UK Analogue Switch-Off consultation

marclt

HI Guys

OFCOM have made announced the start of the consultation on when the UK analogue channels will be switched off.

We all thought the process would start off in the borders of Scotland and England, but now this initial switch off has been extended to the ITV Westcountry (South West of England) and the ITV Wales region. This means that from 2008, according to the current OFCOM suggestion, analogue tv will be no more in these areas... how will this affect viewers in the south east of Ireland?

Heres the full timetable, according to international issues Channel Isles, Ulster and the SE Coast of England will be the last areas to changeover... apparently there is a Europe wide strategy on analogue switch off?!

REGION
HTV Wales 2008
Border 2008
West country 2008
Granada 2009
HTV West 2009
Grampian 2009
Scottish TV 2009
Central 2010
Yorkshire 2010
Anglia 2010
Meridian 2011
Carlton/LWT 2011
Tyne Tees 2011
Ulster 2011
Channel 2012

Marc

Ulsterman 1690

I would imagine that as the analouge transmissions are turned off that power will be increaced on the digital signals so that Irish viewers may not be left totally high and dry

A bigger threat could be Ireland starting its own digital services and therby blocking some of the frequencies used in the UK

apparently there is a Europe wide strategy on analogue switch off

Someone should tell the Irish Govt well :rolleyes:

Incidently isint it high time the Governments insisted that all new TV's and videos in the shops have inbuilt digital tuners. Even though one can now get a Freeview box for as low as 30 quid its still messy having to have yet ANOTHER box under the TV (especially on a portable set)

Macy

Ulsterman 1690 wrote:

Someone should tell the Irish Govt well :rolleyes:

Hear hear, although RTE claim to be digital compliant because of sky/cable/MMDS :rolleyes: Same as the Government claim that Broadband is available to everyone, through Satellite Broadband.

marclt

Ulsterman 1690 wrote:

A bigger threat could be Ireland starting its own digital services and therby blocking some of the frequencies used in the UK

Yes, this IS going to be the main problem! According to COMREG the anticipated frequencies for Mount Leinster for 4 of the digital muxes will be the same as those currently used by Preseli. SO there will be little option for cross over there... a purposely made decision I wonder?

IT will of course cause some problems - atmospheric weather conditions being one example... I mean people will still have their old UHF aerials pointing at Wales, so there is plenty of room for issues to arise.

UK transmitter power will also rise - so current strengths could increase by about 5 times their current levels!

Macy

marclt wrote:

Yes, this IS going to be the main problem! According to COMREG the anticipated frequencies for Mount Leinster for 4 of the digital muxes will be the same as those currently used by Preseli. SO there will be little option for cross over there... a purposely made decision I wonder?

Wasn't one of the things RTE were suggesting having the English stations on the service as well (to justify the price they were going to charge)?

marclt

marclt wrote:

UK transmitter power will also rise - so current strengths could increase by about 5 times their current levels!

Much of Wicklow use Arfon certainly along the coast, its very strong for an only 10kw erp
Crystal where I am anyhow-if that went digital with 5 times the power of the presely signals, then I and most up the East coast would have freeview guaranteed.
Even with the current usual levels for DTT signal would be good from there.

marclt

Is the plan that the current frequencies used for digital in the UK will be phased out after analogue is turned off, so during the switchover, you've got current digital frequencies, they turn off analogue. ANd on the old analogue frequencies they put the existing muxes before turning off the current digital freq's if you get my drift.

SO are the current DTT frequencies temporary while the switch to an all digital system is carried out?

I think the idea is to use as much of the spectrum as possible.
Analogue takes up too much of the spectrum at the moment so when thats gone, the possibility for 100's of channels through DTT via an aerial arises.

Better reception too as power could be rose without interfering with existing analogue signals.

lawhec

The Channel Islands being the last place to have the changover is a bit ofa surprise considering that it was being mooted as being one of the first to change over. I suspect that Ulster is being made near last partly due to the lack of DTT rollout in the Republic - no point making an analogue switch off when tens of thousands of homes still have to rely on analogue for RTE. Still, I think attempts should be made to increase current DTT ERPs before switchover.

UK transmitter power will also rise - so current strengths could increase by about 5 times their current levels!

From what I've read, once the switchover is complete the multiplexes from Divis will be allowed to broadcast up to between 50-100kW depending on parameters while Limavady and Brougher Mountain would be 10-20kW. Some of the "major" relay stations would be carrying all six multiplexes as well (Sherrifs Mt., Strabane, Kilkeel, Afron etc.) at powers that are roughly 10-20% of the current equivalent analogue ERPs.

Yes, this IS going to be the main problem! According to COMREG the anticipated frequencies for Mount Leinster for 4 of the digital muxes will be the same as those currently used by Preseli. SO there will be little option for cross over there... a purposely made decision I wonder?

Since 3 of the 4 vacated analogue channels in the UK for each transmitter will be used for digital broadcasts, I'd say the problem will eventually sort themselves out.

Ulsterman 1690

The Channel Islands being the last place to have the changover is a bit ofa surprise considering that it was being mooted as being one of the first to change over.

Along with the reception problems suffered there from many years caused partially by interference from French transmitters but mainly by the difficulty in getting a reliable link from the mainland to feed their relay transmitters
http://tx.mb21.co.uk/gallery/fremont-point.asp
http://tx.mb21.co.uk/features/sabre/index.asp

lawhec

Along with the reception problems suffered there from many years caused partially by interference from French transmitters but mainly by the difficulty in getting a reliable link from the mainland to feed their relay transmitters

There is now an undersea OFC under the English Channel that now feeds the Channel Islands I believe. The SABRE system is, or will be shortly decommissioned. Channel TV I believe still rely on off-air reception of Rowridge off a site near Le Harve in Northern France which is microwave linked to Jersey.

Ulsterman 1690

For a while they were using a Sky digibox for a feed but like you say presumably its all done by fibre optics now (since they also need to be able to feed back to the uplink station on the mainland the CI regional versions of BBC1 and ITV)

Interesting that the designers of the SABRE were planning for interference from (among other places) Kippure since Kippure didnt start using UHF until the late 1990's

Richard

Ulsterman 1690 wrote:

Incidently isint it high time the Governments insisted that all new TV's and videos in the shops have inbuilt digital tuners

Would be a good idea, but under E.U. Law that would be restricting trade. They might be able to give Tax break, though.

Mike 1972

but under E.U. Law that would be restricting trade

No more or less so than the legal requirement for SCART sockets

Capt'n Midnight

legal requitement for SCART , interesting...

Irish TV's have to have a VHF tuner, something that ain't needed in the UK so more extra expense and it would hold up grey imports.

In Italy there is plenty of talk about DTT and switching off analog. Saying we have digital from SKY/NTL etc is a red herring as it does not free up the spectrum, DTT channels taking about 1/5 the bandwidth of an Analog channel with far fewer restrictions on interference form adjacent channels or transmitters.

If someone told the Gov't they could sell off the UHF bandwidth then they might start to do something on DTT

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/news.nv?storyid=single4193

Acknowledging that DTT is raging across Europe, McKiernan asserts: “The reason why DTT doesn’t have any political backing in Ireland is because it is not a vote winner. The only motivation factor is that in the EU there is an agenda to switch off analogue broadcasting in favour of DTT. Ireland is one of the few countries that doesn’t have a switch-off date. In Italy by 2006 DTT will cease transmitting analogue signals.”

Ulsterman 1690

Irish TV's have to have a UHF tuner

Its actually a VHF tuner

something that ain't needed in the UK

Except for analouge cable in some places and reception of RTE in parts of NI

Actually most countries in the EU use both VHF and UHF for TV transmission (just like Ireland) a far bigger obstacle to trade is the different transmission standards (PAL and SECAM, 5.5, 6.0 and 6.5 MHz sound, Negative and Positive video modulation, AM and FM audio modulation etc) not to mention different types of mains plug

Capt'n Midnight

Point was that it's fairly easy for us to pop up to Norn Iorn for cheaper TV's
Most other EU countries can get more than 5 channels.

Thankfully some TV's allow you to change the sound offset, and at least the voltages are 230V so just need adaptors for the TV, SECAM was designed to be different - any idea if PAL is taking off in Eastern Europe ?

Yeah built in tuners for DTT would be nice, but no point in paying for them until there is some chance of signals to receive, otherwise it would have all the appeal of a tax.

Ulsterman 1690

any idea if PAL is taking off in Eastern Europe ?

Most East European countries switched over to PAL at the start of the 1990's some of them (e.g. former East Berlin) have even switched over entirely to DTT now ! Dunno what happened to owners of SECAM only TV's although I gather that prior to the 1990's most TV's in Eastern Europe were still B&W anyway