could not find any discussion of it on the forum so i thought i'd make a post to let people know.
so basically the phantom patch released on 25.12.10 now has included a 7 day sky uk epg. at present this epg is still in the early stages and will no doubt be updated and tweaked further in later patch releases but it's a huge step forward in my opinion.
in order to populate the epg you will need to tune your receiver into the following radio channel for approx 5 minutes ( the longer the better really )
Astra 2A (28.2E) - IEPG data 1 - 11778.00 V - 27500 2/3 - SID 4189