noggin's posts, page 211

Feeds to Irish Channels

Why? If Sky handled the uplink that wouldn't change the picture quality significantly. The quality is largely dictated by the number of services per transponder - Sky handling the uplink wouldn't mean fewer services per transponder, that would be a decision taken by the BBC. (It's conceivable Sky have different quality encoders I guess...) Similarly the modulation approach taken.

BBC North West Tonight coverage of Cumbria

Because it only needs one. Transmitters are sited to cover the whole of the country as efficiently as possible (only using as many as are required) - not to make nice neat local news regions. The ITV regional franchise structure was based around transmitter coverage - not the other way round, and the same goes for BBC regional news areas.

Winter Olympics 2018

Not sure there will be much atmosphere between 0200 and 0300 in the Olympic Park - when Clare is on-air.

With Pyeongchang 9 hours ahead, UK prime time - where you can see Clare being deployed - is in the very early morning in Korea, and doesn't make for good location presentation. It's a time-zone based decision I suspect.

BBC North West Tonight coverage of Cumbria

Relatively speaking the BBC is now less well-resourced in the English regions than it was in the 80s. Fewer production / technical staff, lower-quality kit (compared to Network production) etc., coupled with expectations of higher production values. What constituted an acceptable service in the 80s wouldn't be acceptable now. (See the Channel Islands opts)

Feeds to Irish Channels

C4 and ITV don't do their own uplinking AFAIK - but they may contract it out to someone other than Sky (such as Arqiva, Globecast etc.). There may be a mix - ITV2/3/4HD (but not SD) are pay-TV on Sky, as are All4/More4/Film4 HD (but not SD). It is possible that Sky uplink the pay-TV stuff and someone else contracted directly by ITV or C4 uplink the FTA SD and HD stuff. (Sky have done deals to provide uplinks in exchange for exclusivity and these services aren't on Freesat or Freeview HD as a result, though they may be on pay-TV Virgin cable)

The BBC used to do their Astra uplinking in house, then when they sold the department that did it to Siemens, I believe Siemens-then-ATOS continued to do it (with some services upland via Arqiva also at one point), albeit from facilities at BBC-owned sites.

Some of the services the BBC outsourced to ATOS (renamed bit of Siemens) have now been brought back in-house to the BBC - uplinking may be one of them.

Whoever is doing the uplinking - whether it is the BBC/ATOS, Arqiva or Sky - they will be adding Sky and Freesat platform-specific data as required.

There are major differences between the platforms in EPG, subtitles and digital text standards - meaning you need to simulcast data in both formats if you are on both platforms, but the platforms are designed such that these simulcasted data streams can be within the same transport stream on a single uplink and don't require duplication of video and audio feeds (which are the expensive bits)

Feeds to Irish Channels

Sky use a proprietary EPG, Freesat use a different proprietary EPG. Neither of them use the DVB Standard EPG. They both use standard DVB Now+Next though.

I believe both Sky and Freesat use standard, but independent, 'bouquet' data feeds for their receivers to map channel line-ups regionally.

The BBC were uplinking to Sky (initially encrypted Free-to-view, then unencrypted Free-to-air) before Freesat launched as a platform, and Freesat had to ensure anything they required broadcasters who were on both on their platform, and Sky's, to do caused no issue to Sky boxes.

I also believe Sky require (or required) anyone not uplinking their services using Sky's uplink services (i.e. not contracting Sky to uplink) to sign an indemnity with a pretty hefty financial penalty, to ensure they wouldn't cause interference to the Sky platform - and this was increased if the uplink also contained Sky-compatible digital text/interactivity.

Eurosport Player

If you contact customer services they tell you that what is branded as 'Eurosport Player' on Amazon isn't 'Eurosport Player' too... They also say that they are not providing the streams on the Amazon service, Amazon are. Be interesting to know if that is actually the case or not... (May have to do some Wireshark work to find out...)

Feeds to Irish Channels

Don't know about the path from Red Bee to the BBC's Coding and Mux operation - but the circuits for all the ITV internal network are HD-SDI over IP AIUI, with decoding to HD-SDI for routing in the HD-SDI domain at two switching centres, before re-encoding to IP.

Cable companies? Think you mean cable company... Virgin Media are the only real cable operator in the UK. AIUI they get an uncompressed feed - but not sure what the carriage medium is - and I may be wrong.



That's not the case. Those broadcasters who contract to handle their own free-to-air uplinks rather than outsourcing to Sky - like the BBC, ITV, C4 etc - and who want them on both platforms - generate transponder muxes that carry both Freesat and Sky specific platform data (Sky and Freesat use different EPG, subtitling, digital text etc. standards) so that they are compatible with both receivers. This will include needing data feeds to and from Sky and Freesat for some of this data.

It's not that Sky program their receiver to take Freesat feeds, any more than Freesat program their receivers to take Sky feeds (Sky uplink services that they make available on Freesat too), broadcasters and uplink operators who wan their broadcasts to be available to both platforms must carry platform specific data for both platforms, in co-operation with both platforms.

It's not Sky making their receivers compatible with 'Freesat feeds'

Feeds to Irish Channels

Do you mean encrypt? It's always been MPEG2 or H264 encoded since the digital era arrived?

Feeds to Irish Channels

I'd expect them to be something like HD-SDI carried as SMPTE 2022-6 over ITV's IP network provided by BT.

ITV's internal circuits have been IP (initially over an MPLS fibre provision) from BT since around 2004. I imagine ITN is included in this.

This is not much more than an informed guess though.

BBC News: Presenters & Rotas

I wouldn't include Victoria Derbyshire in that list, she's better described as a BBC Two presenter who appears on a show simulcast on the News Channel. She doesn't pop up anywhere else on News Channel...

The Legend that is Simon McCoy

Very different kettle of fish. The Six and Nine were more dual-presentation than co-presentation. Most links were single-headed, and the double-headed stuff was close to entirely scripted (and really just for the set-piece elements of the show). There's a world of difference between that and double-headed presentation of totally unscripted breaking news, where you really have to work as a team, and support each other.

Unlike many of the 90s One/Six/Nine era presenters, Philip worked very well in the breaking news scenarios of BBC World and BBC News 24 when he was single-heading, and he could definitely cope well with the demands of that very different role. From memory, both Andrew Harvey and Chris Lowe also made the transition well - and were great on News 24.