PDC Live

Programme Delivery Control

Home Page

Here, I think you'll find, is the first and only on-line, live transcription of the PDC (programme delivery control) packets being broadcast by BBC2 and Channel 4.

PDC is a signal intended for controlling VCRs. It is broadcast along with ordinary television as part of Teletext and it tells the VCR when a particular programme starts and ends. Thus a PDC-equipped VCR will always record the entirety of a programme, even if it is re-scheduled.

To learn more about PDC, follow one of these links and see:

I would like to thank all the people who have emailed me useful information, and to Jim Main in particular for his very detailed descriptions of the PDC packet format.

Update your links! Since its inception in 1996, the PDC Live Home Page has used several different addresses to refer to the same site. Most of the addresses still work, but I should like to encourage maintainers of links to use only http://pdc.ro.nu/ . It's shorter than any of the others, and as it is part of my own http://ro.nu/ domain, I can guarantee that it will function for the indefinite future.


This page was created on 22 July 1996. It was last updated 08 November 2001.
Please send comments to Robin O'Leary pdcweb at ro dot nu
Copyright (C)1996--2001 Robin O'Leary. All rights reserved.