All posts by Steve
Below are all of Steve's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
James: Is the cat walking on your keyboard?
Briantist: Yes, I agree. As soon as any sport sells out to the highest bidder it's the consumer (us) that ends up either paying more or not seeing it at all eg. football and cricket.
The theory behind the live match restriction is that The Premier League don't want to stop fans going to the stadium on a cold Saturday in February rather than watching the match at home in the warm.
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Gordon Bennett! I've just made the mistake of looking at the "Delusional DAB Arguments" page. What a bunch of losers. Life is just too short to waste your time with this sort of stuff. More power to your elbow Brian, this site is excellent and the more time you can devote to the important parts the better.
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Maurice - I've just bought a Panasonic Viera TV which, like yours, has both Freeview HD and Freesat HD tuners built in. Briantist is right, it is Freesat HD that needs a dish whereas Freeview HD will be avaialble through your aerial (if you are in an area that has switched over to digital only).
If you want to do a DIY job I would suggest the Screwfix Freesat installation kit which is just over £40 and includes dish,LNB,brackets, cable etc. If you do not want to DIY then look in yellow pages for satellite installers and get a couple of quotes.
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At last!! After what seems like years of waiting we are finally going to get a decent digital signal. I live in East Yorkshire 60km from Belmont and very slightly "out of sight". To receive most freeview Mux's under most conditions I have needed a 25db masthead amp and Televes 3 element aerial. Given the distance from the Tx I do not suppose I am likely to get too much signal, but I will find out tomorrow.
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Everything working OK here in East Yorkshire. Freeview HD looking pretty good too in 1080i/50Hz. I had expected 1080p/25hz but I would imagimne the lower temporal resolution might not be good for sports. I like the colour rendering in HD, reds especially are less "fizzy" and more natural.
No complaints so far.
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David: Your wife's point regarding the sound level on some HD broadcasts is a valid one. Does anyone know why the sound level sometimes drops out? It's not consistent and varies between different programmes. It happens on both Freesat and Freeview and BBC seems to be more affected than ITV or C4. Is it to do with the switching between 1080i and 1080p?
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Briantist: I'm familiar with Dynamic Range Compression but I thought it was applied to all broadcasts, especially TV commercials. I didn't know that BBC HD sound had less compression, so thanks for that. It's a bit like the old "why are tv adverts louder than the programmes?" argument in reverse.
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Nobody should get particularly excited by this because in fact very little is actualy going to change.
1. If domestic satellite viewers decide to take out a Greek Nova subscription it will probably cost as much as if not more than a Sky subscription, so will be no better off. It is only pubs and clubs that would benefit from the cheaper subscription.
2. The Premier League can (as the judgment confirms) claim copyright on its logo and "anthem" even though they cannot claim copyright on the games themselves. So, to retain copyright on what is being broadcast they just put their logo on the screen and play their anthem now and again. That will enable them to retain the current licence system for different countries.
The huge amounts of money invested by BSkyB and the Premier League on the broadcasting of PL football mean that they will always be at least one jump ahead of the ordinary consumer.
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Briantist: Yes I know. The two points are not conflated, they are separate points. 1 applies to domestic users, 2 applies to pubs and clubs. The breach of copyright occurs when the pub broadcasts the logo and anthem to its customers.
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Page 1
Monday 7 February 2011 2:42PM
This is the important bit:
"The marketing of broadcasting rights on the basis of territorial exclusivity is tantamount to profiting from the elimination of the internal market. Consequently, the specific subject-matter of the rights in the transmission of football matches does not justify a partitioning of the internal market, and thus also does not justify the resulting restriction of the freedom to provide services."
In other words, whoever is selling the Greek decoder cards has a right to sell them in any country in the EU and the end user has the right to use them to watch football matches.
Sky will no doubt have some clever lawyers working on a solution as we speak, but so far it looks like a victory for the single market.