BBC News Multiscreen on Freeview

Please forgive me if I'm being frightfully stupid and missed some other posts on the subject, but when did this start broadcasting? I didn't think it was possible to do this on Freeview (even though it only has 2 channels... plus a glimpse of BBC Parliament when you leave the service)

It started last week sometime, but has been testing for a while!

Well it came along a few weeks ago

Only 1 channel worked on ITVd boxes
When you left it all the new boxes chrashed

So it went off and then came back a week later

It broke everything again

So it's been off for ages before returning on Monday of this week all working.

The two channels are really just two squares joining the BBC Parliament square on 45. The MHEG itself pulls the video/audio streams so that is why they don't interfere with each other.

Wow, I really didn't notice that at all, who is the bloke in "another" virtual news 24 studio who looks and sounds really board? On the top on (are there only two extra feeds?)

Is it just me, or does the BBC NEws Multiscreen keep getting a poor signal quality and stopping and starting. It's really annoying!

Joel.

It's not possible to combine different video streams. Along it looks like two separate screen it's not - it's just two sections of the same stream and the audio is just two different 'languages'.

But, I am interested in why this has happened. Supposedly BBC Parliament is broadcast only in a quarter screen due to bandwidth. But with the two BBC News streams now resulting in a lot more of that channel being used, was it actually possible to have full screen BBC Parliament?

If so, why wasn't this done? Getting basic channels up is more important than interactive services.

I think it's always been possible to have a full screen BBC Parliament on Mux B, but the thing is, as it's only talking heads 99% of the time, ¼ screen is all thats really needed. Plus hardly anyone watches BBC Parliament (0.9% weekly reach I think) so I think it's better the BBC use the space for not only Parliament, but also News Active. After all I expect more people will use it!

S

Some digital adaptors/IDTVs have problems with the new multiscreens.

Some adaptors get a blue screen saying that your digi adaptor is not compatible - some just get dodgy pictures and sound.

this was done as the beeb got sick of trying to support bad MHEG drivers. It had been off for ages and they have a marketing push coming soon/

I think this was always planned for BBC Parliment. It's not as if the BBC care about it anyhow.

I disagree - try watching it from a distance on a 14" set, it just doesn't happen.

I agree with that - I think that they should use BBCi 701/702 to provide BBC Parliament coverage when no other interactive programme is using it. It's unlikely to happen though.



The thing is that my Samsung adaptor worked with BBC News Interactive, now there's a blue screen there. They are just to receive as many complaints if they didn't put that screen there, saying it worked before - now it doesn't.

I think they should use BBCi 701/702 to provide channels and not have interactive on there at all. I've said it before and I've said it again, interactive is, for the most part, just a gimmick. On DTT in particular it's even more gimmicky because the platform lacks the bandwidth to support it properly - any DTT interactive service is just a cut down version of the type of thing you can do on Dsat. Gimmicks should not be occupying valuable space which could better be occupied by channels.