Learning Environments Teaching & research services for staff

TV and radio recording

Digital Media Services provides a TV and radio recording service for the LMS.

We can legally record from the free-to-air digital television channels (ABC1, ABC2, SBS, SBS2, SBS HD, Seven, Seven HD, Nine, Nine HD, Ten and One HD), most Foxtel channels and AM and FM radio.

Academic staff can request upcoming programmes or choose from over 1500 television and radio recordings currently available for inclusion in Readings Online and the Digital Repository.

There are RSS feeds available to help keep up to date with upcoming recordings and recently uploaded media items.

RSS what's this?

Requests for the recording of programs must be made via our online form within two working days of the broadcast.

 For "last minute" requests please enter details via the online form and then telephone 8344 4527. 

Free-to-air television

Academic staff who request off-air recordings for teaching via the LMS will receive one backup DVD copy at no charge. Please allow up to two weeks for delivery. You will also be sent the PID of the item stored online in the Digital Repository. To then link to the item within your LMS subject use the URL:

http://dtl.unimelb.edu.au:80/R/-?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=XXXXX&current_base=GEN01

and replace the XXXXX with the PID.

In addition to the 7-day upcoming shows RSS schedule, we also record every prime-time daily news broadcast and keep them on file for one week. Occasionally we may be unable to copy some programs due to technical difficulties or changes in broadcast schedules outside our control.

Screenrights provides a service - EnhanceTV - that provides study guides and television guides about educational programs broadcast on television. Broadcasts dating back to 2006 can also be purchased from EnhanceTV by request through media collections.

Informit TVNews - TVNews indexes Australian television news, current affairs and selected documentaries from the free-to-air networks with links to the digitised video content and/or DVD delivery. This is an easy and copyright compliant way to access TV news broadcasts for teaching purposes under the Part VA or ScreenRights Licence.

From a technical standpoint, recordings are made using the IceTV subscription service via two EyeTV Diversity tuners to an external Drobo hard drive. This allows us to record up to four programs simultaneously while keeping high quality digital versions of all recorded programmes (Currently storage capacity stands at 5.4 TB, equivalent to 2000hrs).

Foxtel

We can record programming from the following Foxtel channels: A1, Animal Planet, The Biography Channel, Crime Investigation Network, Discovery Channel, Home and Health, Discovery Science, Travel and Living, The History Channel, National Geographic channel, SKY News, BBC World, Bloomberg Television, The Weather Channel, How To Channel, Ovation, Lifestyle Food channel, Showtime, Showtime Greats, Movie ONE, Movie Extra, Movie Greats, World Movies and TCM.

Radio

All radio recordings are done by specific request.

Internet

Australian podcasts and webcasts can be copied for educational purposes if they were originally 'born' as free broadcasts”. See here for more information.

Links to previously recorded online materials are available from Digitool and Media Collections' Web-Media resources page.

Digital Media Services can digitise and make available online complete copies or excerpts of any off-air material recorded after 1991. Request can be made via the online form. Media Collections in the ERC Library has a large collection of off-air recorded materials that can be used in this way.

Playback of off-air recorded DVDs

All programmes recorded on to DVD are automatically broken up into five minute segements. This allows for qickly stepping through the DVD by using the next button on the DVD remote. In most lecture theatres the lectern key pad enables you to play, stop, pause, fast forward (search + option) and select chapter (advance to the next segment or chapter which on our television recordings is a jump of 5 minutes).

Further information

If you require any additional information, contact the Learning Environments service desk:

Service coverage hours: Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm
Tel: 834 46600

For general queries, please log a service enquiry

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