I can understand ITV+1 needing to be regionalised, but is there any point in C4+1 being regionalised? Surely they'd get as much revenue from showing one advertising region across the UK?
Err - if that were the case why would they bother regionalising the main C4 feed?
Is it an OFCOM regulation to provide regional advertising?
I can understand ITV+1 needing to be regionalised, but is there any point in C4+1 being regionalised? Surely they'd get as much revenue from showing one advertising region across the UK?
Err - if that were the case why would they bother regionalising the main C4 feed?
Is it an OFCOM regulation to provide regional advertising?
I'd be surprised if it was. Regional advertising exists because it is profitable.
I can understand ITV+1 needing to be regionalised, but is there any point in C4+1 being regionalised? Surely they'd get as much revenue from showing one advertising region across the UK?
Err - if that were the case why would they bother regionalising the main C4 feed?
Is it an OFCOM regulation to provide regional advertising?
Don't think so - I think it is more a requirement of the advertisers - and it makes C4 money. If it were more profitable for C4 to run a single region I'm sure they would.
And what about those who cannot, because of topography or local planning policies can't erect a satellite dish?
The so-called "Freeview lite" service from the bulk of relay transmitters is pretty appalling.....surely it would make more sense for them not to carry plus one channels so that ITV 3 and ITV 4 could be provided. They were there at first until one of the muxes was allocated for HD instead. It seems rural areas and pockets in larger towns and cities are regarded with disdain. The original plan for the Selkirk transmitter group was for just under half the relays to carry the full service....Peebles, Hawick, Berwick and Eyemouth. But the goalposts were moved and none of them (Berwick is now fed from Chatton) has anything other than the basic service.
The commercial operators didn't take up the offer of expanding their multiplexes to other transmitters. They just kept the same transmitters that were in use pre-switchover, but with a power boost to reach more households.
Film 4 is testing as a hidden stream on D3&4 in London, which means an extra channel is about to become available for relay transmitter viewers. Film 4+1 is now likely to take the current Film 4 bandwidth in the coming weeks.
I can understand ITV+1 needing to be regionalised, but is there any point in C4+1 being regionalised? Surely they'd get as much revenue from showing one advertising region across the UK?
No, advertisers often only want to do one area. This is more true with NI and Scotland but it still brings in more extra revenue than the cost of extra capacity.
Channel 5 has several regions too - the NI region was only created a year or so ago.
And ITV (1) has several sub-regions for advertising purposes, although I'm not sure they're all on Astra any more.
Great news about BBC One regional variants finally becoming available in HD but can anybody tell me why they haven’t been available on Sky before? Has it been down to a capacity issue with satellite space or something to do with carriage fees maybe? Or do you think the BBC didn’t want to roll it out on Sky until they could also offer the same service on DTT/Freeview etc? Just interested to know, because obviously the regional ITV HD service has been available on Sky for some time now.
It's not so much about capacity issues, far more to do with cost. If you consider that they fit 7 SD services into a transponder, but only three HD ones - and transponder space doesn't come particularly cheap.
Going off on a bit of a tangent here - all SD services on the Sky platform are still DVB-S, because that's what oodles of old Sky boxes can handle. DVB-S2 is far more efficient - you wonder how much Sky would save on transponder costs if they switched all their SD services to S2 and sent all their SD subscribers a new box?
Reporting Scotland has been going out in HD since January!
Hmmm that's interesting, usually if a programme has an HD equivalent, the SD channel would say 'Also in HD', and the HD channel would have in brackets 'HD' on the information page...both of them have neither.
AFAIK the news production process isn't entirely HD yet - packages edited and fed down the line from the other studios around Scotland will be SD, and I'm fairly sure I've seen some bits and pieces edited in Glasgow in SD too. The studio and its graphics engine are definitely HD, though. Perhaps not enough of the programme is in HD for it to be considered truly HD?
Going off on a bit of a tangent here - all SD services on the Sky platform are still DVB-S, because that's what oodles of old Sky boxes can handle. DVB-S2 is far more efficient - you wonder how much Sky would save on transponder costs if they switched all their SD services to S2 and sent all their SD subscribers a new box?
Haven't they been sending all customers Sky+HD boxes as standard for quite some time now, so presumably those with an SD box must be a fairly small proportion. I guess transferring to S2 would be more about freeing up space for HD rather than launching even more channels - and that is what annoys me with Freeview. The three commercial muxes now have 12-13 channels each on their muxes compared to 8-10 pre-DSO. A bit of overall planning rather than greed could easily have freed up one of the existing commercial muxes for HD by prioritisiing the needs of HD over giving more shopping channels 24 hour slots. I'm sure Arqiva could have struck a deal with ITV/SDN to move 4-5 of their channels to the SDN mux in exchange for space on a new HD mux run by Arqiva.
As for this new HD muxes - as C4 joined forces with the BBC to push for this space to be released it looks like they'll have at least two channels - I'd have thought E4 and Film4 HD, though knowing C4 of late it'll probably be C4+1 HD and 4seven HD. It wouldn't surprise me if Sky have more say than C4 in to when these services launch - especially Film4 HD, which launches on Sky in September. Even though it's not exclusive to them (it's been on Virgin for ages) I wouldn't be surprised if the deal had some stipulation about it not being on Freeview/Freesat for a period.
Also in not strictly on topic news I see 4music has launched a connected red button app so those people with the right equipment can press red on channel 18 and access the full range of BOX TV channels.
I concur that Freeview Lite is a fairly awful service, having used it when visiting the in-laws in the Calder Valley. It's not so much the reduced number of channels as the (to the uninitiated) seemingly random selection you get, coupled with huge gaps between numbers in the EPG and the presence of +1s over separate services. Completely get the argument over regional ads, but when the 3 muxes available to you hold three separate versions of ITV and C4 you wonder if they should see the bigger picture.
That said, if I was in one of these areas I'd be on Freesat like a shot so there are options available to people that don't involve paying a subscription.
Oh and the 4 Music press red service is appalling - not only does it only work for a certain boxes (which they don't advertise), it has the effect of completely freezing my 2010 Sony HD TV when you simply watch 4Music, not even pressing the red button.. Not great to do that on something relatively recent.
The 4Music thing works fine for me though it take about 10 seconds for each channel to load. Shame there's only 3 additional channels and not the full range of Box TV channels.
The 4Music thing works fine for me though it take about 10 seconds for each channel to load. Shame there's only 3 additional channels and not the full range of Box TV channels.
If it works for you, then you haven't got a YouView box. These services use the MHEG-IC standard which isn't supported by YouView... yet.