Blog: Switched off by digital switchover
Thursday 12th May 2011, 9:08AM BST.
Blog: Tonight is Planet of the Apes night on Film4, with Beneath the Planet of the Apes followed by Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. That’s a lot of apes, and had they been on before the digital switchover I’d have looked in.
My freeview reception was a big on the dicky side before the digital switchover, but it worked. True, people would freeze occasionally if it was a windy night, or go a bit green and blocky, but on the whole, if a good film was on I could watch it.
And then came the digital switchover.
Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought the whole point of switching off the analogue signal was to boost the digital signal.
Well, that’s not the case, because my Film4 reception has gone from being slightly dodgy to non existent.
I just cannot get a signal.
It’s the same for Dave (home of Top Gear and other BBC comedy shows with added adverts every seven minutes), Yesterday (home of antique WW2 documentaries, antique episodes of the Antiques flamin’ Roadshow and antique WW2 dramas such as Secret Army and Colditz) and Bid TV (home of things you don’t want to buy being sold by people you don’t want to watch). I can get these channels, but the reception is worse than it was before the switchover.
So, no great loss then.
My BBC reception is crystal clear – BBC 3, BBC4, and the BBC News Channel are all present and correct.
But not Film4. And in the desert that is freeview TV, Film4 was occasionally like finding an oasis complete with towels, sun loungers and a free bar staffed by Teri Hatcher in a skimpy bikini. (I say ‘occasionally’ because they show their fair share of rubbish, too.)
So, presumably my choices are to get a professional in to go into the attic, walk over the beams and fiddle with the aerial (for a lot of money), or take up that nice Mr Murdoch on his offer of a satellite dish. For a lot of money.
Or I could forget all about Film4 and make do with DVDs and the other channels.
And books. I could start reading books again and take up a hobby. Get out of the house. Join a club. Talk to people. Get away from the telly.
Actually, digital switchover, you may well have done me a favour…
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you could of course get off your lazy bum, go in the loft and point the aerial in the right direction for free.
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shame thats life
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Get SKY tv…….
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A third re-tune will be necessary (mentioned on page 13 of the leaflet put though doors several months ago) on the 28th September.
On that date all the channels mentioned by the writer will go to full power – they are currently still at low power so as not cause interference with adjacent areas which do not switch-over until the 28th September.
A bit more patience is required!
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Sympathies from Ludlow.
Freeview service is dreadful here in Ludlow.
Unless it is a clear blue sky, we lose all but the main TV channels on Freeview.
There is a local relay in the town but it only serves houses on the ‘right’ side of the hill. Many of us have to struggle to reach the signals from the main transmitters on The Wrekin and Sutton Hill, some 40 kilometres away.
The reason that we can receive the BBC channels but not the commercial channels is because the public service multiplexes on which BBC broadcasts are allowed to operate at much greater power than the multiplexes which broadcast the commercial channels.
The BBCA and BBCB multiplexes each have effective power outputs of 20kW from The Wrekin transmitter.
By contrast, the Arqiva B multiplex, which broadcasts Film4 and ITV4 and many other commercial channels, only has an output power of 1kW.
The situation is worsened because, for commercial reasons, the operator of the Arqiva multiplex has also tried to pack more channels into their 24Mbps digital transport stream.
Arqiva are attempting to use a 64QAM modulation scheme, instead of opting for 16QAM which offers less channels but a more reliable signal.
64QAM would be fine if the signal quality was good, but of course on the periphery of the Freeview reception area, the signal is too poor for it to be successfully demodulated.
The use of the 16QAM modulation scheme on the 18Mbps Arqiva A multiplex which broadcasts Dave, Pick, SkyNews, etc, means that the signal is more reliable, but at a cost of less channels.
There has been much hype over Freeview, not least from the Government, which plans to auction off the bandwidth released by closing analogue TV. It is reported that the mobile phone operators plan to launch video phone services in the old sub-bands from analogue TV.
Broadcast TV, whether digital or analogue, has had its day. It’s a obsolete technology.
By now the incumbent telephone carrier, British Telecom, should have rolled out Fibre To The Home as part of its 21CN programme.
We should be expecting triple-play services of Video on Demand, High Speed Internet, and Voice, all delivered over a packet-based fibre network.
We can dream!
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