Freeview changes: 29th/30th June as COM7 closes

[mici01]

The UK is way behind the game now,  despite being the first country in Europe to have launched digital terrestrial television.

I don't think its despite being first to digital TV ... it's because of it. If you're first to something you have to deal with legacy problems down the line.

A lot of countries are going through sort of 2nd DSO now and are retiring DVB-T by switching completely to DVB-T2 with HEVC encoding. Poland just did it's switchover, just the PSB got an extension for the old system because of the war in Ukraine.

[Keith]

A lot of countries are going through sort of 2nd DSO now and are retiring DVB-T by switching completely to DVB-T2 with HEVC encoding. Poland just did it's switchover, just the PSB got an extension for the old system because of the war in Ukraine.

There's definitely a strong case for the UK to do the same, even if it gave the PSB an extension on the old system as per Poland. Whether OFCOM and/or government have any interest in doing this in the near future though remains to be seen.

[Brekkie]

There is no excuse for it not to happen. Yes, of course consideration needs to be given to those who may struggle should they need to upgrade (though anyone buying new Freeview equipment in the last 6 years won't need too) but ultimately with other areas of technology such as PCs/Laptops and Tablets/Phones we're used to having to upgrade every few years to get the best out of the technology, so TV should be no different.

And as is so often the case not taking action when it should have been taken makes it even more difficult in the long run. It's harder to justify changes which may impact the poorest now than it would have been 3-5 years ago, plus of course with COM7/8 now gone any changes of muxes will have to be done live, which based on what happened in 2010 would require a few months downtime to make the upgrades. Had these changes been made with COM7/8 in place they'd have been able to do it in a less disruptive manner.

[JAS84]

A few months downtime? Nobody's going to accept having no TV for that length of time, it's a non-starter.

[Brekkie]

Well it wouldn't be no TV, it would just be one mux down at a time - though in theory once you've done the first you can temporarily stock that full with SD channels on DVB-T2 whilst others are being done.

The simplest way probably is for the BBC to go first as their core four channels are in HD already, but they'd need to house BBC News and BBC Parliament temporarily, but they could probably be squeezed in on PSB3 in SD. Obviously BBC Scotland/Alba to factor in too.

However in reality I suspect any plan would keep the main BBC channels at least and ITV/C4/C5 in SD on DVB-T until the end of the switch over.

[Aplus1]

ultimately with other areas of technology such as PCs/Laptops and Tablets/Phones we're used to having to upgrade every few years to get the best out of the technology, so TV should be no different.

But TV is different. Upgrades to laptops, tablets and phones are needed because the use we make of them is increasingly complex and requires additional processing power. Whereas a TV just receives broadcast television, and it can do that as well after a few years as it could on the day it was sold. Just like a car - it just works, you don't need a new one all the time. 

A TV is a major expense for most people and they don't renew their TVs every few years because they don't need to. If you want to, that's up to you and nobody is stopping you. If you personally want more/better/different TV channels, you are placed to buy the equipment to get that, so you're not losing out in any way at all. But I personally wouldn't feel comfortable trying to force my own preferences on everyone else - causing them nuisance that they'd probably not want, and costing them money that they possibly don't have.

[Brekkie]

ultimately with other areas of technology such as PCs/Laptops and Tablets/Phones we're used to having to upgrade every few years to get the best out of the technology, so TV should be no different.

But TV is different. Upgrades to laptops, tablets and phones are needed because the use we make of them is increasingly complex and requires additional processing power. Whereas a TV just receives broadcast television, and it can do that as well after a few years as it could on the day it was sold. Just like a car - it just works, you don't need a new one all the time. 

A TV is a major expense for most people and they don't renew their TVs every few years because they don't need to. If you want to, that's up to you and nobody is stopping you. If you personally want more/better/different TV channels, you are placed to buy the equipment to get that, so you're not losing out in any way at all. But I personally wouldn't feel comfortable trying to force my own preferences on everyone else - causing them nuisance that they'd probably not want, and costing them money that they possibly don't have.

Completetly disagree - most people do little more with their phone or PC than they did the last time they updated it, but the updates enables it to do more should you desire to benefit from it.   TV should be the same, and even then we're talking updates every decade or two rather than every 3-5 years.    The cost of updating is also less than updating other technology.

[London Lite]

For most people, their sets some of which are still DVB-T and only go up to 720p HD are perfectly happy with their sets and in a cost of living crisis, I really don't blame them if they want to watch linear tv in SD for now.

However, there has to be a point when T2 replaces DVB-T as the main distribution outlet for DTT. Like the analogue to DVB-T switchover, those with older sets should be able to buy a box at a budget price to convert their sets to receive DVB-T2 and are likely to have Freeview Play added for catch-up services to enable them to have smart facilities.

My last set which I purchased in 2018 is a dumb tv with smart tv facilities through an Amazon Fire Cube and Nvidia Shield which provide all the services I require between the two. Personally I'm not a fan of smart tv's purely because of the short life span of the apps and the OS used, but boxes and a dumb tv do what I need it to require.

[Markymark]

Well it wouldn't be no TV, it would just be one mux down at a time - though in theory once you've done the first you can temporarily stock that full with SD channels on DVB-T2 whilst others are being done.



The simplest way probably is for the BBC to go first as their core four channels are in HD already, but they'd need to house BBC News and BBC Parliament temporarily, but they could probably be squeezed in on PSB3 in SD.  Obviously BBC Scotland/Alba to factor in too. 



However in reality I suspect any plan would keep the main BBC channels at least and ITV/C4/C5 in SD on DVB-T until the end of the switch over.

I don't quite follow your logic, you can easily upgrade a mux and all of its transmitters from T1 to T2 virtually instantaneously . Hardware upgrades and replacements at the broadcaster end can be done over a period of time, you do the standby kit first, then the main, run it all at T1 then when you're ready flip the whole lot over at once, overnight.

In fact exactly that was done with the 1000 or so small relays at DSO. The transposers were exchanged months and years in advance for dual standard analogue/DVB kit, and run in analogue mode until the relevant DSO in each region, then switched on DSO day. It was the only way to do it in fact !

The relay stations won't require any modification for T2 anyway, and the main transmitters require just a new modulator at the front end.

What is the challenge is all the millions of bits of receiving equipment.

[Keith]

There is no excuse for it not to happen. Yes, of course consideration needs to be given to those who may struggle should they need to upgrade (though anyone buying new Freeview equipment in the last 6 years won't need too) but ultimately with other areas of technology such as PCs/Laptops and Tablets/Phones we're used to having to upgrade every few years to get the best out of the technology, so TV should be no different.

And as is so often the case not taking action when it should have been taken makes it even more difficult in the long run. It's harder to justify changes which may impact the poorest now than it would have been 3-5 years ago, plus of course with COM7/8 now gone any changes of muxes will have to be done live, which based on what happened in 2010 would require a few months downtime to make the upgrades. Had these changes been made with COM7/8 in place they'd have been able to do it in a less disruptive manner.

Between 2023 and 2024 the mobile phone networks will be ceasing support for 3G. Hypothetically would it be possible for OFCOM to borrow part of this range for a temporary MUX?

If so the use of a temporary MUX using DVB-T would have allow an existing COM multiplexes to be transferred to the temporary one, and then once cleared that MUX could be upgraded to use DVB-T2, and channels then moved back. Repeat this process for all the existing commercial MUXs until COM4, COM5, and COM6 were all using DVB-T2. If needed PSB1 and PSB2 could be left as DVB-T to provide a legacy service for those with older TVs. (Arguably PSB2 could also be converted if ITV, Channel 4, and Channel 5 were also moved onto PSB1, to provide the equivalent of a pre-DSO service.)

[Markymark]

There is no excuse for it not to happen.  Yes, of course consideration needs to be given to those who may struggle should they need to upgrade (though anyone buying new Freeview equipment in the last 6 years won't need too) but ultimately with other areas of technology such as PCs/Laptops and Tablets/Phones we're used to having to upgrade every few years to get the best out of the technology, so TV should be no different.



And as is so often the case not taking action when it should have been taken makes it even more difficult in the long run.  It's harder to justify changes which may impact the poorest now than it would have been 3-5 years ago, plus of course with COM7/8 now gone any changes of muxes will have to be done live, which based on what happened in 2010 would require a few months downtime to make the upgrades.    Had these changes been made with COM7/8 in place they'd have been able to do it in a less disruptive manner.

Between 2023 and 2024 the mobile phone networks will be ceasing support for 3G.  Hypothetically would it be possible for OFCOM to borrow part of this range for a temporary MUX?

An extra temporary mux !?  That would require huge work and money to equip all 1154 transmitter sites with an extra physical transmitter, even if spare frequencies were available (and they'd have to be in the legacy UHF TV band (which most mobile services are not) and we wouldn't be allowed to that because of ITU rules anyway).

Also remember COM 7/8 only covered 70% of the population from 30 sites, so using them as parking positions was never going to work for the other 30% (and 1100 tx sites)

[Brekkie]

Well it wouldn't be no TV, it would just be one mux down at a time - though in theory once you've done the first you can temporarily stock that full with SD channels on DVB-T2 whilst others are being done.



The simplest way probably is for the BBC to go first as their core four channels are in HD already, but they'd need to house BBC News and BBC Parliament temporarily, but they could probably be squeezed in on PSB3 in SD.  Obviously BBC Scotland/Alba to factor in too. 




However in reality I suspect any plan would keep the main BBC channels at least and ITV/C4/C5 in SD on DVB-T until the end of the switch over.

I don't quite follow your logic, you can easily upgrade a mux and all of its transmitters from T1 to T2 virtually instantaneously . Hardware upgrades and replacements at the broadcaster end can be done over a period of time, you do the standby kit first, then the main, run it all at T1 then when you're ready flip the whole lot over at once, overnight.



In fact exactly that was done with the 1000 or so small relays at DSO. The transposers were exchanged months and years in advance for dual standard analogue/DVB kit, and run in analogue mode until the relevant DSO in each region, then switched on DSO day. It was the only way to do it in fact !



What is the challenge is all the millions of bits of receiving equipment.

If that's the case then there is no excuse not to do it (My theory was only based on how long PSB3 was out of action in 2010 between the 2nd BBC SD mux closing and the HD mux launching as it was withdrawn before the Winter Olympics but didn't launch in HD till closer to the World Cup).  

Would be interesting to see the most recent stats on that receiving equipment as I suspect it's far higher than this discussion might pressume - I know when we were talking about it a few years back something like 50% of viewers were thought to have Freeview HD equipment so a few years on I'd expect that to be significantly higher - although of course every 1% without is still hundreds of thousands of people.

[Markymark]

I don't quite follow your logic, you can easily upgrade a mux and all of its transmitters from T1 to T2 virtually instantaneously . Hardware upgrades and replacements at the broadcaster end can be done over a period of time, you do the standby kit first, then the main, run it all at T1 then when you're ready flip the whole lot over at once, overnight.







In fact exactly that was done with the 1000 or so small relays at DSO. The transposers were exchanged months and years in advance for dual standard analogue/DVB kit, and run in analogue mode until the relevant DSO in each region, then switched on DSO day. It was the only way to do it in fact !







What is the challenge is all the millions of bits of receiving equipment.

If that's the case then there is no excuse not to do it (My theory was only based on how long PSB3 was out of action in 2010 between the 2nd BBC SD mux closing and the HD mux launching as it was withdrawn before the Winter Olympics but didn't launch in HD till closer to the World Cup).  

There was indeed a gap, but I don't recall it had anything to do with conversion work per se, it was a case that BBC B had been cleared out of SD services, and the transmitters (and it was only those that at the time (2009) had already been DSO'd, which wasn't that many) were just transmitting null packets until the T2 version of the mux was ready to launch with actual services. CP, Lichfield, Emley, Pontop, and Black Hill where DSO wasn't due until 2011/12 actually carried a low power pre DSO version of PSB 3 from 2009/10.
Confused yet !!?

[News Engineer]

iPlayer is 720p but still with that funny filmic effect on everything.

iPlayer has offered 50fps (full HD motion) for several years now, it was one of the first streaming services to do so. If you are still seeing 'film effect' there is something wrong with your equipment or its settings.

[i.h]

Between 2023 and 2024 the mobile phone networks will be ceasing support for 3G.  Hypothetically would it be possible for OFCOM to borrow part of this range for a temporary MUX? 

The spectrum freed up by closing down 3G will be immediately ploughed back into 4G/5G, that's the primary reason for getting rid of it (3G is unique in that it "hogs" a lot of valuable spectrum even when there are few users. This doesn't apply to 2G, so that's why there are no plans to close this down)

Also, 3G was never deployed in "TV" spectrum, so there's nothing there that would be usable anyway