I seem to remember when digital TV was a new concept, when the BBC were actively promoting it - the had people from or working on or behalf of the BBC at the Bentalls Centre (a shopping centre not too far away from me) dishing out bags of leaflets and trinkets explaining how exciting the digital revolution was going to be and how you can get it. In fact, I think I still have some of those bits and bobs around in a box somewhere.
I feel that quality has been left out when it comes to digital TV. It seems to be more cram-as-much-crap-on-as-we-can at the expense of quality.
I have seen far too often on Freeview when there has been severe pixellation on feeds where there is lots of action on screen -e.g. sport. It looks horrible and it wouldn't be a great selling point to me, seeing as I can get perfect analogue reception. No pixellation, no (at times) mushy sound.
I also get frequent problems with the ITV channels - the slightest bit of electrical interference (e.g. switching on a flourescent light, starting up the hoover, the fridge compressor kicking in or the central heating boiler firing up) causes them to have a digital 'sneeze' and the picture and sound breaks up momentarily, which is very annoying especially when you're recording something.
Also, I think other platforms like cable need to sort the basics out before going onto bigger things. The software in use on NTL boxes is especially dire - it is slow to respond when in interactive mode and I even managed to crash a digital box once by doing too much channel surfing.
The same is true for DAB. I tried a DAB set in a shop recently, and although the sound quality was reasonable - this was one of the ones with a weedly mono speaker in it.
Although there might be loads of stations out there with a taste to suit every man and his dog, the quality is rather abysmal on anything but a one speaker kitchen portable. DAB was originally touted as having near CD quality sound, but it is turned out to be anything but. All low-bitrate mush, with some stations in mono (I seem to recall there is at least one music station on there in mono). And I also hate the way they tout digital as being better, it is not in certain respects!
I also dislike the way that broadcasters have taken 4:3 material and cropped it to 16:9 or 14:9 to make it "widescreen". I've been watching on and off this week the repeats of the Demon Headmaster on the CBBC channel, and the quality (when cropped) certainly looks worse than it was all those years back when it was broadcast in original 4:3. It is un-necessary and looks really awful.
I'd wager with the cropping and subsequent loss of resolution, it probably looks worse on the majority of widescreen TV sets which are not set up properly - with a digibox feeding a 4:3 feed to a WS TV, and the picture looking stretched.
I think shops (esp. DSG) are the worst cuprits at that - the majority of WS sets on display in the stores I have visited are wrongly set up, being fed a crappy quality picture or are displaying ceefax/teletext. How's that for a sales pitch?!
While there's plenty more channels, and much of the time they're showing crap that I'd never want to watch, I think I'd get bored of telly pretty quickly if I had to go back to just five channels.
There's been plenty of occasions when I've managed to accidentally stumble across something entertaining on Sky Travel (of all places), or an strangely fascinating documentary on BBC Four. Or been glued to Sky News. Or wished that I had E4, rather than its programmes taunting me from beyond the Top-Up TV MHEG. (No longer a problem, of course.)
Yes, there are problems with DTT; I'm sure most of them could be sorted for my flat with a new aerial, but I'm only here for a year and it's a shared antenna, so I'm not even sure who would pay for it. And there is some rubbish programming that's certainly not to my taste (although is surely to
someone's
). You're right though about the widescreen problem. Dixons et al ought to get their finger out and sell it properly; and the broadcasters should stop showing stuff the wrong way. Has anyone tried asking for their excuse for cropping things in such a nasty way, incidentally?
Digital's not perfect, but can you really say we'd be better off staying analogue?
(Oh, and I forgot to ask - what was the Windmills test tx?)
When ITV Digital collapsed, a number of test transmissions were broadcast on their old transmission slots, to test different transmission systems (to imrpove the receivability of transmissions etc.)
One of the most common test sequences was shots of Windmills that the BBC use as a test sequence. It works well at stressing digital TV systems because it has quite taxing motion (rotation is more difficult to cope with than linear movement) as well as fine detail (as I think it was original shot on HD - so it is very sharp when downconverted to SD)