TV switchover fiasco

DAB sounds worse than FM wrote:


Not to mention the fact that 8K allows national SFNs, which should allow
us to receive far more multiplexes than we can currently.



Here we go again, what is it with you people about more muxes and more
bloody channels? We can not fill up the ones we got now without a lot of
repeats and crap.
What we need is decent picture quality.
you yourself moan about the quality of DAB radio, and why is it so crap?
Because they just squeeze more and more.

We do not need more muxes, we need less channels and more quality.

for **** sake, this country gets bloody worse.

"Ad" wrote in message
...
Ivan wrote:


That would be suicide, if that happened, then people will just say sod
digital and go back to analouge.
I do not think it will happen, if it does, then how can we trsut Ofcom
not to change the system when it likes?


As well over 90 per cent of Freeviews near 6 million viewer's probably
have
8K compatible receivers anyway, and won't notice any difference (apart
from

That is just guess work, a lot of people may still have the older
Ondigital boxes even when/if the analogue is switched off. what about
the first no Ondigital set top box, the small Pace, can that cope with 8K?


Like most other Freeview boxes (even the very early ones) the Pace digital
adaptor coped admirably.
DTVA technical specification includes:

Currently 14 free-to-view digital channels

Automatic and Manual channel search

Quick Electronic Programme Guide with favourite channel selection

Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) Subtitle system Capabilities - Fully DVB
compatible

Input Frequency - UHF (430-862 MHz) - Bandwidth: 8 MHz

Demodulator - COFDM waveform, 2k/8k modes - Fully DVB-T ETSI 300 744
compatible

Video Output - PAL, RGB, S-VHS

Graphic User Interface - English and Welsh

Software - downloadable

Power and Consumption - Low power operation 8 watts - Ultra Low Power
Standby 1 watt

An MHEG software download which will enable viewers to access interactive
digital text services will be ready in July 2002.

Ad wrote:
DAB sounds worse than FM wrote:


Not to mention the fact that 8K allows national SFNs, which should
allow us to receive far more multiplexes than we can currently.



Here we go again, what is it with you people about more muxes and more
bloody channels?


Wrong; more muxes = more capacity = eases pressure on bit rates.


We can not fill up the ones we got now without a lot
of repeats and crap.
What we need is decent picture quality.


Then we need more capacity.


you yourself moan about the quality of DAB radio, and why is it so
crap? Because they just squeeze more and more.


No, because they leave a lot of capacity unused, they just don't want to
increase their bit rates on DAB.


We do not need more muxes, we need less channels and more quality.


Or vice versa....



--
Steve - www.digitalradiotech.co.uk - Digital Radio News & Info

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"DAB sounds worse than FM" wrote in message
...
Ivan wrote:
"Ad" wrote in message
...
Ivan wrote:
I found this snippet in this week's ERT, personally I don't think
that there is anywhere near that amount of early receiver's still
in use, but let's hope that progress for the overwhelming majority
won't be held up by a vociferous few.

29 March 2005 TV switchover fiasco

GOVERNMENT regulator Ofcom is backing a change to the Freeview TV
signal that will render a million set-top boxes obsolete.

The switch from the 2k to 8k transmission standard will also
adversely affect 75,000 integrated digital TVs (IDTV).

The proposed modification would provide the UK with a more reliable
digital terrestrial TV (DTT) system but because many older ITV
Digital and Freeview receivers are incapable of handling the 8k
carrier system they will stop working if the change is made.



That would be suicide, if that happened, then people will just say
sod digital and go back to analouge.
I do not think it will happen, if it does, then how can we trsut
Ofcom not to change the system when it likes?

As well over 90 per cent of Freeviews near 6 million viewer's
probably have 8K compatible receivers anyway, and won't notice any
difference (apart from maybe improved reception for lots of people)
then I can't really see why people would be turning away from
Freeview 'en mass' can you?


Not to mention the fact that 8K allows national SFNs, which should allow
us to receive far more multiplexes than we can currently.


Agreed Steve, it's only my opinion so I could well be totally wrong, but I
sincerely believe the that if they switched over to 8K tomorrow, it wouldn't
really cause anywhere near the amount of problems that the news item
predicts.



--
Steve - www.digitalradiotech.co.uk - Digital Radio News & Info

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Ad wrote:
Ben wrote:

Ivan wrote:

That would be suicide, if that happened, then people will just say sod
digital and go back to analouge.



iirc, the ofcom consultation document was asking whether they should
switch to 8k as soon as analogue is switched off, so there won't be
any analogue to go back to.



Which means that some poor sods will find out on the day of switch off
that they can not get any T.V

'fraid so :-)


One of the main criticisms of the current DTT arrangement is that it
doesn't work well with portable TVs and set-top aerials. 8k should
help quite a bit with this, so I can see it being a real success.


The problem here is this is just guess work, no one knows if this 8K
will make a difference.

Not at all, the effect of increasing the number of COFDM subcarriers is
well known.

Ad wrote:
DAB sounds worse than FM wrote:

Here we go again, what is it with you people about more muxes and
more bloody channels?



Wrong; more muxes = more capacity = eases pressure on bit rates.

Do you really think it will work that way? No, they will cram crap
into the extra space.


Having more capacity will ease the overall pressure on bit rates. I'm
not saying that when we have 8K they will move channels onto new
multiplexes to increase the bit rates of channels we already have, but
at least there won't be the kind of pressure on new channels that there
currently is on bit rates now.


We can not fill up the ones we got now without a lot
of repeats and crap.
What we need is decent picture quality.



Then we need more capacity.


What we need is to take some of the crap channels off.
Top up T.v should never have been allowed to happen.
Too many shopping channels


Seeing as that is not going to happen then it is better to add more
capacity.


No, because they leave a lot of capacity unused, they just don't
want to increase their bit rates on DAB.

That do not make sense, surley it do not cost any more to increase the
bit rate


Compare the number of actual 160k+ stations with the number of possible
160k+ stations on he

http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/wa...x_capacity.htm

Basically, the commercial radio groups do not want to use bit rates
higher than the minimum because they don't want us to get used to higher
audio quality.

Incidentally, the commercial radio groups are all in favour of lowering
the bit rates from what they are now (98% using 128kbps) to 112kbps, and
Ofcom proposed this in the recent DAB public consultation.




--
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Ivan wrote:
"DAB sounds worse than FM" wrote in message
...

As well over 90 per cent of Freeviews near 6 million viewer's
probably have 8K compatible receivers anyway, and won't notice any
difference (apart from maybe improved reception for lots of people)
then I can't really see why people would be turning away from
Freeview 'en mass' can you?


Not to mention the fact that 8K allows national SFNs, which should
allow us to receive far more multiplexes than we can currently.


Agreed Steve, it's only my opinion so I could well be totally wrong,
but I sincerely believe the that if they switched over to 8K
tomorrow, it wouldn't really cause anywhere near the amount of
problems that the news item predicts.


I agree, because according to a book I've got about DVB it said that
just 6 months after OnDigital launched DVB-T chips supporting both 2K
and 8K appeared, so there shouldn't be that many receivers that cannot
handle 8K out there, and most of them will be replaced by the time any
change to 8K occurs. And at the end of the day, by the time such a
change happens Freeview receivers will probably cost about £20 or less,
and I'd say they'd be doing any owners of 2K boxes a favour, because
they're bound to be ultra-sluggish at changing channels and navigating
text etc.

Ultimately, the price of annoying a very small minority of people is
undoubtedly worth paying because of the number of muxes that such a
change would allow. Currently channels 21 - 68 excluding channels 36 and
38 are used for TV, and yet we only have 6 multiplexes. Theoretically,
with national SFNs you can have 1 multiplex per channel right across the
country, so theoretically we could have 64 multiplexes! It won't be as
simple as that, but it should allow us all to have far more national
multiplexes than are possible with 2K.


--
Steve - www.digitalradiotech.co.uk - Digital Radio News & Info

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Ad wrote:
Ben wrote:

The system needs to change in several ways. For example, MPEG2 is
outdated now, more efficient compression schemes such as H264 could
be

This is the problem, things changes too much.


Current DTT receivers *CAN NOT* decode HDTV transmissions. HDTV is going
to happen, so anybody that wants to receive HDTV on DTT needs a new
set-top box and it makes perfect sense to change the video codec to the
most modern video codec available.


What about people who spent a fair bit of money on Integrated
digital T.vs, how are they going to feel when they find out that
they will not be able to use it? About time this country made a
standard and stayed with it.


They can use it - they can get a cheap set top box like everyone
else.


Fantastic. they paid over the odds for their T.v and will have to use
another box.


No, not another box, a different box. And if they're just changing the
2K box for one that can receive 8K then you'll probably be talking about
such massive expense as £20 by the time such a change happens.


Having more COFDM sub-carriers will make not the slightest
difference to picture quality, what it does is improve reliability
in the presence of

so we are back to square one.


No; more multiplexes = more capacity = less pressure on bit rates.


impulse interference. The robustness of the signal (influenced by
choices such as 2k/8k and 64QAM/16QAM) is an entirely separate thing
from the quality of the picture, which is largely determined by
bitrate and the quality of the source material.



Which is what I said, so lets concentrate on better quality, and not
on more channels.


No; more multiplexes = more capacity = less pressure on bit rates.


--
Steve - www.digitalradiotech.co.uk - Digital Radio News & Info

Find the cheapest Freeview, DAB & MP3 Player Prices:
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On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 19:46:31 +0100, Ivan wrote:


"Dave Fawthrop" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 18:57:06 +0100, "Ivan"
wrote:



| As well over 90 per cent of Freeviews near 6 million viewer's probably
have
| 8K compatible receivers anyway, and won't notice any difference (apart
from
| maybe improved reception for lots of people) then I can't really see why
| people would be turning away from Freeview 'en mass' can you?

Does anyone have a list of boxes which *are* or *are not* 8k compatible?
or a way of testing boxes?


I don't really know Dave, but from everything I've been able to ascertain
over the last few years on this newsgroup and others from people a lot more
knowledgeable on this subject than myself, it would appear that shortly
after the initial introduction of On-digital in the late Nineties, 8K
chipsets became readily available and were fitted as standard in later
receivers.

If this is correct then one must assume that by the time Freeview took over
that out of the existing 1 million On-digital subscribers, many will have
dumped their receivers and switched to Sky, a sizeable chunk of the
remaining ones will have been 8Kcompatible anyway and many others will have
upgraded to more up-to-date Freeview receivers.

After OnD went bust a rather large amount of receivers in stock were sold
- I don'tknow how many though but they were stacked up in many shops.

Also, are we really so tight as a country that those going to sky would
not have given their boxes to someone else?

I still have no problem with the change as a new box will be dirt cheap.
It also reinforces the seperate boxes vs integrated TV argument.

--
Spammer? Have an email address:

Aha - Ta muchly.

Ben
~~~

dylan wrote:
It's the number of carriers in the COFDM signals

take a look at http://www.gigawave.co.uk/cofdm.html