Today (30/10/06) Freeview is now four years old to the day, and what a way it has come from its 23-channel original package on October 30 2002, and look at the presentation that has passed in that time.
Hey I've just thought; ITV dropped regionality three days before the launch of Freeview and had their new look. Did they do that specifically for Freeview?
Hey I've just thought; ITV dropped regionality three days before the launch of Freeview and had their new look. Did they do that specifically for Freeview?
No - they had nothing to do with Freeview, well except that they came up with the name and the BBC nicked it!
The original ITV/C4 "Freeview" bid though would have seen regional programming on the ITV News Channel though.
All the info is on the OFCOM website somewhere, along with the SDN bid.
Although it all has worked out OK in the end, I'm in no doubt that the ITV/C4 bid was a better bid than the BBC/Sky bid.
It would have seen all muxes put on the 16QAM thing, seen ITV and C4 launch interactive streams and also reserved space for the BBC's proposed content - something the BBC didn't do for ITV/C4.
Does the TV Forum Archive (if you can get it to work) stretch back to the launch of Freeview - be quite interesting to see how wrong we were!
I think Freeview has been a major success in it's short existence. It's good that the main DTT broadcasters are all now shareholders, but their is alot of wasted bandwidth by the use of Quiz/Shopping channels.
In only 2 years we will see the start of analogue switch-off, so I think we will see much better channels from the Freeview/TUTV service as it becomes available to all.
The cost of digital TV has dropped dramatically. £30 for a top-set-box is surely not going to harm many peoples' budgets if they have 2+ years to save up the cost is it?
The cost of digital TV has dropped dramatically. £30 for a top-set-box is surely not going to harm many peoples' budgets if they have 2+ years to save up the cost is it?
That's the kind of logic the government uses, along with their way of claiming x% of the country are now digital, so we're on target. It's not the cost of getting a box for one TV that's the problem. It's the cost of getting 4 of them for all the TV's in the house, then another 2 or 3 for all the VCR's. Added to that, not all those TVs and VCRs will take SCART connections so the whole appliance needs replacing due to the lack of RF outputting boxes on the market (I think there's a few, but realistically how many of the general public know to look for 'RF out' when shopping for one?). And let us not forget the increase in licence fee. For those people still only using black and white TVs with a black and white licence, there are *no* black and white digital boxes, so get saving for your colour licence now. It's a lot more than £30 in the end.
Brekkie Boy posted:
Although it all has worked out OK in the end, I'm in no doubt that the ITV/C4 bid was a better bid than the BBC/Sky bid.
The ITV/C4 bid was good, but at the end of the day you don't really think it was turned down on the basis of the quality of the bid do you? It was down to the backers. The BBC's bid had... well... the BBC behind it. The other Freeview bid had ITV behind it, who'd just had ITV Digital collapse, and had the hatred of the entire first division on them. Better thought out or not, Ofcom needed someone running it who wouldn't have to spend a long time fixing their own digital television reputation first.
Now where's Jetix?The only kids channels they've got are cbbc and citv.CBeebies dosent count.Now the cbbc channel is good for some things and citv's got more good programmes than cbbc but it's still not enough.
