does anyone know when bbc 1 and 2 will be doing a trade test transmission next year(i think thats what it is called) when they show testcards and tones for an hour overnight.
it happened on january 23rd earlier this year so will it happen again in january 2007.
also what testcards do you think they will show during next years tests.
also once everyone goes digital by 2012 will they stop these tests.
I don't think I'll be able to catch it this year seeing as all the TV's in the house are digital-enabled. I'll probably try and hook the analogue signal up again (if I can).
does anyone know when bbc 1 and 2 will be doing a trade test transmission next year(i think thats what it is called) when they show testcards and tones for an hour overnight.
it happened on january 23rd earlier this year so will it happen again in january 2007.
also what testcards do you think they will show during next years tests.
also once everyone goes digital by 2012 will they stop these tests.
The tests carried out are the RBS Tests, here is a detailed explanation about the reason for these tests from deejay, last year:
deejay posted:
Most (all?) transmitters have a system built in whereby if they lose their incoming main feed of BBC1 and/or BBC2 for a set amount of time, they pick up the signal from their nearest transmitter and 'rebroadcast' it. During this test, the engineers in London cut the feed of BBC1 and BBC2 to the network and instead only send it to Crystal Palace. All transmitters other than CP lose their output, then steadily the ones nerest to CP go into rebroadcast mode (RBR), then the next ones and so on all the way up country. Engineers across the country then watch the output of their local transmitters and report back when they manage to get a signal again. Testcard fans often get a good long look at various test patterns sent from London so that various quality checks can be made.
After the switch over, they might have some form of test to make sure that Mux 1 survives a loss of feed from London, but then again they might not.
There will almost certainly be some sort of backup, but i'd have thought it would be very unlikely that it would be by RBS and therefore any testing would be far diffrent from what thy do now.
Will 2007s Trade Test be the last seieng as we're going Digital in 2008? Also.. if the switchover begins in 2008, will the five channels start showing captions from then, or will they broadcast as normal until the region is switched off?
These are engineering tests - trade tests were when the test card and demonstration films were shown so that tv dealers and aerial installers had something to demonstrate sets with and a signal to point an aerial at.