Editing Virtual channel (section)

===Europe, Africa and the Middle East===

Europe, Africa and the Middle East do not use a special numbering system for subchannels; two related "channels" (that is, programme streams) may have unrelated numbers (for example, in the United Kingdom, [[ITV (TV network)|ITV]] is channel 3 and its digital sister channel [[ITV2]] is channel 6 on [[Freeview (UK)|Freeview]]).

In the United Kingdom and Ireland, Freeview channel numbers are defined within the terrestrial broadcast stream using the NorDig descriptor format within the DVB "Network Information Table".

In continental and eastern Europe, virtual channels are not used, since television sets and receivers there allow users to freely assign arbitrary numbers or letters to channels.

Stations still market themselves as "first", "second", or "third" channel (and so on), or "channel A", "channel B" or "channel C", etc., but this reflects historic or colloquial usage, or is done for marketing purposes. For example, in Germany the term "third programme" refers to the local public station, which was usually the third TV station to go on air in most areas<ref>[[WDR Fernsehen]]</ref>{{Circular reference|date=October 2019}}<ref>[[:de:Drittes Fernsehprogramm]]</ref>{{Circular reference|date=October 2019}}. These terms are unrelated to the transmitting RF channel. Referencing the above example, the third programmes in Germany never transmitted on an RF channel below 21.

Virtual channels are used on [[direct broadcast satellite]]s, such as [[Dish Network]], [[DirecTV]], and [[SES Astra|Astra]]. Rather than a few dozen channels with a few subchannels each, these services map to a range of hundreds of individually numbered channels. This is true of [[digital cable]] and [[satellite radio]] services, as well.