The new NEW Central West and BBC Midlands thread

Absolutely noggin, poor wording on my part. I did mean the slightly clunky opting arrangements where the analogue network feeds were present in the galleries and opting was changed from soft to hard opting when the vision mixer cut away from the network feed. There were two digital network feeds present in main regional centres, originally for networks 1 and 2. Quite early on though, it was decided to move all opts to network 1 and provide 2 resilient network 1 paths to each site. This is why right up to the end of analogue television, main regions could still opt on BBC 2 analogue but never on digital.

(I say main regions because none of the sub opts could ever opt on BBC Two.)

Apparently Hull could opt on BBC2 analogue but only for whole of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. That is to say that the Hull studio could opt out on Emley Moor and Belmont BBC2 and provide a pan-regional programme.

Never happened, but apparently the way the opt switch was configured it could be done.

Oxford could opt to BBC Two analogue too but only for the whole of the South and obviously not at the same time as Southampton. On the odd occasion where regional news moved to two in recent years Southampton provided a pan regional programme.

We've gone over this stuff in the past before a few times I think. Older main centres with two galleries could also opt on both networks at once. I remember reading instructions in how to route Bristol pres to network two while the main gallery had control of network one. Afaik though it never happened.

Yes, in fact Oxford BBC 2 (analogue) had to follow Southampton. The transmitter received
its input feed off air from Hannington (which in turn was off air fed by Rowridge, which made
for a really ropey picture, but I digress)

Oxford BBC 1 analogue was fed via fibre on a dedicated circuit from Southampton, which was
how Oxford opts could be broadcast from either Oxford or Soton. (There was a circuit (still is I assume)
from Oxford to Southampton, so in fact Oxford the transmitter was fed from Oxford the studio always via Soton )

These days the transmitters are all directly fed from central BBC Coding and Mux centres - the regional centres no longer have direct feeds to their regional transmitters, they feed a regional BBC One SD variant (at 270Ms) via fibre to a coding and mux centre, where it is statmuxed with the other BBC channels and then fed to the transmitter(s) over fibre. I don't know if the Oxford network feed is routed directly to CCM or goes via So'ton.

I didn't think there were every 9Mbs MPEG2 digital network feeds of BBC Two to the English regions (and the required decoders), only the "analogue" BBC One and Two network feeds which were usually fibre 140Mbs PAL composite digital circuits (Yep analogue network distributed digitally... Massively higher bitrate as they were effectively uncompressed, with Sound In Syncs carrying digital audio - in a very similar data format to NICAM 728)

Certainly any concept of regional opting on BBC Two was dropped before DTT opting happened as I think even then BBC Two, BBC News 24 and BBC Choice were statmuxed together in central coding, with only BBC One encoded CBR (at the relatively high 5.8Mbs?) to allow for fixed bitrate regional drop-ins (you couldn't replace a statmuxed service easily)

I have a suspicion that BBC2 in the Channel Islands opted out once in the 90s for a special Island Games programme. Though this could have been a manual intervention (re patching) at Fremont Point rather than a conventional neat and tidy opt out.

I should think it still goes via Sot'on, in fact doesn't the gallery at Soton perform the sub/opt switch, for the
18:30 programme, and provide a clean network feed for Oxford to opt in and out of at 22:25 ?
It would make sense, because it gives the easy facility for Soton to use its second studio for Oxford ?

No, Oxford feeds itself to the coding centre when there's a sub opt, and feeds Southampton to the coding centre when there isn't. At 1830, they opt out of a clean version of network 1, then switch the feed on their desk to a feed post-Southampton's opt. At the end of the sub opt, Oxford can then go out of circuit, leaving Southampton to do the opt back to network at 7pm. This is far better than the previous arrangement where circuits up and down country between Oxford and Southampton provided the ability to opt, but meant that Oxford's gallery remained live with Southampton on the output between 1845 and 1900.

Does that mean that previously it wasn't possible for someone to be interviewed from Oxford while the 1830 programme was going out?

Also Oxford had a new down the line camera installed but I think encountered a few teething problems. Is it in use now?

No, the old Oxford newsroom camera could still be used when the subopt was going out because there were separate lines to London which could be passed on to other regions (including Southampton). The new DTL studio is now in use and is HD.

There was also one occasion where the south today weather forecast was presented from Oxford pan regionally while the Oxford gallery remained on air carrying the sub opt to the north part of the region. It was achieved because Oxford originally had an outboard CSO keyer (bought for the 8pm bulletin). Southampton fed the graphics up a spare circuit, Oxford combined that with the weather presented and fed to composite back to Southampton.

Thanks. Is there any word on other buildings having the DTL upgrade?