'NTL Broadcast has won a contract to put ITV services onto the Astra direct-to-home digital satellite system and to provide terrestrial programme feeds from the regional studios to a central multiplexing centre. Worth around £40 million, the deal provides all the technical infrastructure to allow ITV channels to be received on home digital satellite receivers in addition to existing arrangements using terrestrial and cable platforms.
ITV has a 10-year satellite capacity deal for three transponders on the Astra 2D satellite. NTL will bring together the outputs of all the regional ITV companies so that they can be ‘uplinked' from NTL's new earth station at Morn Hill near Winchester. '
Full article can be seen on the link above.
Good news then! First the satellite, now the uplink - everything is going well!
It certainly looks like full steam ahead for ITV on Sky and I think they'll keep their promise and have the service on Sky Digital by the end of the year, if not before. Its cool, although it will be interesting to see what happens to ITV Digital's churn and subscription rate.
BB
BringBackThames
Does it seem likely now that we'll be able to see all regions on one dish?
I can't see why GMTV wouldn't be. You get networked news programmes all of the time, and whilst GMTV is a franchise holder it is essentially a networked programme.
On the subject of all regions on Sky... doubtful.
Whilst it wouldn't do any harm at all and wouldn't cost Sky any extra money, they will probably only make 1 region available.
However, if you live in an overlap area, like me, you will get the extra channel(s) that overlap in your region.
It will be like the same situation with the BBC One nations at the moment.
BBC One Wales, Scotland and NI are available on SkyD but to viewers outside the nations they are not available.
I'd certainly like Sky to do something allowing us to watch all regions but whether it happens or not remains to be seen.
I would think that GMTV would have to be available on DSat.
Though GMTV is a separate ITV franchise, it is non-geographic, and has regional variations (most of which are provided by local regional ITV franchise holders - though I believe Belfast is provided by ITN not UTV?) I would imagine that there would not be totally separate presentation for ITV on DSat - so GMTV would be carried as part of the regional ITV franchise holders uplink signal.
It WILL be interesting to see which subregions ITV franchises chose to broadcast, for both advertising and news reasons. (AIUI ITV will only be broadcasting 16 variations - and thus in England only one of the subregions will be carried - Central, Yorkshire, Meridian, Anglia and Westcountry should be interesting - they all have quite a few news regions!)
There's been so many conversations about this on DigitalSpy with people (including myself) going around in circles!! I say 'it might be possible, let's just wait and see' and there's other people on the forum that are adamant neither the tests or the actual regions when launched, will be available other than the postcoded region (either 1 or 2 ITV regions).
Surely it's not Sky's decision on whether all the regions will be available? That'll be an ITV decision but, as mentioned numerous times, the regions buy programmes to be shown only in the available region, not all around the country. Let's see....
I can see the sub regions being a real problem that will have to be sorted out eventually.
Westcountry has 4 sub regions at the moment and it is going to be quite confusing for viewers.
Why on Earth they decided to give another region to Border is beyond belief. The only difference is a bit of football!
It should have gone to the Midlands. With Central West and East getting different ones and just leaving South with West.
I think this is how many sub regions there are:
Tyne Tees: 3 regions
Yorkshire: It's 3 or 4?
Central: 3
Anglia: 2
Meridian: 3
Westcountry: 4
So ITV will have to buy more than double what it has already got if it wants sub regions....
It would be Sky's decision as to how many regions could be stuck clogging up their EPG. I doubt they will want to have 16 different channels all saying ITV : STATION NAME
If they were to be available I think Sky wouldn't allow ITV to go and plonk 16 new channels in. You'd only be able to get them by tuning in yourself.
Unless an interactive service could be created allowing viewers to select from a map with ITV region they wanted to see?
In the US the local affilate stations are all going to be available on satellite... every one of them.
Although they aren't yet, I was told that this was going to take place over the next few years.
That's a serious amount of channels though. Not sure how they are going to do it, unless they only make the regional stations owned by NBC/ABC/CBS/FOX available. Because obviously not all of the regional stations are owned by the networks, they just broadcast whatever they put out.
IH
I Hate HTV West
cheshirec posted:
It would be Sky's decision as to how many regions could be stuck clogging up their EPG. I doubt they will want to have 16 different channels all saying ITV : STATION NAME
If they were to be available I think Sky wouldn't allow ITV to go and plonk 16 new channels in. You'd only be able to get them by tuning in yourself.
Unless an interactive service could be created allowing viewers to select from a map with ITV region they wanted to see?
In the US the local affilate stations are all going to be available on satellite... every one of them.
Although they aren't yet, I was told that this was going to take place over the next few years.
That's a serious amount of channels though. Not sure how they are going to do it, unless they only make the regional stations owned by NBC/ABC/CBS/FOX available. Because obviously not all of the regional stations are owned by the networks, they just broadcast whatever they put out.
I was under the impression, Chesh, that in the States although the stations are on DSat they're not available outside of their broadcast areas because of licence restrictions ... and, the FCC are strict about that too ...
It would be Sky's decision as to how many regions could be stuck clogging up their EPG. I doubt they will want to have 16 different channels all saying ITV : STATION NAME
If they were to be available I think Sky wouldn't allow ITV to go and plonk 16 new channels in. You'd only be able to get them by tuning in yourself.
Unless an interactive service could be created allowing viewers to select from a map with ITV region they wanted to see?
In the US the local affilate stations are all going to be available on satellite... every one of them.
Although they aren't yet, I was told that this was going to take place over the next few years.
That's a serious amount of channels though. Not sure how they are going to do it, unless they only make the regional stations owned by NBC/ABC/CBS/FOX available. Because obviously not all of the regional stations are owned by the networks, they just broadcast whatever they put out.
I was under the impression, Chesh, that in the States although the stations are on DSat they're not available outside of their broadcast areas because of licence restrictions ... and, the FCC are strict about that too ...
I'm not 100% sure on it to be honest. It was brought up during a debate about how CNN could improve, in one of their chatrooms. The guy there was commenting on how much better satellite was when compared to cable and then was saying how all us regional stations would be available on satellite soon.
So I'm not sure to be honest, just quoting him
FYI: There was actually a channel called the 'satellite news channel' or SNC as it became known.
It was set up by ABC in 1982 as a rival to CNN. It failed.
