Prime falls out of Sky

Sky remote pointing at a TV for NZ herald Business, Friday. 26 August 2011. New Zealand Herald Photograph by Dean Purcell.

Changes to the Prime Television satellite signal caught some Wairarapa viewers on the hop last week.

Sky Television announced at the end of last month that "minor changes" were looming for the satellite signal involving the free-to-air channel, says Kirsty Way, Sky corporate communications head.

Prime had been broadcast twice - once by Sky and Freeview respectively - and the change deleted the duplicate satellite signal, she said.

The first step in the change was the decryption of the Prime signal on August 31, she said, in three regional feeds comprising North, South and Central, which included Wairarapa.

The second step was the shutting down of the duplicate Prime signal from the Freeview satellite at 11.59pm on Tuesday night.

Ms Way said the Prime Television channel, like the channels C4 and Trackside, would be available through the Sky satellite service and Freeview users would need to re-download the revised signal on Channel 10.

Freeview|HD (via UHF aerial) and Igloo customers were unaffected by the change, she said.