changing a few U links is hardly a soft-opt though
perhaps they could have patched bbc west (and i presume south west) to take "network" feed from bbc midlands late night on friday, or very early saturday morning? then patch it back to london as network feed early sunday morning?
An even better solution as it only requires 1 person to press an opt-out button.
However might have caused problems for the bulletins at 5:20
changing a few U links is hardly a soft-opt though
perhaps they could have patched bbc west (and i presume south west) to take "network" feed from bbc midlands late night on friday, or very early saturday morning? then patch it back to london as network feed early sunday morning?
An even better solution as it only requires 1 person to press an opt-out button.
However might have caused problems for the bulletins at 5:20
i would have thought opting out of midlands today would be as easy as opting out of london news?
And Birmingham isn't the standby network feed anymore either.
are we absolutely sure about that? i have reason to 'think' (although, not know) otherwise. for those in the know, i'm talking about another event on saturday 22nd.
Blimey - opened a can of worms here! Shouldn't have called it the transmisson chain - poor choice of words. Sorry about that. The reason the opt in the West and South-West is entirely due to the way Bristol's opt-out galleries are configured.
All regional centres pass programmes from the network to it's transmitters perfectly properly - no tinkering with aspect ratios can occur.
When older regional centres opt-out of network, because the galleries are 4:3 they have been configured to chop the top and bottom of the picture off and pass a 14:9 image to the analogue and digital chains. They are appropriately ARCd so that analogue gets 14:9 letterbox and digital gets 14:9 pillar-boxed.
Now, tinkering with U-Links and switches may well have tricked the system so that this match could have been offered to the viewers in the accepted Sport format of 16:9 for digital and 4:3 centre-cut-out for analogue, but it will have disrupted transmission while it was set-up by both Plymouth and Bristol. Far safer to allow Bristol and Birmingham to opt out in the usual manner to carry the game, even if it did mean that Birmingham opted slightly too late, and Bristol passed a 14:9 image to West and South-West viewers.
And Birmingham isn't the standby network feed anymore either.
are we absolutely sure about that? i have reason to 'think' (although, not know) otherwise. for those in the know, i'm talking about another event on saturday 22nd.
Now, tinkering with U-Links and switches may well have tricked the system so that this match could have been offered to the viewers in the accepted Sport format of 16:9 for digital and 4:3 centre-cut-out for analogue, but it will have disrupted transmission while it was set-up by both Plymouth and Bristol. Far safer to allow Bristol and Birmingham to opt out in the usual manner to carry the game, even if it did mean that Birmingham opted slightly too late, and Bristol passed a 14:9 image to West and South-West viewers.
Surely both the BBC 1 network digital sustaining feed, and any OS feeds come via the main station router, as would outputs to the TX/uplink ? If so transparent cuts can surely be dropped in and out using an X-Y router panel ?
Apparently there was a network evacuation test this weekend at the mailbox to test that everything was working fine (idents etc.)
As far as I can tell Birmingham is still the network backup and there are seemingly no intentions to change that!
The Mailbox isn't a big regional centre like Pebble Mill was - it only has one gallery (for local news) and there are now 4 channels - not enough room
They've got something totally new and far better now than legging it up to Brum!
That's quite true, but geographically it makes sense to have something else up your sleeve well away from the South East, so Birmingham does still play a part in the back-up scenario.
