Using the same channel numbers for SD and HD

It's late, my brain is almost asleep, maybe I should leave this till
morning. But then I'll forget to post it again!!

This comment from another forum raises the question of "How's it done?"

"UK EPGs are very poor as far as channel allocation is concerned. TNT in
France have a much better system whereby HD versions appear on the same
channel numbers on an HD receiver as the SD versions do on an SD
receiver. On the HD receiver, the SD versions are then shuffled up to
higher channel numbers.

On an SD receiver, the first seven channels are TF1, FR2, FR3, Canal+,
FR5, M6 and Arte.

On my Sagem the first seven channels are TF1-HD, FR2-HD, FR3, Canal+ HD,
FR5, M6 HD and Arte HD. (TF1 is on 51, FR2 on 52, M6 on 56 and Arte on
57 - all 50 channels higher.)

To my mind, that's how it ought to work. Why can't UK EPGs be as simple
instead of hiding HD channels all over the place!!?"

Richard

On 21/12/2013 21:14, Dickie mint wrote:
It's late, my brain is almost asleep, maybe I should leave this till
morning. But then I'll forget to post it again!!

This comment from another forum raises the question of "How's it done?"

"UK EPGs are very poor as far as channel allocation is concerned. TNT in
France have a much better system whereby HD versions appear on the same
channel numbers on an HD receiver as the SD versions do on an SD
receiver. On the HD receiver, the SD versions are then shuffled up to
higher channel numbers.

On an SD receiver, the first seven channels are TF1, FR2, FR3, Canal+,
FR5, M6 and Arte.

On my Sagem the first seven channels are TF1-HD, FR2-HD, FR3, Canal+ HD,
FR5, M6 HD and Arte HD. (TF1 is on 51, FR2 on 52, M6 on 56 and Arte on
57 - all 50 channels higher.)

To my mind, that's how it ought to work. Why can't UK EPGs be as simple
instead of hiding HD channels all over the place!!?"

Richard


indeed.
can't see why then, when regional news is needed the receiver couldn't
auto switch to the sd channel and then at the end switch back to hd -
can't be that hard.

--
Gareth.
That fly.... Is your magic wand.

On 21/12/2013 21:52, the dog from that film you saw wrote:

? ...........
can't see why then, when regional news is needed the receiver couldn't
auto switch to the sd channel and then at the end switch back to hd -
can't be that hard.

That needs to be programmed in. It's late, my little grey cells are all
but dead, so I'll leave research till another time. I suspect it's to
do with LCNs (Logical Channel Numbers) and their implementation in the UK.

Richard

"the dog from that film you saw" wrote in
message ...
can't see why then, when regional news is needed the receiver couldn't
auto switch to the sd channel and then at the end switch back to hd -
can't be that hard.

Or if *it* is too difficult, why can't BBC1 HD from a given transmitter
carry the SD version of BBC1 for the duration of the regional news. OK, so
that bit won't be in HD but surely it's not beyond the wit of man to upscale
SD to HD so there isn't a resolution change.

Anything would be better than BBC1 freezing to a caption saying "we can't
show the regional news on BBC1 HD, so please retune to BBC1 SD" or words to
that effect.

On 21/12/2013 22:02, NY wrote:
"the dog from that film you saw" wrote in
message ...
can't see why then, when regional news is needed the receiver couldn't
auto switch to the sd channel and then at the end switch back to hd -
can't be that hard.

Or if *it* is too difficult, why can't BBC1 HD from a given transmitter
carry the SD version of BBC1 for the duration of the regional news. OK,
so that bit won't be in HD but surely it's not beyond the wit of man to
upscale SD to HD so there isn't a resolution change.

Anything would be better than BBC1 freezing to a caption saying "we
can't show the regional news on BBC1 HD, so please retune to BBC1 SD" or
words to that effect.

I suspect a quick fix will be to upscale the regional opt feed at the
Centralised Coding & Mux centres. But that will be expensive and take
time to install and implement.

Richard

"Dickie mint" wrote in message ...
On 21/12/2013 22:02, NY wrote:
"the dog from that film you saw" wrote in
message ...
can't see why then, when regional news is needed the receiver couldn't
auto switch to the sd channel and then at the end switch back to hd -
can't be that hard.

Or if *it* is too difficult, why can't BBC1 HD from a given transmitter
carry the SD version of BBC1 for the duration of the regional news. OK,
so that bit won't be in HD but surely it's not beyond the wit of man to
upscale SD to HD so there isn't a resolution change.

Anything would be better than BBC1 freezing to a caption saying "we
can't show the regional news on BBC1 HD, so please retune to BBC1 SD" or
words to that effect.

I suspect a quick fix will be to upscale the regional opt feed at the
Centralised Coding & Mux centres. But that will be expensive and take
time to install and implement.



There are three main problems: HD is on a different mux to SD cross switching between which is technically quite difficult; the distribution of HD to main stations is quite seperate from SD; are BBC regional studios equipped with HD?


--
Woody

harrogate three at ntlworld dot com

In article ,
Dickie mint wrote:

To my mind, that's how it ought to work. Why can't UK EPGs be as simple
instead of hiding HD channels all over the place!!?"

There's a bit about this at

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/abouttheb...-December-2013

-- Richard

On Sat, 21 Dec 2013 22:16:18 -0000, "Woody"
wrote:

Please ditch the HTML.
--
Regards, J B Good

On 21/12/2013 22:06, Dickie mint wrote:

I suspect a quick fix will be to upscale the regional opt feed at the
Centralised Coding & Mux centres. But that will be expensive and take
time to install and implement.


Or they could just broadcast the local news from the closest region that
has it in HD. A cat stuck up a tree is the same story no matter where
it originates.

Judging by the news content of BBC local radio there is virtually no
_real_ local news to report.

--
mailto:news{at}admac(dot}myzen{dot}co{dot}uk

On Sun, 22 Dec 2013 09:13:29 +0000, alan wrote:

Judging by the news content of BBC local radio there is virtually no
_real_ local news to report.

Regional TV also struggles. Many years ago, I remember that the lead
item on 'Reporting Scotland' was that a Golden Eagle had been discovered
in someone's freezer. My visitors were very impressed - not.

--
Alan White
Mozilla Firefox and Forte Agent.
By Loch Long, twenty-eight miles NW of Glasgow, Scotland.
Webcam and weather:- http://windycroft.co.uk/weather