The frustrating thing is how much power the home shopping channels still have. QVC, Ideal World and co should have been shoved away to a three digit LCN years ago. On Sky they're far away from the entertainment channels, while Freeview's LCN continues to be an odd mix of formats in the lower end of the EPG.
Outside the PSB's and some niche offerings like Talking Pictures and Sky Arts, it's become too bloated and crammed with sub-par 544x576 nonsense.
The consultation document suggests that non-PSB content could be SD/HD substituted where it is essentially (not exactly) the same, but PSBs should remain as simulcasts. This seems a bit harsh on commercial PSBs. Channel 4, for instance, should be able to swap DVB-T2 HS C4 for the SD version on LCN 4, where the set provides for this, and despite the "LEMNUS" macro-region not being respected.
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Simul-cast requirements for PSBs could, however, be relaxed to enable (for instance) Channel 4 to offer HD versions in areas that do not conform to their SD advertising macro-regions.
This is covered off and allowed for. From the consultation:
In the case of PSB channels, where an HD version is substituted in the LCN for the SD version, all programming on the HD version must be an exact simulcast of the SD version in order to satisfy Ofcom's PSB prominence requirements that are due to come into effect on 4 January 2021.
There may however be differences in promotions, advertisements, and on-screen graphics and idents
Of course, the C4 swap would mean a growing number of people not seeing the adverts advertisers have paid the channel to appear in certain regions, which would undermine the purpose of the LEMNUS model.
The frustrating thing is how much power the home shopping channels still have. QVC, Ideal World and co should have been shoved away to a three digit LCN years ago. On Sky they're far away from the entertainment channels, while Freeview's LCN continues to be an odd mix of formats in the lower end of the EPG.
Outside the PSB's and some niche offerings like Talking Pictures and Sky Arts, it's become too bloated and crammed with sub-par 544x576 nonsense.
Why should broadcasters who have been anchor tenants on the platform from the very early days lose highly valuable assets, in the form of channel numbers, just because of the content that they broadcast?
In any case the ability to sell guide positions may well be enough for a number of the shopping channels to move down the EPG as the money they can make from selling the slot is likely to be greater than the benefits from keeping them.
The frustrating thing is how much power the home shopping channels still have. QVC, Ideal World and co should have been shoved away to a three digit LCN years ago. On Sky they're far away from the entertainment channels, while Freeview's LCN continues to be an odd mix of formats in the lower end of the EPG.
Outside the PSB's and some niche offerings like Talking Pictures and Sky Arts, it's become too bloated and crammed with sub-par 544x576 nonsense.
Why should broadcasters who have been anchor tenants on the platform from the very early days lose highly valuable assets, in the form of channel numbers, just because of the content that they broadcast?
You can ask that question of children's channels and news channels, which have been moved at least three times and are now nearly 200 places lower down the EPG.
Still no plan in this for any progress in switching to HD. With just a handful of HD channels I'm not sure there is much benefit in switching with SD channels.
Assuming these changes go ahead, it will be interesting to see how Youview react.
From a lot of the wording in the consultation, it seems that any IP streams that do get introduced will be provided via the Freeview Play backend (using CLM features), rather than using the OTA pointers that Arqiva currently transmit on their muxes.
So unless they try to work with Freeview to gain access to these same streams, they would need to strike their own deals with the broadcasters separately in order to provide the same type of service which viewers would expect.
Similarly, Freeview starting to use the IP channel LCN range to provide services would, as the proposals note, conflict with the pay channels provided by BT and Talktalk.
Fair enough, in some respects.... the IP channel LCNs were provisioned to be used on a per-provider basis, and it's already in the policy that Digital UK would use these numbers for Freeview Play services if (and when) they launched. But viewer expectations mean that it's going to be hard to reconcile the differences between the two very similar platforms.
If Youview wanted to try and mirror whatever IP channels launched on Freeview Play, it would have perhaps been workable for to change their numbering, such that they used the bottom (less likely to be used) end of the allocated LCNs. However, since the proposals have also defined genre ranges within the IP block, there's not much wiggle room for that. Especially as there isn't a Sports or Movies genre in the proposal.
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On the flip side, these proposals could open the door to pay TV services using the Freeview Play platform as a springboard. A revival of the TopUp TV model... or even as a replacement for BT/Talktalk's Youview offering.
The frustrating thing is how much power the home shopping channels still have. QVC, Ideal World and co should have been shoved away to a three digit LCN years ago. On Sky they're far away from the entertainment channels, while Freeview's LCN continues to be an odd mix of formats in the lower end of the EPG.
Outside the PSB's and some niche offerings like Talking Pictures and Sky Arts, it's become too bloated and crammed with sub-par 544x576 nonsense.
Why should broadcasters who have been anchor tenants on the platform from the very early days lose highly valuable assets, in the form of channel numbers, just because of the content that they broadcast?
In any case the ability to sell guide positions may well be enough for a number of the shopping channels to move down the EPG as the money they can make from selling the slot is likely to be greater than the benefits from keeping them.
If these channels can still make money by having a LCN in the 400s, well away from PSBs and the like on other platforms, then that should be it.
Freeview for too long has allowed the home shopping channels too much leeway in comparison to the mucky channels which were eventually given their own section.
If HD variants will swap with the current SD slots, it'll make it even more of a mess. The HD section for example which I largely use on Freeview is tidy (bar kids HD in the 200s) and is easy to flick between 101-105 without having to muck about having to go to 3 for ITV HD London if this was enabled.
It's probably too late and been too mismanaged to work now but IMO the HD channels should be say 101-139 but with their SD equivalent on 1-39 (and then swapped if needs be), with any SD only channel from 40 onwards. That should have been the driver to get channels to upgrade to HD and in doing so securing a higher EPG slot. When the two additional Arquiva muxes were announced with the knowledge they would be time limited it should have been with the view that the SD only muxes would eventually close, not the new HD ones.
And just as with shopping channels there are now enough film and music channels to justify their own section on the EPG, and perhaps an argument for the +1 channels to be grouped together as they are now on Sky too.
I also still don't understand why Youview was given the 300s rather than the 600s when their channel range expanded.
Last edited by Brekkie on 18 November 2020 10:35pm
Also, it may be possible for PSB and non-PSB commercial channels to develop "Adsmart" type applications, or to deliver localised or interest group content. Clearly, this goes beyond the functionality of even smart TVs with Channel List Management (CLM), requiring the development of application layer components making deep calls into firmware, so it isn't what this consultation is about. But, such future development shouldn't be proscribed by only allowing PSB HD substitution to be an absolute mimic of the SD, whether the HD version is off-air or IP delivered.
Yes - the DVB standard has included support for triggering advert replacement for a while in 'splice in terms' using SCTE-35 type solutions (this is used where DVB-S/S2 is used to distribute channels for DVB-T/T2/C but with localised advert insertion for regionalised adverts. I believe it is used in Russia for instance).
The frustrating thing is how much power the home shopping channels still have. QVC, Ideal World and co should have been shoved away to a three digit LCN years ago. On Sky they're far away from the entertainment channels, while Freeview's LCN continues to be an odd mix of formats in the lower end of the EPG.
Outside the PSB's and some niche offerings like Talking Pictures and Sky Arts, it's become too bloated and crammed with sub-par 544x576 nonsense.
Why should broadcasters who have been anchor tenants on the platform from the very early days lose highly valuable assets, in the form of channel numbers, just because of the content that they broadcast?
In any case the ability to sell guide positions may well be enough for a number of the shopping channels to move down the EPG as the money they can make from selling the slot is likely to be greater than the benefits from keeping them.
If these channels can still make money by having a LCN in the 400s, well away from PSBs and the like on other platforms, then that should be it.
Freeview for too long has allowed the home shopping channels too much leeway in comparison to the mucky channels which were eventually given their own section.
If HD variants will swap with the current SD slots, it'll make it even more of a mess. The HD section for example which I largely use on Freeview is tidy (bar kids HD in the 200s) and is easy to flick between 101-105 without having to muck about having to go to 3 for ITV HD London if this was enabled.
The consultation says that the HD version of a channel would show in both sections with the SD version being placed at LCN 610 upwards
The frustrating thing is how much power the home shopping channels still have. QVC, Ideal World and co should have been shoved away to a three digit LCN years ago. On Sky they're far away from the entertainment channels, while Freeview's LCN continues to be an odd mix of formats in the lower end of the EPG.
Outside the PSB's and some niche offerings like Talking Pictures and Sky Arts, it's become too bloated and crammed with sub-par 544x576 nonsense.
Why should broadcasters who have been anchor tenants on the platform from the very early days lose highly valuable assets, in the form of channel numbers, just because of the content that they broadcast?
You can ask that question of children's channels and news channels, which have been moved at least three times and are now nearly 200 places lower down the EPG.
Still no plan in this for any progress in switching to HD. With just a handful of HD channels I'm not sure there is much benefit in switching with SD channels.
I would imagine that news, childrens' and home shopping categories have been separately consulted over the years. The difference is that BBC dominate the categories which have moved and have no presence at all in the category that hasn't, so you can infer from that the BBC were up for moving their content (presumably on the grounds it'd be sought out regardless of EPG position) but the shopping channels were not (since they rely somewhat on 'passing trade').
The biggest usability improvement to the EPGs on all platforms would be to implement switching between HD and SD versions by a toggle (one of the coloured buttons perhaps) on the same LCN rather than cluttering up the EPG with duplicates.
The Virgin EPG is particularly awful but Freeview and Sky aren't great