tune in to these channels, you need a reasonably recent computer hooked up to the College network and the free multi-platform VideoLan Client (VLC) http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ (Windows/MacOS X/Linux etc. versions available).

To get a channel list:

Windows

In the View menu choose Playlist
In the playlist window choose from the menu:

Manage > Services Discovery > SAP Announcements

Macintosh

Services Discovery Menu

After launching VLC, turn on the SAP Announcements from the Services Discovery menu.

To select a channel manually:

Open the VLC media player.
Click on the File and select Network stream. Then select UDP/RTP Multicast and then enter one of the multicast addresses listed below and the corresponding port number, i.e. in order to watch TV 5 then you would either enter 239.192.168.1 in the address field and change the port number to 4444, or you could copy the MRL udp://@239.192.168.1:4444 into the MRL field. The procedure is the same for the other streams available.

Additional notes

The transmitted signals are interlaced, and on computer screens the video quality can usually be improved by selecting one of the de-interlace options in the Video menu in VLC.

jump to