Al Jazeera English | Refresh 2020

The new look was due about 5 or 6 years ago but never materialised despite the new studio on London and the launch of AJ America happening in that time. They were doing a big tech refresh in Doha for a while which presumably delayed it.

It'll be ready soon I'm sure, as they say in the middle east... inshallah!

Not sure if this is the right thread, and apologies if posted elsewhere, but AJE have launched in SD on Freeview. They have started simulcasting in SD on DVB-T COM 6.

There is an MHEG5 (I think) overlay pointing to this - so I guess they are switching off their HD service on Freeview HD?

Progress.

Well Com 6 would give them a bigger audience than the HD mux they are on now.

I don't know why they gave up their SD slot in the first place

Muxes COM 7 and 8 only have up to about three years left, before they close. In fact they have closed in parts of Devon and Cornwall in the last couple of months already. Considering they were launched to drive take up of T2 receivers, so we could move faster to a DSO-2 they've been a miserable failure

In what way Mark? Has take-up of T2 receivers been terrible since then? They've allowed BBC Four HD and BBC News HD to broadcast in HD to a reasonable number of people who would otherwise get SD versions of those services only.

I'd expect there are more Freeview HD than Freesat HD equipped homes out there now? (Freesat has a very low take-up - not helped by C4 pulling C4HD from the platform)

We are going to have to look at T2 switchover ASAP - but B**xit is no doubt taking a lot of time from other matters...

It would make sense - on paper - to keep PSB1 and PSB2 DVB-T but shift COM4,5 and 6 to DVB-T2 to create some more capacity. However commercially that may kill Arqiva/SDN's business models - but I can't see PSB1 switching to T2 before the COM muxes?

Oh, indeed, my telly spends as much time tuned to COM7/8 as it does to PSB 3 ! However, COM7/8 were supposed to herald a big marketing push extolling the virtues of HD, I don't sense that's happened. That
said, I think today every TV that's sold is T2 compartible, but I suspect thousands unware of the HD versions of their favourite channels languishing up at 101+ Whenever I book into a hotel with a T2 telly, it comes up on Ch 1 to 5 when I switch it on.



Yes, and Humax have thrown in the towel on Freesat receivers, so are there any non Humax Freesat PVRs on the market now ?



Nor me..

I favour the solution than Ed Vaizey put forwards in 2011 and 12 ...
Mandate all PSB channels to,emit HD only and coordinate this with the 700 MHz clearance.
Thus does give interesting issues like the decrease in the number of PSB muxes and thus whose they are ( as there is will the COM muxes assuming no vast growth is channels on the platform. )
But it would save many tens of millions pounds a year revenue on double illumination ...
and there he the income from the spectrum auction ( and the half a billion pounds already agreed) to do /offset the cost if the Capex required on DTT .
Other objections are the large number of sky SD boxes off contract ..
But there are not that many households without a HD tv and a STB to convert is not THAT expensive ( and the government could give back the help scheme money it grabbed)

Given the any current emissive platform has only say 15 years left and the number of channels will decrease as the martini effect takes place ( any time any place any way )

Given the current Brexit B*****ks .. the degree of clarity from a politician was mind bending

I liked the French DSO. It enabled the main PSBs to go HD only, with the majority of the commercial channels also chose to broadcast in 1080i. Those are in SD are largely news channels. Franceinfo and LCI are SD only. (Those channels are FHD on other platforms).

Yep - French DSO stayed with DVB-T though, so effectively wasted 12Mbs per mux compared with switching to DVB-T2.

It's a pity we can't do what Germany has done and jump to HEVC 1080p50 DVB-T2 (which is both efficient and high quality) for HD, and 540p (avoiding interlace) for SD (which is almost always a 1080p->540p conversion)

Steff Gaulter is leaving Al Jazeera.

Steff was there from the very beginning, if I recall correctly.

Only Kamahl, Darren Jordon and Sohail Rahman remain from Day One, I think.

Although Sami Zeidan and Hazem Sika have come and gone and come back onto screen over the years.