The death of terrestial TV transmission?

[ms660]

Originally Posted by SiriusHardware

As soon as you have to pay-to-view individual programmes you immediately narrow your choices, as you aren't going to take a chance on something you may or may not like - most likely you'll stick with safe choices, so anything unusual / innovative / not mainstream will not get watched very much. Worse still, it may not even get made in the first place if the provider judges that too few people will pay to watch it.

Spot on.

Been trying for 3 years to download The Conversation (Hackman) from a platform that my family subscribes to, eg, Netflix, Amazon.....still no joy.

Lawrence.

[Refugee]

I like the way you can be chatting about something and then you can search for it on the web and watch the video.
We were chatting here about Pyrex TV tubes failing and following on with a video on U-tube done with a slow motion camera of a Pyrex item being enticed to explode.
I like the ability to select topical viewing.

Putting on a slightly radical stance...
Searching for "your stuff" (it is pushed on you by the method used by search engines) "content" merrilly reinforces a view. "Unwanted content" can, and should let us expand our horizons. To misquote Bowie (I think, it's been a while) "don't turn away the strange".

[Hybrid tellies]

I would give terrestrial TV and Radio another 20-25 years. By then all broadcasting/streaming will be on line via direct fibre feed to your house or over the 5G, and what comes after 5G, network. Just as we do now with on line TV apps we will be able to watch or listen to TV/Radio live or whenever we want, wherever we want and use pause if we need to.

[Rich Woods]

Originally Posted by SiriusHardware

That would have been a lot of dishes needing installing at the same time. Obviously the aim was to let people use their existing reception infrastructure as far as possible, with only an extra (Digital terrestial receiver) box inserted between their aerial and old analogue TV.

Yeah, I get that, but right from the start it’s never been that simple. Digital multiplexes have been at one time or another transmitting out of analog frequency range & folks have been encouraged to buy wideband aerials. More recently this has happened again with 5G clearance, in some cases main multiplexes have moved completely from one end of the UHF spectrum to the other. The cost of fitting mini dishes for those who hadn’t got them would have been small beer when compared with the removal of the costs of running the transmitters. I should also add that I would have been sad to see them go, but I think it would have made more financial sense to bite the bullet back then.

[Rich Woods]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tees-58821271 I would say from the carefully worded short video there’s little or no intention to replace Bilsdale with anything on the same scale. More concern is expressed about repairing the moorland. My guess would be that something similar to the temporary mast will most likely be erected at the main site. We shall see.

[Station X]

To quote from the article you linked to:-

Once the new tower goes live, it will serve 95% of homes with 70 Freeview channels, with 100% coverage only resumed when a new permanent mast is installed on the site of the Bilsdale transmitter.

[SiriusHardware]

We will be observing developments at SWMBO's with interest as she is in the 5% who still don't get a signal after the temporary mast was fired up.

We've acquired Freesat to get around the problem but that only serves the lounge (the currently broken terrestrial signal is distributed to sets all over the house). It also leaves several expensive Freeview recorder boxes lying around redundant, so we'd like to get the Freeview signal back eventually.

[Rich Woods]

Originally Posted by Station X

To quote from the article you linked to:-

Ah, apologies, the perils of only watching the video. Well spotted.

[Rich Woods]

Originally Posted by SiriusHardware

We will be observing developments at SWMBO's with interest as she is in the 5% who still don't get a signal after the temporary mast was fired up.

We've acquired Freesat to get around the problem but that only serves the lounge (the currently broken terrestrial signal is distributed to sets all over the house). It also leaves several expensive Freeview recorder boxes lying around redundant, so we'd like to get the Freeview signal back eventually.

It wouldn’t take much to set up magic eyes & a modulator to get the freesat around the house, but yes the loss of the free view recorders is indeed a ball ache.

[patrickgnl]

Originally Posted by SiriusHardware

We will be observing developments at SWMBO's with interest as she is in the 5% who still don't get a signal after the temporary mast was fired up.

We've acquired Freesat to get around the problem but that only serves the lounge (the currently broken terrestrial signal is distributed to sets all over the house). It also leaves several expensive Freeview recorder boxes lying around redundant, so we'd like to get the Freeview signal back eventually.

Other than an analogue modulator you can get a DVB-T modulator that will send a single HD channel along the aerial cable. The only caveat is that each TV/recorder must work with MPEG4 (not just MPEG2 as with standard def Freeview). Most UK TVs since about 2011 do - as MPEG4 is used with DVB-T2 for HD here, but not DVB-T..

Personally I use a ZGemma 2xDVB-S box as a server and a second box as a client in another room. They work with a form of Linux and are very configurable but also fiddly to set up..

[Granitehill]

Has there been any announcement on the transmit ERP for the various multiplexes on the temporary Bilsdale mast ?
I suspect the aerial arrays will be a lot smaller to keep down the wind loading, and the much lower height will take its toll as well.

What about the transmitters? The last time I saw a main station UHF transmitter, it wasn't exactly portable...

[Radio Wrangler]

The signal to noise ratio on this thread hasn't been wonderful. It's all speculation and some posts have wandered into areas political, maybe even conspiracy-theoretical.

It's time to sit back and just watch to see what happens. Whatever it is, it won't be perfect and we'll have no choice but to live with it. Perhaps it's a good time to invest in standards converters, pantry transmitters and recordings of favourites.

David