All posts by Briantist
Below are all of Briantist's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
Mark A.: Looking at the "local TV" coverage areas, 99.9% of them will have the SDN multiplex after switchover, as there are only three relays - Beecroft Hill (21,000 homes), Tay Bridge (27,000 homes) and Barnstaple (16,000 homes) in the list Local TV on Freeview - new Ofcom maps | ukfree.tv - independent free digital TV advice .
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Mike Dimmick: You make very good points.
It might be possible to use even lower bitrates for these local TV channels as the content they will be providing will largely be unchallenging to MPEG2 encoding (no sports or stroking). The "usual trick" of having low horizontal resolution, 540x576 can be employed. A comparison of TV, HDTV and computer monitors | ukfree.tv - independent free digital TV advice
You could, as you say, get 16 streams statmuxed at 2.1Mbps each, it could also be possible to use this bitrate for the high-coverage station (over one million potential viewers: London, Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle, Liverpool, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Cardiff, Falkirk, Southampton), a little less for 400,000 to a million and much less for under 400,000.
If the new services are DVB-T on terrestrial then they must be DVB-S on satellite, as there are about 12,437,000 non-HD Sky boxes out in the wild (UK+Ireland) - there are 3,822,000 Sky HD boxes. http://corporate.sky.com/…1011 .
I don't think transponders will be an issue now there is a lot of extra capacity - New Astra 1N satellite to offer more UK-focused capacity - and soon | ukfree.tv - independent free digital TV advice .
The PRS of 16.5k out of an annual budget of 500k is only 3.3% of the budget.
PPL says that "Usage in advertisements, signature tunes and station identity signals is excluded" - see PPL : Television broadcasting.
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Richard Davis: The figures are from the official Ofcom source, Ofcom | Tech Parameters . As Ofcom licence Digital One, their information should be correct.
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Des Collier: Thanks, I hope you find it useful. It certainly is interesting viewing the information graphically.
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Barry Cooper: What is the interference like, and also how does moving the aerial/receiver around effect the interference?
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Mary: I'm not sure, I would give this - My Freeview box has no EPG, is blank on FIVE, ITV3, ITV4, ITV2+1, has no sound or the channel line up is wrong | ukfree.tv - independent free digital TV advice - a go.
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Daniel: Thanks, I have removed it. I must have missed your previous post, my apologies.
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Des Collier: No, the map above shows Grimsby and the coast from Cleathorps to Immingham. The idea with these services is that they focus on a small area, due to the nature of the geographical interleave.
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Trevor Harris: 16 minutes an hour of adverts is the normal rate for a UK commercial channel.
The Freeview picture quality will be at normal bitrates, possibly higher because it probably isn't work doing a statmux on two channels. Cable will be good, the proposals for a limited quality service is just an exploration of the options for putting them on satellite.
I would have thought that the local programming created would be a VOD service, but the proposals on the table are for a set of local television services based around the "it works on your existing television".
It is highly notable that local VOD services are notable by their not existence, or indeed their closure (ITV Local).
The point is, surely, that you have to make trade off between "national" multi-billion pound services that cover the UK and "local" services designed to let you know what's going on where you live.
For example, here is Brighton and Hove, there are 360,000 people who don't really give a toss about what happens today in Southampton or Portsmouth or Dover. You might watch the "regional news" on the BBC or ITV to hear about something dramatic or important, but you have to sit for half-an-hour to perhaps find a few minutes.
The local service will provide information that is about the locality.
Which is why I think the best way to kick the service off it to ignore the "super-served" areas that already have a regional news hub, and start with Liverpool, Edinburgh, Falkirk, Preston, Middlesbrough, Grimsby, Maidstone, Sheffield, Aye, Brighton and Hove, Stoke on Trent, Gloucester, Burnley, Reigate, Swansea, Hemel Hempstead, Plymouth, Keighley, Malvern, Inverness, Bedford, Limavady, Dover, Carmarthen, Greenock, Shrewsbury, Hereford, Scarborough and Salisbury - all places with a population between 100,000 and 2,000,000.
Directing the money at London, Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester and so forth in the first instance is not really going to add much for these places: they already have a "regional news hub" from two other broadcasters.
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Friday 12 August 2011 5:48PM
Another comparison
BBC Local Radio - £110.2m content + £9.9m distribution + £21.4m infrastructure.