ITV1 on Sky

What would happen if someone removed their Viewing Card halfway through the match?

Depends. It's all done through big aerials pointed toward the UK, like the Irish Republic. I think Belgium gets Anglia, and Holland would get Yorkshire or Tyne Tees.

The signal can give instructions to the box to take the default region on 103 or the encrypted stream. This is to ensure that there are no problems if the card is removed from the receiver etc.

Should the card be removed half way through the match, the stream would obviously not be viewable until the card is reinserted.

It should be pointed out that it wouldn't matter when the card was actually removed from the receiver, i.e. whilst on encrypted stream or region, a signal is always sent to the box to indicate which mode it should be in. Further, it is not enough to send the signal once. The signal indicating the mode must be sent in series throughout the transmission in order to allow for incorrect data reception (i.e because either the card was removed for any length of time, or because the receiver lost satellite reception for some reason.... weather being a probable cause).

Dont RTL broadcast Champions League matches on Wednesday FTA that can be picked up on Astra 1 across Northern Europe.

How is this different to ITV doing it?

Ste

Actually speaking, as far as I know there was only ever discussion about using the dynamic switching system for Champions League and imported material (i.e. Hollywood stuff and the like). It does however lead to the possibility of simply having a single itv national stream which shows everything encrypted, and then using the other streams for regional opt-outs like news, local programmes and (maybe idents?). All viewers would receive the national stream during national broadcasts. This would significantly reduce costs to ITV (mainly transponder leased air-time) because the regional streams can be switched OFF during national broadcasts. It means ITV only pay for the cost of encrypting one stream, the others being FTA for the regional stuff.

Well today is Monday, and no tests, hopefully by the time I get back tonight, there will be some!

When are these tests going to begin???

Yes - I was looking forward to today, but nothing seems to have happened yet.

To my knowledge, there was never any formal announcement made about when itv was to begin testing - people just speculated that tests would commence today (Mon 29th Oct). It seems unlikely that itv will actually perform tests for at least a couple of days, I know ntl haven't finished their uplink testing! However having said that, it's not strictly itv who will be testing, it's still ntl since they are responsible for getting the whole network on satellite. ntl engineers should be paying quite a number of visits to all of the itv1 regional centres over the coming few weeks

Actually, the setup is more or less complete already. They have the equipment hooked up at the main itv1 outlets and indeed, tests already took place on another satellite a few weeks ago! I suspect final testing will end soon (off-air testing) before the network begins actually uplinking any of the itv regions. There really isn't all that much testing left to be honest, it all happened behind closed doors But yes, we should be c'ing some of the regions appearing really soon

So no tests will be happening tonight?

Where did 29th October as testing date come from anyway?

Actually, I don't think ITV1 have been testing on another satellite, it was merely broadcasting on PAS 9 for the Grand Prix a few weeks ago.

J2K, celebrating his 600th post, still singing.. #Get ready for ITV!#

I have just tuned to one of the frequencies to see a still from 'Trisha'. Then my Digibox froze and rebooted.
What's going on?