Quote:
Originally Posted by jj20x
It was, but it doesn't really matter. A throwaway comment made by a minister can easily be taken out of context by a forum member and used to support their view of how things should happen. A mandatory switch to DVB-T2 would require funding from the Government, he didn't reveal any plans to do that. As things stand, the Government are quite happy to avoid funding a mandatory conversion and to leave the decision to the broadcasters. The Government would probably prefer to auction off the entire UHF broadcasting spectrum to mobile operators at the earliest opportunity. The uncertain long term viability of the platform will hold back funding from the Government and from commercial operators.
Arqiva don't feel that the time is right to convert the commercial DTT multiplexes to DVB-T2 and there's little chance of it happening until they are ready. They will keep the temporary multiplexes running for as long as they are allowed. Unfortunately, when the temporary multiplexes close and these low budget channels are faced with the cost of financing carriage on a national multiplex, I fear we may well see a few departures from DTT.
The local SD channels are already there on TS ID 101 for the BBC. I can't see VM setting up 16 additional SD streams for a few minutes each day on a national transport stream. In any event, switching would be clunky and horrible, switching between screen resolutions and between streams which are out of sync with each other by several seconds.
With a lot of coding and a vast amount of wasted bandwidth if they were to follow your idea. There would still be fairly large areas switched to the wrong local channel. Where a regional network carries overlapping BBC regions there is no easy way of knowing which is the correct region for an individual viewer.
Just let the viewer select the appropriate channel. The BBC put the annoying red slate up for a reason, to prompt the viewer to change channel.
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I was surprised to learn that it was Arqiva that had encouraged the Government to clear 700MHZ/switch off the temporary muxes
earlier than planned. I wondered why they would, at face value, shoot themselves in the foot and lose the additional revenue earlier than planned! Turns out that Arqiva also have their fingers in the mobile phone pie too...
I'm sure you're right and the Government would love to flog the whole of the spectrum to mobile phone operators. Maybe this could be feasible with the advent of Freesat (along with commercial availabilities like VM and Sky)?
I
think that Freesat has better coverage than Freeview, it has much more bandwidth available for more channels (and in HD too) than Freeview could ever offer.
A radical move like this would appeal to a Conservative Government as it would help commercial entities like VM & Sky, (whilst still offering a non profit and better alternative to Freeview). It would bring cash into the public coffers and could pay for any enforced switchover for various groups.
The Thatcher administration presumed that satellite would be the future and not DTT and more TV's seem to be having a satellite tuner included as standard.
Well, if these new services aren't for local radio or local TV inserts (I am now more inclined to think they would be for the latter), I really don't know!
I can't imagine a plethora of extra TV channels coming (and, as you say, they're in an unusual place for this), plus why the code names??
People have suggested Pop Max and Freesports, but, other than some of the low budget niche channels on Sky, I don't think that there's anything else to add apart from Sky Atlantic.
Maybe the huge amount of apps that Cindy Rose promised are about to arrive? Are apps added and 'broadcast' in the same way as linear TV channels? I'd have thought that they wouldn't be and that they just prompted the TiVo to connect to the internet and take an online feed instead, but you'll know better than me.