Why are they turning off Analogue TV?

freeview was crap when i had it. picture was crap and there wasnt even anything on the channels worth watching. a few things on ITV2 occasionally and thats it. I sold it a few months later.
 
happytechie said:
of course the real reson that they are turning off analogue is so that the govmnt can sell that bit of the EM spectrum to the highest bidder and make a load more cash ....
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Absolutely right. Analog TV takes up very large chunks of the available spectrum, and with increasing demand on the spectrum, that's valuable space. So if they replace it with digital, they can wedge more channels in (depending on compression settings and therefore required quality levels) AND free up large chunks of the spectrum for far more lucrative commercial use .... such as cellphone, private company radio systems, data transmission, etc.

Oh, and because of the additional channels, they can pretend it's all done in the interests of the viewing public, blithley ignoring the fact that the interests of the viewing public are actually served by the content of the channels, not the number of them. 100 channels full of garbage doesn't actually offer the consumer any advantage over 20 channels of garbage .... unless you like garbage. :)

To my mind, the interests of the viewing public would be better served by restricting the amount of adverts on existing channels, because with many programs, if you edit out the adverts, the "previously seen on ..." bits and just stick to actual program (including credits), you'll find an hour "program" slot actually gives you between 35 and 40 minutes of actual program. The rest is filled with adverts (typically three lots of 4.5 minute ad breaks during a program, and more ads at the beginning and end.

This is why I buy a lot of DVDs and don't watch much TV, though BBC is certainly MUCH better in that regard than other UK commercial non-premium channels.
 
The freeview site seems very outdated, its said we cant get digital since the begining yet we've always managed to get most the channels and recently all the channels.

£20-30 for a freeview box is worrth it even if the site doesnt say you can recieve it, its more of an invesment, you may not beable to get freeview yet but you will in the future.
 
Clarkey said:
I live in central manchester and freeview doesnt work worth a damn, its rubbish imo, the best i've had out of it is a picture which breaks up and stutters all the while. The PQ was pretty good though, sky is rubbish, its just a wash of compression artifacts, too many nonsense channels.
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i'm not going to defend the channels, lots of channels means lots of rubbish content
but
i've got freeview without any issues from the city centre out to fallowfield
you need a reasonable aerial and to be using the right transmitter, but it should be absolutely fine
 
FAO: People who think that they are NOT able to receive Freeview.

You are more than welcome to email me your postcode ([email protected] ) and I will look into your situation more thoroughly with maps etc...

Most people actually can receive Freeview!
 
E1mo said:
malfunkshun;

I'm not so sure, at the end of the day the MPEG2 decoder in an STB either follows the standard or it doesn't. No amount of clever post processing can get the detail back and remove the blocks.
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If only that were true.
Its not about post processing, cheaper boxes have cheaper parts (A Motorola cpu prings to mind that is dire); cheaper stream demulitplexers and cheaper mpeg decoders. So they are immediately at a disadvantage. Im not saying that the stream that is transmitted is ideal but what the STB manages to do with it can differ while still meeting the requirements.
 
HEADRAT said:
Turn it off now I say, that way with bandwidth they save they could do Highdef freeview.

HEADRAT
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For HD freeview to be realistic I think they really need to shift Freeview over to MPEG4. This means ALL new STB's though so very unlikely to happen.
 
Tesla said:
For HD freeview to be realistic I think they really need to shift Freeview over to MPEG4. This means ALL new STB's though so very unlikely to happen.
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All European broadcasters have settled on MPEG-4 as their prefferred transmission standard.
 
Visage said:
All European broadcasters have settled on MPEG-4 as their prefferred transmission standard.
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I thought as much but wasn't 100% so didn't post it.

A few years ago MPEG4 decoders were expensive to manufacture but now is not the case.

The longer the government wait to go MPEG4 the worse the situation gets.
 
Tesla said:
I thought as much but wasn't 100% so didn't post it.

A few years ago MPEG4 decoders were expensive to manufacture but now is not the case.

The longer the government wait to go MPEG4 the worse the situation gets.
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But its not down to the government. Its down to the broadcasters. The format of the data within the DVB stream is entirely platform dependant.

As long as the head-end and STB speak the same language it will work, regardless of governemnt. Obviously broadcasters will make the choice that allows them to fit as many channels onto a trasnponder as possible, while still maintaining a minimum broadcast quality. This is obviously further complicated by having variable bit rates for different channels - BBC News 24 will obviously required a lower bitrate for a given perception of quality than live sport, for example.
 
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