Channel television network contributions

According to the below article Jersey got its first fibre optic cable in 1989. Since then not only will the technology improved bandwidth on fibres but the Internet has happened and there's a lot more demand for connectivity.

A lot of us will now have enough bandwidth into our houses to carry the entire D3&4 DTT Mux, probably a few times over. Getting it to Jersey isn't that much of an issue these days

Here's a map of undersea cables: https://www.submarinecablemap.com/#/


Though they're not without their problems, Jersey Telecom have breaks on 3 of theirs in 2016
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-jersey-38146787


Maybe, if it was a long enough failure but then there's issues if a second one fails. It's a last resort so what version doest really matter as long as it keeps something on air

Indeed, Jersey has a high demand for bandwidth too (given its size) with all the banking activity, and isn't every business and home now connected with a direct fibre connection too ?

The first fibre delivered TV channel there was C4 on Jan 1st 1993. BT bundled in the connection with their
new 34 Mb/s national distribution network that C4 used after their 'disconnection' from ITV.

It's always been cost, rather than technical issues that has made delivering TV to the Channel Islands a bit of a challenge. If money no object there'd have been multiple 5 MHz links via SHF fed down through France to there, (just like the rest of the UK had)

In fact there was some thought within the BBC that the IBA's SABRE link was an expensive and indulgent project, the BBC took the view that Fremont was just ordinary transmitter serving 100k people, so why the fuss ? I think they failed to understand that for the the IBA, the link was Channel TV's lifeblood, and without a reliable feed they would be dead. One of the few instances where licence funded and commercially funded public service broadcasting ethics didn't align.

From the BBC point of view Analogue tv was fed by a feed off DSAT via a sky STB with Ceefax added at the transmitter from a VBI of a video cue circuit whuch had both BBC one and BBC TWO Ceefax in it . This used two E1s.... The CI Studio as a 8Mbit/sec MPEG 2 was the return feed on these and the E1s carrying radio NICAM streams.
Thus Ceefax origination and coding and mux were in Plymouth...
This was due to loosing the SHF link frequency ..
"analogue from DSAT Sky " was later used to feed Sandy health as BBC Cambridge moved saving a vast sum in microwave links and making the move a lot easier via centralised coding and mux ..
DSAT Sky was used as it has teletext subtitles in it and you just bridge in Ceefax at the transmitter .

The distribution feeds and later BBC raman like connectivity were in fibre one route via France ...
but I don't know how BT hermes network get there ...probably in different fibre to itv.

The same was used, for the same reasons, to deliver Westcountry ITV to the analogue transmitters, when the Plymouth studio centre
was closed (and functions relocated to Bristol). It was in place for a couple of years, from Plymouth closing
until DSO in the region. There was a large benefit to satellite viewers too, the bit rate of Westcountry on Astra was notched up to 8 Mb/s, to make it 'broadcast' quality. Very ironic !

Ah - I always wondered why Westcountry's picture quality was better than other regions on Sky back then. Presumably they also increased the resolution to full 720x576 rather than the sludgy 544x576 the rest of us had to put up with.

Yes, I'm pretty sure they did that too.

I remember waaay back when in the analogue days ,you could tell if you were watching Channel Telly solely by the picture quality. Watching telly in the UK was like losing one of your senses, albeit not a very useful one.

I'm guessing Channel was always a bit challeged in picture quality due to the fact it was rebroadcasting a (weak) off-air signal?

Obviously because it was coming via analogue, the Meridian analogue feed made its way onto DSAT at the very start.

However, how come SABRE continued to be used for the Meridian feed when the Astra feed could have been used?

I've just remembered, there was another kind of network contribution that Channel used to make. It used to appear - not just on a telly in the background, but as proper plot-relevant fictional reports - every now and then in Bergerac on BBC1.

The Jersey Evening Post used to provide the odd fake newspaper as well, and I'm sure BBC Radio Jersey must have made a few appearances.

As far as I know, Channel switched to a fibre feed sometime in the 90s, (as said, C4 switched to one in Jan 93).
The BBC carried on using the Alderney SABRE until 2003, when they changed their feed to Astra. Despite their
reservations, and initially using just a dumb array of 24 antennas ganged together on Alderney, they ended up using the SABRE long after ITV and C4 had reduced it to a standby roll. (Also there was a Mk2 SABRE at Cherbourg from 1986, (the point at which Channel changed from using TSW to TVS for their network feed))

What did the BBC use before SABRE or did they start on the islands the same time as ITV?

No, for VHF/405 they used this at Torteval

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/reports/1969-21.pdf

The ITA used for VHF/405 a diversity receive site on Alderney that flipped between Chillerton Down (Southern) Stockland Hill and Caradon Hill (both Westward)

http://txlib.mb21.co.uk/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=5165

When UHF came (for BBC and ITV) in 1976, the IBA developed the SABRE receive system. As said up thread, the BBC initially baulked at using it, and instead used a number log periodics in a fixed array looking at Stockland Hill.
At some point a few years later, they shallowed their pride and used the SABRE too.

The SABRE and BBC arrays are in the early photos here, and links to other BBC and IBA papers

http://tx.mb21.co.uk/gallery/gallerypage.php?txid=860