BBC News HD no longer available on Freeview from 30th June 2022

throwaway4372 said:
BBC News HD no longer available on Freeview from 30th June 2022

Channel Changes and closures on Freeview on 29th & 30th June

On 29th & 30th June 2022 there are changes being made to the way some channels are currently broadcast.
www.freeview.co.uk www.freeview.co.uk

Options:
- watch the SD channel (lol no)
- use iPlayer
- stop watching BBC News

I'm very surprised that a main channel would just die off like this. Gonna pee off a lot of people.
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LuckyBenski said:
This is basically the challenge: broadcast TV signal reaches most but not all of the population. For some it's a reduced service i.e. fewer channels, and for some it's flaky, and for some they're out of range.

Same for broadband except it's something like 10+% of households, and there's doesn't seem much plan to remedy this.

IMO broadband should be as available and reliable as mains electricity and running water at this stage. It's a basic right of access here.

On the bandwidth topic relating to internet TV - there's something like 5-7 multiplexes running, each carrying let's say ballpark 20Mbps of content. That's easily 100Mbps of information in the airwaves right now bouncing off your walls and through your skin. Arguably that bandwidth would need to reach every home over IP to match efficiency. If everyone were to individually stream content (rather than taking it from a broadcast or multicast) the internet traffic wouldn't cope. So we do need a properly engineered IP TV infrastructure to make this work.
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And that is exactly what has happened. BT has upgraded its core routers to support multicast.

Not got multicast enabled on my router currently. But if you start VLC and open rtp://234.81.131.194:5802 on BT Broadband I believe that is the preview channel for current BT TV channels delivered over multicast. There are also dozens of encrypted test channels in the 234.81.130.xxx to 234.81.132.xxx range. Including BBC News HD along with a whole bunch of other regional channels like BBC One N Ireland HD, BBC One London HD.

From the snippets I've gathered online they hint we will see these multicast channels coming via BT broadband to Freeview Play and Youview very soon.
 
Blackjack Davy said:
Or just shut the things down must be costing a fortune all those transmitters all over the country when a single satellite gets the job done my father can even pick up the service in Spain albeit with a larger dish
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Three satellites...

There are people/places in the UK that can't get satellite coverage or can't set up a dish. There are also places that get poor/no normal TV reception. So it's a complementary system really, each option patches over the gaps in coverage for the other a bit.

While it might be costing a lot to run, what you're proposing is that the majority of TV -watching homes get a new TV or box, and a dish. It happens to be that all TVs have a TV tuner built in but only some TVs have a satellite tuner built in. It's not as simple as just switching everyone over and we obviously have to keep the service continuous. So we're basically living off of the infrastructure decisions of past generations.
 
This reminds me of working in a call centre where we had Sky News on 99% of the time (rest was England football matches and FA Cup Final) on a TV at the front of the room. It was when Boris Yeltsin died. Sky kept showing the same 60 second clip of him shaking hands with someone and showing him he can sit down, him dancing etc for about an hour, whilst the presenter was interviewing correspondents etc about Yeltsin's passing. Had subtitles.
 
Never been able to get Freeview but still rocking my old panny plasma with built in Freesat hd so still get the HD news also Bloomberg news Hd that i watch for US share news ect
list of Freeview vs freesat here
edit due to dont get cnn international hd but do get cnbc Hd
 
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dLockers said:
The problem is broadcast. IP has so much routing overhead that it isn't practical. I think 5G had partially solved this.
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How do you think the 5G basestations link back to the cellular network? Each network operator will be building a new fibreoptic backbone or greatly extending the ones they built for 3G/4G. Base station traffic capacity exceeded what commercial microwave links could carry back in the 3G days (particularly after HSDPA rollout on multi-frequency cells).
 
Vanquish-Storm said:
Why? :( All broadcasters should be looking at transmitting in 4k and no removing HD for SD should they not?
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Why?

A huge proportion of content that goes on TV isn't even filmed/produced in 4k. It's just not needed for the news, or serials like EastEnders. Do you honestly think that cartoons and kids shows need to be 4k, and kids will notice/care?

I get frustrated with some of the lower quality SD channels (yes compression and quality are variable on SD broadcast in order to preserve bandwidth for "more important" services). But most of what's on normal TV either doesn't need to be mega quality, or isn't available beyond HD even at source.
 
LuckyBenski said:
Why?

A huge proportion of content that goes on TV isn't even filmed/produced in 4k. It's just not needed for the news, or serials like EastEnders. Do you honestly think that cartoons and kids shows need to be 4k, and kids will notice/care?

I get frustrated with some of the lower quality SD channels (yes compression and quality are variable on SD broadcast in order to preserve bandwidth for "more important" services). But most of what's on normal TV either doesn't need to be mega quality, or isn't available beyond HD even at source.
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What’s the difference in production costs / cameras though? I would guess not much beyond more data storage needed and assuming you’re not buying RED movie cameras.
 
LuckyBenski said:
Why?

A huge proportion of content that goes on TV isn't even filmed/produced in 4k. It's just not needed for the news, or serials like EastEnders. Do you honestly think that cartoons and kids shows need to be 4k, and kids will notice/care?

I get frustrated with some of the lower quality SD channels (yes compression and quality are variable on SD broadcast in order to preserve bandwidth for "more important" services). But most of what's on normal TV either doesn't need to be mega quality, or isn't available beyond HD even at source.
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I agree that 4K isnt needed for news or cartoons but Im sure news broadcasts have had the equipment for years to record in 4K. As for cartoons, they are all done on computers now so its easy for them to renderer at 4k if needed. But this move is a step backwards going back to SD.

SD isn't going to be around forever and most, if not all TV's and TV equipment sold now are 4K have been for years. We need to make a step in the direction to make use of this.
 
4K distribution bandwidth seems the main obstacle, and reading this (2019) many of usa studios (and probably uk now) already have the cameras..
4k can be driven by live event broadcasts, but evidently neither olympic/glastonbury are delivering that material even if you would pay,
as I watched the F! silverstone coverage I wondered whether the SKy 4k stream was much better and had better camera angles/editing, which I thought were poor on the C4/fhd coverage.

e: last time I looked sky 4k live sport used ~25Mb/s, considering current hardware available for real-time hevc image compression
 
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