Freeview changes

[epsilon]

Originally Posted by Media Boy UK

I feel Frasers may buy the non TV Side of the company and own Ideal World name to run the web site.

With the EPG channels numbers on both Sky and Freeview going to any broadcaster who want them.

Having been on the other side of this type of situation I can say that things are not always as they seem. A certain chain of events is sometimes preferred to allow a debt free phoenix to rise from the ashes. IW will have a seriously damaged reputation by now but I wouldn't be altogether surprised if we see Peter Simon again at some point, trying to sell drones to an unsuspecting public. Repeating the mantra that IW is a trusted supplier with a 20+ year history etc etc..

[Media Boy UK]

Originally Posted by epsilon

Having been on the other side of this type of situation I can say that things are not always as they seem. A certain chain of events is sometimes preferred to allow a debt free phoenix to rise from the ashes. IW will have a seriously damaged reputation by now but I wouldn't be altogether surprised if we see Peter Simon again at some point, trying to sell drones to an unsuspecting public. Repeating the mantra that IW is a trusted supplier with a 20+ year history etc etc..

TJC or Gems TV have 5 channels so he may end up with one of them I can't see him going to QVC.

If Fraser Group do launch Sports Direct TV it won't be live but it will be like the Shopping channels you see late at night on channels like MTV, Quest and Pick.

---------- Post added at 19:36 ---------- Previous post was at 19:25 ----------

Ideal World slot is NOT 24 hours on COM6 it was broadcasting from 7am to 12midnight everyday.

Maybe Gems TV will ask Arqiva to move them from COM5 to COM6 to save them the wee bit of money. But Together TV will end up with Ideal World old slot on COM6.

[epsilon]

Originally Posted by Media Boy UK

TJC or Gems TV have 5 channels so he may end up with one of them I can't see him going to QVC.

If Fraser Group do launch Sports Direct TV it won't be live but it will be like the Shopping channels you see late at night on channels like MTV, Quest and Pick.

---------- Post added at 19:36 ---------- Previous post was at 19:25 ----------

Ideal World slot is NOT 24 hours on COM6 it was broadcasting from 7am to 12midnight everyday.

Maybe Gems TV will ask Arqiva to move them from COM5 to COM6 to save them the wee bit of money. But Together TV will end up with Ideal World old slot on COM6.

Maybe someone could launch Every Day is a Panto TV and employ Peter to ramble on endlessly.

[Media Boy UK]

New space for a 24 hour broadcasting channel has been found on the Local TV Mux.

see the final part of the link: - https://www.digitalbitrate.com/dtv.p...ive=47&lang=en

---------- Post added at 14:30 ---------- Previous post was at 12:47 ----------

Digital Spy Forum's poster "kjhskj75" has just posted:

This happened around 2pm:

*LCN 52 "GREAT! romance" has moved from Local to ArqB.
*LCN 206 "Pop" has moved from ArqB to Local.
*LCN 208 "Pop Player" on SDN has changed LCN to 212.
*LCN 208 "Pop Max" has launched on Local.

[Media Boy UK]

Here is the up to date list of space on Freeview being unused.

Unuse 24 hours slots:
-Old New slot slot on LOCAL TV mux (Only in some areas where you can watch KMTV, Latest TV, Local TV, Notts TV, NVTV, Sheffield Live, That's TV (With Local News), POP, POP MAX, RealityXtra and Tiny Pop.)

Part time slots:
-Old Ideal World slot on COM5 mux (From 7am to midnight only).

Slots information right at time of posting.

[epsilon]

Originally Posted by Media Boy UK

New space for a 24 hour broadcasting channel has been found on the Local TV Mux.

see the final part of the link: - https://www.digitalbitrate.com/dtv.p...ive=47&lang=en

---------- Post added at 14:30 ---------- Previous post was at 12:47 ----------

Digital Spy Forum's poster "kjhskj75" has just posted:

This happened around 2pm:

*LCN 52 "GREAT! romance" has moved from Local to ArqB.
*LCN 206 "Pop" has moved from ArqB to Local.
*LCN 208 "Pop Player" on SDN has changed LCN to 212.
*LCN 208 "Pop Max" has launched on Local.

As far as the local mux is concerned, Pop has effectively replaced the duplicate of GREAT! TV with Pop Max replacing GREAT! Romance. So no extra streams. It would be very difficult to see that from the bitrate graph you linked as it seems to be suffering from a poor signal and as a result severe bitrate or packet loss.

[Mr K]

Originally Posted by Media Boy UK

Here is the up to date list of space on Freeview being unused.

Unuse 24 hours slots:
-Old New slot slot on LOCAL TV mux (Only in some areas where you can watch KMTV, Latest TV, Local TV, Notts TV, NVTV, Sheffield Live, That's TV (With Local News), POP, POP MAX, RealityXtra and Tiny Pop.)

Part time slots:
-Old Ideal World slot on COM5 mux (From 7am to midnight only).

Slots information right at time of posting.

Never mind all that MB. What are you having for your Birthday tea?

[Media Boy UK]

Originally Posted by epsilon

As far as the local mux is concerned, Pop has effectively replaced the duplicate of GREAT! TV with Pop Max replacing GREAT! Romance. So no extra streams. It would be very difficult to see that from the bitrate graph you linked as it seems to be suffering from a poor signal and as a result severe bitrate or packet loss.

GREAT Movies +1 has now close on Freeview so Tiny Pop is now 24 hours.

That bitrate story about the new "slot" was found by Mike aka A516Digital on his twitter page.

https://twitter.com/a516digital/stat...15063415681024 (You may not see link)

---------- Post added at 18:34 ---------- Previous post was at 18:32 ----------

Originally Posted by Mr K

Never mind all that MB. What are you having for your Birthday tea?

KFC

[epsilon]

If you look at this one you will get a better perspective. https://www.digitalbitrate.com/dtv.p...ive=47&lang=en
They do seem to have been experimenting with 5 stat-muxed channels alongside the fixed bitrate local channel but have rolled back to 4 stat-muxed services with today's changes. I would hope that having 5 stat-muxed channels was a configuration error as that many services on a QPSK mux would be very bad. They could convert to QAM-64 to add more services (as the GMUX did) but that would make the signal far less robust and severely reduce the coverage areas of the multiplexes. They won't be allowed to reduce the coverage areas for local TV so that is a non starter.

[Media Boy UK]

If you look at the local TV broadcaster they have X2 higher Mb/s then any other broadcaster on Local TV Mux.

So if the local broadcaster Mb/s in half the new slot can launch - DS Forum think it will be That's Cinema.

[epsilon]

Originally Posted by Media Boy UK

If you look at the local TV broadcaster they have X2 higher Mb/s then any other broadcaster on Local TV Mux.

So if the local broadcaster Mb/s in half the new slot can launch - DS Forum think it will be That's Cinema.

That's because the other broadcasters are stat-muxed and sharing video bandwidth. They are all muxed together by Comux at its Birmingham NOC. The local services are added separately at fixed bitrate so need to be at a much higher bitrate. It is by design. Adding the local service to stat-muxing would require a vast amount of extra encoders as the services would then have to be stat-muxed for each and every local TV area. Rather than a single national stat-mux with local services added at fixed bitrate. So, you are talking about dozens of extra, very expensive, encoders. They just won't do that for the local multiplexes which are run as cheaply as possible.

[cheekyangus]

Originally Posted by epsilon

That's because the other broadcasters are stat-muxed and sharing video bandwidth. They are all muxed together by Comux at its Birmingham NOC. The local services are added separately at fixed bitrate so need to be at a much higher bitrate. It is by design. Adding the local service to stat-muxing would require a vast amount of extra encoders as the services would then have to be stat-muxed for each and every local TV area. Rather than a single national stat-mux with local services added at fixed bitrate. So, you are talking about dozens of extra, very expensive, encoders. They just won't do that for the local multiplexes which are run as cheaply as possible.

Thanks for the explanation.

I wonder if they are going to axe all their +1s and sell the channel numbers. Two of them are timesharing on the Manchester Mux, so if the Movies+1 disappears on Local Mux, as seems to be the case, I can't see them keeping all three channel numbers going, especially now they have Catch-up on Freeview.

[epsilon]

I don't see the point of the Manchester GIMux at all. With a relatively small coverage area and carrying channels that, surely, can't be very appealing to advertisers I'm surprised that it is still around. I can't see the Cardiff GIMux ever launching.

[epsilon]

Originally Posted by epsilon

If you look at this one you will get a better perspective. https://www.digitalbitrate.com/dtv.p...ive=47&lang=en
They do seem to have been experimenting with 5 stat-muxed channels alongside the fixed bitrate local channel but have rolled back to 4 stat-muxed services with today's changes. I would hope that having 5 stat-muxed channels was a configuration error as that many services on a QPSK mux would be very bad. They could convert to QAM-64 to add more services (as the GMUX did) but that would make the signal far less robust and severely reduce the coverage areas of the multiplexes. They won't be allowed to reduce the coverage areas for local TV so that is a non starter.

I had another look at this with a better view of events as the new channel mix pattern emerged. The earlier pattern noted on the Emley Moor bitrate graph doesn't really show an experimental combination of 5 stat-muxed channels. If anything, on a single scan, it seems that all of the channels normally stat-muxed were running at fixed bitrate and a much lower rate than would be needed to produce a reasonable quality output. So, I'll put that down to either a configuration error with the signal or with the DBR monitor. The second anomaly simply showed the GREAT! tv channel disappearing and being replaced by null packets. An indication that GREAT! tv had already been replaced with POP in the stat-mux at the Comux NOC but the SI data hadn't been updated to "extract" the new service for the transmitter sites. Quite messy really. But they don't seem to have had any more than 4 channels in the stat-muxed segment at any point in time.

[epsilon]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/reception/work.../hd-ip-streams

From today, supported Freeview Play devices (with suitable broadband speeds) can now receive several IP connected BBC HD channels.

301 BBC THREE (bringing HD coverage to Scotland and Wales but available nationwide)
302 BBC Scotland (extending coverage beyond Scotland)
303 BBC ALBA (extending coverage beyond Scotland)
501 BBC NEWS (making the HD service available once again to supported devices)
502 BBC PARLIAMENT (bringing the HD service to supported devices)

A retune may be required to add the channels.