NG
Presumably, the ultimate granularity would be taking all of the main tx, plus the main high-power relays as a basis. Most of the stations would be grouped into sub-regions, but some would justify the approach taken of having separate directional (low bitrate but highly robust) petals. The basis of a sub/micro-regional mux supporting BBC1, ITV, something else and something other else capable of splitting services between Liverpool & Manchester (Cambridge & Milton Keynes, Leeds & Sheffield, Edinburgh & Glasgow... etc) is probably all that is required. Most tx sites only need a unitary transmission to address micro regions, even frankly the Great Bellemonte!
I think the BBC and ITV would prefer not to be on low-power sub-regional muxes - and instead maximise reach, unless the sub-regional muxes guaranteed identical (or better) population coverage.
The approach taken for the main PSBs has always been 'coverage first', 'editorial split second' (i.e. make the editorial work with your coverage patterns, don't design your coverage patterns editorially) which makes absolute sense for channels largely carrying a network.
Unless you go down the route of radically replanning for SFNs - you're always going to be running local muxes on very low powers to avoid interference, which means running at very low data rates (the local mux in the UK is running at 8Mbs QPSK compared to the 24Mbs+ 64QAM of other DVB-T muxes as a result, so only carrying 3 poor quality MPEG2 SD streams)
noggin
Founding member
Local TV
I would suggest that as long as you had a national spine, you could go more local than the original ITV regional structure. Even then though, the number of 'regions' in the network would probably be quite small still. Westcountry used to have 4 sub regions, Central 3, Meridian had Thames Valley, South and South East. The old HTV could be split into 3 sub regions, West of England, South Wales and West & North Wales. STV has sub regions for their news. Overall you could create smaller sub-regions, but the total number would probably be no more than 40-50, and even that maybe being optimistic.
Presumably, the ultimate granularity would be taking all of the main tx, plus the main high-power relays as a basis. Most of the stations would be grouped into sub-regions, but some would justify the approach taken of having separate directional (low bitrate but highly robust) petals. The basis of a sub/micro-regional mux supporting BBC1, ITV, something else and something other else capable of splitting services between Liverpool & Manchester (Cambridge & Milton Keynes, Leeds & Sheffield, Edinburgh & Glasgow... etc) is probably all that is required. Most tx sites only need a unitary transmission to address micro regions, even frankly the Great Bellemonte!
I think the BBC and ITV would prefer not to be on low-power sub-regional muxes - and instead maximise reach, unless the sub-regional muxes guaranteed identical (or better) population coverage.
The approach taken for the main PSBs has always been 'coverage first', 'editorial split second' (i.e. make the editorial work with your coverage patterns, don't design your coverage patterns editorially) which makes absolute sense for channels largely carrying a network.
Unless you go down the route of radically replanning for SFNs - you're always going to be running local muxes on very low powers to avoid interference, which means running at very low data rates (the local mux in the UK is running at 8Mbs QPSK compared to the 24Mbs+ 64QAM of other DVB-T muxes as a result, so only carrying 3 poor quality MPEG2 SD streams)
Last edited by noggin on 1 September 2017 9:34am - 4 times in total