And the ABC TV Australia box uses the logo associated with the ABC’s international service. Few other errors too.
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Currently aboard the Carnival (formerly P&O) Encounter on a short 3 day taster cruise out of Brisbane. There’s a limited selection of channels in each stateroom, all broadcast in brilliant no-definition analogue.
No Sport24 or Sport24 Extra unfortunately which is reportedly common on a lot of cruise ships, a bummer as I was hoping to watch the F1 tomorrow and Monday morning. Curiously enough none of the bars I’ve been to so far (and that’s most of them) seem to have any TV screens at all for sport (edit: 2 screens in the Casino had the main Sport24 channel, oddly placed though with only a couple of seats around the bar with a good view of the screen).
ABC News and Sky News Australia are the only mainstream Aussie channel options.
Wifi onboard is fast but streaming options are very limited as the Wifi network is routed through Carnival headquarters in the US, none of the Aussie streaming services work and most of the American ones are blocked too.
Full channel list:
- 11 Channel Guide
- 13 Safety Information
- 14 Carnival Entertainment
- 15 Cruise Life TV
- 16 Carnival Adventures
- 17 Complimentary Movie Channel
- 18 Complimentary Movie Channel
- 19 Complimentary Movie Channel
- 20 BBC HD (Maritime version for Cruise Ships)
- 21 ABC News
- 22 BBC News
- 23 Sky News Australia
- 24 Australia Comedy and Drama
- 25 Prime One
- 26 HGTV
- 27 Food Channel
- 28 Travel Channel
- 29 National Geographic
- 30 Good To Know
- 31 Funtimes (Audible)
- 32 Map Channel
- 33 Forward Camera View
- 34 Lido/Aft Camera
- 35 Music Channel
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Racing TV I think is meant to be .com?
If you’re not “going” anywhere they usually don’t have the rights to the channel, given you’re “technically” still in Australia. Bummer I agree!
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I did a similar 3 day cruise out of Sydney (back to Sydney without stopping) a few years back and they still showed FOX produced AFL and NRL games (though not the proper FOX Sports channels as such).
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Makes sense- interestingly enough Sport24 was to be found in the casinos so it’s not a reception issue, the rights issue makes sense especially being a “domestic”/“nowhere” trip.
That’s not why I’m on here though, been having a great time keeping myself busy with the onboard activities.
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Staying at Dinner Plain in the Victorian Alps tonight. No Free to air signals here, but my accommodation provider did include this bit of info
Turns out they’ve now switched off this Dinner Plain network, so the only option is to stream over the internet with wifi or mobile.
I was disappointed! I had my hopes up that the channels on this Dinner Plain network would be VAST, was keen for a Nine Imparja fix!
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looks like it happened in 2023
https://engage.alpineshire.vic.gov.au/community-hubs/dinner-plain-hub/dinner-plain-tv-survey
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Thanks, would have been good if they had updated the info on the email they sent me! 
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I recently stayed in a Brisbane hotel which had the Foxtel Business IQ system and without question, it’s the best hotel TV system I’ve come across. Not only were all of the FTA channels available alongside the Foxtel channels (something you don’t see in some hotels) but the Chromecast casting worked without any issues.
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Agree, I had that at Quest Albury on Thursday night. Great system.
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My Wollongong hotel has this neatly laid out channel list. Is virtually all straight free to air only, but unusually, it looks to be up to date!
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Apart from the Peach Comedy and Bold Drama. It is very up to date. Unusual
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Not up to date - 10s multis are old.
Whoever works at that hotel is a mediaspy user though by the looks of it lol
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I’m disappointed to hear that the Dinner Plain cable system has been switched off. I was last there in 2019. It was very unique I thought, especially being cable delivered around the village.
It was essentially VAST delivered over 3 DVB multiplexes. All MPEG-4 with the streams presumably ripped straight off the VAST satellite mux and not re-encoded at all. I imagine it was a high cost to maintain.
I guess individual accommodation and privately owned
snow cabins can now get their own VAST systems.
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Visiting a relative in hospital this week.
Across different wards, there was free television (which isn’t always the case). One ward had a perfect duplication of FTA channels but the others were shocking. Two wards had 4:3 aspect TVs with a squashed picture filling the screen. Only some channels were scanned in. In the single digits there was just 10 on 1, ABC and SBS. You had to go searching for 71 and 90 while many multis seemed to be MIA.