Satellite style breakup on RTE Analogue

TVDX

Just watching RTE Analgoue from Limerick transmitter and amidst the heavy rain, it looks like RTE's Sky dish has becomne mis-aligned and thus the analogue reception of RTE One, Two and TG4 is breaking up.

I thought I was seeing things at first but I then went to a second totally analogue TV and the picture breakup continued.
Is this anything to do with DTT development.

And is there no true Analogue RTE now or is everything supplied from Astra.
Very strange.

watty

No. The Woodcock hill is fed from Maghera using ordinary "off air" analogue TV reception. That will change in next week or so.

It may have been a microwave link somewhere. Unlike the French, RTE do not feed any transmitter from Satellite. The Signals on Sky are uplinked by RTE from Donnybrook with their own equipment. They also uplink TV3 and TG4.

Nothing (RTE TV wise) is "supplied" from Astra, except pay TV viewers. RTE regard satellite as a wireless cable TV system and treat it the same as NTL/Chorus.

Woodcock is getting an upgrade maybe next week to same power, but Transmitters rather than Transposing Maghera.

RTE may be moving to Digital feeds, I do know that why older distribution system is ANALOG FM Microwave, newer feeds to transmitters are fibre which implies digital. Not affected by rain though.

The analog FM microwave feed to Maghera would go sparkly like old Analog satellite, not blocky like bad MPEG, unless they are running Digital over that feed. It is still microwave fed (Maghera) but I thought it was analog.

The signal margin on Broadcasters terrestrial and satellite links are designed to be HUGE, to cope with Blizzards and Tropical downpours, so I can't imagine what was causing it, I will ask.

kkennedy

I am on Chorus Cable Analog and noticed this over the past week or so.
It only happens on the Irish channels, a green line would appear on the screen for second, similar to the blocky breakup of a satellite signal on a weak transponder. I was blaming Chorus.:rolleyes: Still could be.

Mayo Exile

Noticed this as well on TG4 off Clermont Carn a week or two ago. Looked exactly like the picture breakup you get on Dsat or Freeview when the signal drops below a certain level.

Ulsterman 1690

The Signals on Sky are uplinked by RTE from Donnybrook with their own equipment. They also uplink TV3 and TG4.

I thought RTE was uplinked from the UK ??????

IIRC there are only four uplink points for Astra
One in England One in Beirtzdof (SP?) Germany one in Denmark and one in Belgium

Presumably DWTV and TVE have to be uplinked from the same place since along with TV3 they share a transponder with RTE

RTÉ put up a new huge dish at Montrose for to uplink to Astra.
Theres a thread here somewhere with the details around the time that their joining sky was first mooted.

Tony

Ulsterman 1690 wrote:

I thought RTE was uplinked from the UK ??????

IIRC there are only four uplink points for Astra
One in England One in Beirtzdof (SP?) Germany one in Denmark and one in Belgium

Presumably DWTV and TVE have to be uplinked from the same place since along with TV3 they share a transponder with RTE

The newer satellites accomodate on board multiplexing so you can send channels for one transponder from several different locations so in thory you can have as many uplink locations as channels

L1011

Tony wrote:

The newer satellites accomodate on board multiplexing so you can send channels for one transponder from several different locations so in thory you can have as many uplink locations as channels

Although a: I don't remember SES using that feature and b: I think I timed DW and TVEi on 28 and 19, and they're being beambent back up from Dublin. Eurobird 1 has it, I'm almost sure, hence its popularity with german news gathering organisations.

As goes the teleports, they're for major block uplink for putting together small independent stations/blocks of stations for uplink. If you rent a full transponder you uplink from wherever.

watty

I thought actually RTE re-cycled the same gear that they already had for Tara. Tara was uplinked from Donnybrook. TV3, RTE1/2, TG4 definately is. I have wondered how DW/TV5/TVi get on board. Since those 3 are FTA on other satellites Donnybrook could easily pick them up and uplink as virtually no extra cost. But really I don't know and not inclined to ask.

I have confirmed how Maghera is fed (Woodcock receives it Off Air). However my source doesn't want the details publicised. They don't feed it off Sky:)

Woodcock is getting upgrade to its own feed and new transmitters.

Any digital feeds that might be in use, might be 3 to 4 times the quality available from Sky transmission. That's all I can say.

Sparky

i remeber a new dish being constructed in rte back years ago for sky, maybe tara was uplinked from their old green dish.?

There was a new dish put up there for the Sky uplink alright.

As I said theres even a photo of it being constructed in a thread here from that time and Afair, an email from RTÉ mentioning its completion.

Lennoxschips

when you think that rte do their own uplinking you have to wonder how sky got them to sign the dotted line. 6 year contract, no ftv service, minimal family pack, do your own uplinking... but hey, sky is paying for the transponder.

watty

Sky not charging for Encryption or EPG. These together are more than transponder.

AFAIK Sky can put RTE in ANY pack, any price or even FTV, at Sky's discretion.

If Sky didn't charge 10 time the reasonable price for EPG and 500 times the reasonable price for encryption, then all the Irish broadcasters could get a good deal renting the entire transponder. (Sky rents it anyway from Astra) and be on air with FTV.

lawhec

I think the multiplexing technology which Tony is talking about where several uplinked signals can be multiplexed onto one downlinked transponder is Skyplex - Eutelsat certainly have had this on board now for a few years but Idon't remember SES using it.

I thought that the RTÉ SHF links went from analogue to digital a few years ago (explaining why morning programmes were "suspended" a few years ago for stuff similar to the Landscape Channel) and I suppose if the signal was degraded by the weather then "blocking" would occour.

Mind you, I've yet to see anything as bizarre as a few years ago when on Brougher Mountain the soccer scores were being read out late Saturday afternoon on BBC1 and suddenly Channel 5 popped up for a few seconds!:eek:

watty

I accidently put out an RTE testcard into BBC Schools program. The phone rings or someone drops their dinner tray just as you are pressing a buttoon or pluging in a Musa jack. It happens.

TVDX

Watty, I am very interested in that last anecdote.
Can I ask?, and it's fine if you don't want to say.
But what sort of work did you do at the BBC?, and what do you study to do it these days?.
I am interested in that sort of work.

Also, was there a reason for there being an RTE testcard?.
I think you should start a thread with broadcasting anecdotes!.

watty

I was a Communications Engineer. Nowadays probabily you need Degree or Msc in Electronics and then addtional courses that the BBC used to give at Evesham.

Even after getting the job you were on probation maybe for over a year till you pass the BBC part1 and BBC part2 Comms Engineering courses. I don't know what happens know that BBC sold Evesham.

I thought I was plugging a Colour Bar source on the patch panel to a Studio. Instead I unplugged the UK feed to BBC NI and plugged in RTE's Eurovision feed (which was routed through Belfast CTA in those days.) The Eurovision feeds were used fo everything from distributing a News report from an American crew to a Uplink Station in Spain to feeding Muppets to RTE for later broadcast.

Ironically people had been calling for RTE to be available in NI (I think perhaps before C4 had started and Divis actually already had the 4th transmitter). A politician a few days earlier had claimed tht ait was a different system and not technically possible.

Even more ironically RTE had opened a very big mast in Cairn Hil (sometimes called Carn Hill) in Longford on same channel as Kirk O'Shots or some place in Scotland. After close down the transmitters did not "know" the programs where over so automatically went to off air pickup of the preceding TX in chain to Crystal Palace.

The first night RTE was running later than BBC, the Divis system picked up Cairn Hill perfectly, OFF THE BACK OF THE RX AERIAL! and transmited part of film, RTE News, part 2 of film and the National Anthem.

About 20 folks rang BBC to complain. About 100 rang RTE office in Belfast to ask if this would be regular and when was the next time?

The transmitter system was changed after this with signalling to tell TX when to turn off and sync pulse coding to stop even someone "hitting" the TX's Rx straight after closedown as happened in Japan to hijack most of the TV network.

watty

TVDX wrote:

Watty, I am very interested in that last anecdote.
Can I ask?, and it's fine if you don't want to say.
But what sort of work did you do at the BBC?, and what do you study to do it these days?.
I am interested in that sort of work.

Also, was there a reason for there being an RTE testcard?.
I think you should start a thread with broadcasting anecdotes!.

Really it was a dying job then, With much more automated and more reliable equipment comming in. Most of the job doesn't exist now except in commissioning and testing. The amount of expert staff needed is much lower. Similar with Transmitter Enginners, who originally had to do a lot of repairs and maintenance.

The 1950s to early 1970s was the heyday of Communication and Transmitter Engineering. Really I missed it. So rather than become a "Machine Minder" I left and became a Design Consultant / Engineer, initially on AV systems and then later microprocessor systems, Telecom, RF design and Industrial control.

With recession in Electronic Design in early 1990s I increasingly did SW only projects and IT system design and Support, with the major exception of an IceCream Making and Vending machine I designed all the SW and Electronics for.

I last 4 years I have been doing some RF systems from Wireless Barcode SQL databases to Voice, Data and Video Repeaters for the "Wireless Experimenter/Radio Amateur" community.

There is more market now in Communications Engineering for Mobile Phone/Data market than for BBC/RTE type market. The Broadcasters are being encouraged to drop enginnering and outsource it to installers etc and concentrate on making / broadcast programs. I think it is a mistake and leading to a dumbing down of technical quality as purchasing import programs also leads to a dumbing down of content quality.

IMO TV content and technical quality is poorer on average than 20 years ago.
ITV and C4 particularly are much poorer. RTE and BBC on average arn't as good and most of the newer channels on Multichannel inc Five you wouldn't miss them. We would have less repeats and higher quality on main channels.

Apart from very specialised channels such as Nat Geo the 800 channels has resulted in a dilution of quality and proportionatly very little extra choice.

watty

watty wrote:

I thought I was plugging a Colour Bar source on the patch panel to a Studio. Instead I unplugged the UK feed to BBC NI and plugged in RTE's Eurovision feed (which was routed through Belfast CTA in those days.) The Eurovision feeds were used fo everything from distributing a News report from an American crew to a Uplink Station in Spain to feeding Muppets to RTE for later broadcast.

Ironically people had been calling for RTE to be available in NI (I think perhaps before C4 had started and Divis actually already had the 4th transmitter). A politician a few days earlier had claimed tht ait was a different system and not technically possible.

LoL Actually a few years ago,BBC one wales went out on RTE one from Mount Leinster in perfect picture quality on a saturday morning.I wondered what happened there.

The first night RTE was running later than BBC, the Divis system picked up Cairn Hill perfectly, OFF THE BACK OF THE RX AERIAL! and transmited part of film, RTE News, part 2 of film and the National Anthem.

About 20 folks rang BBC to complain. About 100 rang RTE office in Belfast to ask if this would be regular and when was the next time?

Heh! that sounds funny,I'll bet the Irish national anthem didnt go down too well in Ian Paisleys living room

TVDX

Watty, thanks for both those replies.
I think you could have a very interesting book there.
Combined with pictures of transmitters, studios, testcards etc. I would be your first customer!.

Pat Gleeson

watty wrote:

The Broadcasters are being encouraged to drop enginnering and outsource it to installers etc and concentrate on making / broadcast programs. I think it is a mistake and leading to a dumbing down of technical quality as purchasing import programs also leads to a dumbing down of content quality.

IMO TV content and technical quality is poorer on average than 20 years ago.
ITV and C4 particularly are much poorer.

Apart from very specialised channels such as Nat Geo the 800 channels has resulted in a dilution of quality and proportionatly very little extra choice.

Never a more true set of statements said, right there.

The more channels we get, the less choice there seems to be.

Let me know when you have finished the book, Watty :-)

byte

Yeah, I want a copy too!

See? You've 3 buyers already, before you've even put pen to paper (or opened MS Word)!

Also, though not Engineering related as such, is some aerial stories
http://www.wrightsaerials.tv/aerialstories.html

Might interest some.

lawhec

Certainly the "Channel 5 on BBC1" thing was a bit mystifying. I can't recall the exact year, excpet it was sometime between 1998 and 2001. Brougher had no direct feed of Channel 5 (DTT was a late starter there) and to see the soccer scores being read out with a picture then breaking though with the "5" dog in the top left corner - the only occasion Channel 5 has appeared on analogue from Brougher! How it occoured I dunno - the original feed for analogue 625 line TV was through an off-air pickup of Divis which was then SHF linked to Brougher though before DTT started a dedicated optical fibre line was laid from Divis to Brougher. DTT then got delayed from Brougher as the test transmissions ended up wrecking some peoples RTÉ TV reception from Holywell Hill, mostly in Tyrone but also a few households in East Donegal too. DTT was delayed for several months before the majority of those affected had the chance to switch to an alternative source for RTÉ.

Watty, the Scottish transmitter in question is Black Hill. Indeed back in the late 1990's late one evening Divis had a major malfunction which caused BBC1 and BBC2 NI to go off air and shut down (can't remember if UTV & CH4 were affected) but the Brougher Mountain and Limavady (confirmed by observing the Strabane relay) transmitters instead rebroadcast BBC Scotland, which was novel. While Limavady would probably be able to pick up a Scottish transmitter (probably Darvel or Black Mountain) off-air for backup, I'd doubt it would prove possible for Brougher, so I suspect there is a seperate feeding arrangement for Limavady and Brougher in place if Divis itself breaks down and can't outsource, herby re-routing a Scottish off-air pickup.

Meanwhile over in England, there's a couple of infamous incidents of TV transmitters being "hijacked", one broadcasting the voice of an alien over the ITN News (supposed to have been done by a bunch of students) while the Plymouth relay TX was also hijacked after ITV went off-air and broadcast a porn film!

Sparky

TVDX wrote:

Watty, thanks for both those replies.
I think you could have a very interesting book there.
Combined with pictures of transmitters, studios, testcards etc. I would be your first customer!.

Me too, as i said before to watty, he is some man of knowledge, he has made this thread a very interesting read.

watty

Yes, indeed probabily Black Hill.

The Transmitter hijacking can't be done now. In Japan he had the Porn videos and etc in a 4 x 4 near the second TX in the national chain and kept the whole network bar one TX several nights running till caught. Sometime between 1974 and 1977. Probabily U-Matic format rather than evil Philips 1500. Just before the VHS and Betamax formats launched. I can't remember when the N1700 came out, though in 1978 or 1979 I must have fixed a lot of N1500 and N1700, but I was fixing VHS and Betamax then too.

He might have been using a portable 1/2" reel to reel (I had one), most were mono, but some had colour and a few you could even retrofit NTSC or PAL. They used the colour under system as used in all modern analog video recorders (Colour limited to about 700KHz BW and recorded on a separate 1MHz approx FM carrier to the Mono video FM carrier. In 1976 or 1977 I did see a 1/4" tape reel to reel portable Akai colour video recorder.

There was also a cartridge JVC machine. You had to rewind all the tape into the catridge which had a single spool and a stiff leader in it to eject.

lawhec

The Transmitter hijacking can't be done now. In Japan he had the Porn videos and etc in a 4 x 4 near the second TX in the national chain and kept the whole network bar one TX several nights running till caught.

Watty, could it be possible during the BBC network tests that are often done once or twice a year in the early Sunday morning hours where the network feeds are switched off (except for Crystal Palace) and the "final redundancy" kicks in where the main transmitters attempt to relay each other through off-air feeds? I'm sure if someone was to overwhelm a signal to some of the main stations, maybe Sutton Coldfield, a similar "trick" could be done!:eek:

Mind you, the BBC Engineers would be on to you in a flash!

watty

No. It can't as nowadays there is a special security code in the sync pulse of the legitimate transmitter.

Actually I think I know how, but I won't say

mrdtv

Once in Suffolk when ITV1 was off-air I saw Sudbury switch to an off-air relay of Nederlands 2 , probably from Lopiik!!! It had the PM5544 Philips colour test card and there was no sound because of the difference in systems. The IBA soon put a stop to 'foreign incursions'. Along the coast there you can get Netherlands/Belgium every day including Digitenne although that is encrypted. I have also seen Kippure RTE in South West Scotland and in the Lake District.

marclt

I remember not long after TnaG became TG4 there were several occurances of this sort of break up on Mt. Leinster.

It also happened on RTE1 and RTE2... of course ringing RTE Tech Info was useless... they had closed for the evening! It lasted some time before normal the problem was resolved.

It was green lines and blocking all over the screen and sound break up.

I was told not so long ago that alot of work had happened there to upgrade the transmitter to handle digital transmission. I guess they just haven't started anything yet!

Ulsterman 1690

RE: link security

Many relay transmitters (including some serving quite densly populated areas) are probably considerably less secure than main sites.

I remember hearing somewhere that in cold-war Poland "Solidarity" used to make clandestine TV broadcasts via hijacked TVP transmitters (perhaps with some collusion from sympathetic TVP engineers -who knows)

Also it used to be a popular hobby in the Netherlands to break into the cable TV network for pirate broadcasting

Antenna

back on topic,
TV3 from Spur Hill (Cork) sound and vision were breaking up/blocking badly for a while last Tuesday (12/Sept), around midday. RTE1,2, TG4 were not affected.
The problem seemed to be only at Spur Hill, as TV3 from Mullaghanish was fine.
I don't know how long the problem was present for, but I saw it over a half an hour period, after I happened to switch on TV3 sometime before midday.
I checked again at 1PM, and it was OK, breakup was gone.
Before anyone asks, there was no heavy rain to have disrupted the digital microwave link to Spur Hill.
Take a look at the attached picture, taken during a show called 'Property Ladder - USA'

(BTW 'Collins Barracks' transposer relays Spur Hill, so that would also have been affected)

SRB

late 1990's late one evening Divis had a major malfunction which caused BBC1 and BBC2 NI to go off air and shut down

---

Something similar happened in 1999, though it wasn't Divis this time, it was BH Belfast which suffered a massive power failure, the late movie which was being shifted in NI had just started when it suddenly cut to the last five mins; Divis having lost BH NI, had switched to Cambret Hill, Scotland.

RTE 1 DTT from Three Rock had quite a bit of break up last night during the 9PM News, it wasn't the DTT Signal as it remained constant, seemed to to be on the source.