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Signing on Digital TV

(August 2001)

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MG
MikeG
Has anyone noticed that on the terrestrial channels on analogue (BBC1/2,ITV,C4/5) that some programmes are signed on digital but not on analogue? This has happened on Breakfast on BBC News 24 and also on Hollyoaks this morning.

Why do they do this? I'm not complaining, i'm just saying they might think of doing it on analogue for the hard of hearing! As only a small proportion of the UK has digital TV.
AE
Ashley Elford
It is a requirement that all channels (except British Eurosport) sign 1% of total programming if they are on the digital terrestrial platform. This will increase over the next decade only 1 or 2% higher (with probable 'Lara Croft' style electronic signers). As such, many channels do not bother making an opt-out for cable and satellite viewers, and so that's why they are able to recive signing too.

Mike, nearly a quarter of households in the UK have digital television - hardly a 'small proportion'.
MG
MikeG
What - nearly 15million people have digital?
AE
Ashley Elford
MikeG posted:
What - nearly 15million people have digital?
15 million people have digital television in their household.
MG
MikeG
God, I wouldn't have thought that! Seen as Tessa Jowel in this weeks Radio Times says the government doesn't know whether it will get everyone switched over before the 2006-10 deadline.
NG
noggin Founding member
The reason that there are a reasonably high number of digital households is because of the number of Sky analogue installations which have been converted.

The figures are something like 5.3million Sky Digital installations and 1.1 ITV Digital installations. Not including Digital Cable that means there are approx 6.4 million digital installations. Very few of these are in the same house, and many houses contain more than one person. Also it seems families and the young are more likely to have multichannel digital - so I think the estimate is 15million people can actually watch digital. (Approx 3 viewers per digital household?)

However for analogue switch-off arguments the more important figure is still the number of analogue DEVICES installed. Though a house may have one digital receiver many people will also have portable analogue TVs in other rooms, VCRs etc. All of these would need to be replaced/upgraded with digital receivers, or they would be rendered partially useless without an analogue signal. (Yes, you can feed the output from a single digital receiver around the house, but then you would only be able to watch a single channel around the house!)

6.4 million digital receivers is still a tiny proportion of the total number of bits of analogue equipped TV kit.

There was talk of a VERY cheap digital terrestrial receiver box being built to stick on the back of existing analogue kit. This would have no decryption kit (so would not receiver ITV Digital subscription channels) , and would just receive the free digital channels. The thinking is that it would have to cost less than 50quid, and that would still only work most usefully on TVs, as loads of VCRs still require their own tuner/receiver to be able to tape different channels when un-attended. Perhaps the government would be able to subsidise this, if they plan to sell the analogue airwaves.

It would be good if they sold the analogue space to more broadcasters, so that digital terrestrial was able to broadcast more channels...
DB
dbfriends Founding member
So what's going to happen when analogue is switched off? Surely they'll have to get rid of the signing again or face getting loads of complaints from people who aren't hard of hearing and see no reason their picture should be shrunk into a little box? I know that BBC1 currently shows some signed programmes late-night but surely that's not an option for all deaf people?
NS
NickyS Founding member
dbfriends posted:
So what's going to happen when analogue is switched off? Surely they'll have to get rid of the signing again or face getting loads of complaints from people who aren't hard of hearing and see no reason their picture should be shrunk into a little box? I know that BBC1 currently shows some signed programmes late-night but surely that's not an option for all deaf people?

I think they're working on the technology so that you'll be able to switch the signing on and off just like you can with subtitles.

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