All posts by DaveCheltenham
Below are all of DaveCheltenham's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.Jason - You will either have to unscrew them or if Crimped, cut them off. See this website for refitting:-
How to fit F Connectors to coaxial cable for Sky and Freesat
Regards (GL537QH)
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Surely, with a bit of innovation for Freeview and Freesat, an automatic means of changing multiplex / transponder as part of the EPG could be devised. On Freeview, when tuned to BBC One, on an HD decoder it would default to BBC One HD except when a regional programme bit is set. Likewise on Freesat, the local BBC One is determined by the post code.
The channel would stay on the local SD one as long as the bit remains set and default to HD when not. This could equally be applied to BBC Two and the Sky EPG.
If they can do it for RDS Radio, traffic and DAB to FM transfer and back, the coding cannot be that difficult?
Regards
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Briantist You said A satellite transponder costs about £4m a year to hire, and it's probably more when the BBC doesn't own it direct, but via Sky.
Why should hire of the transponders have anything to do with Sky as SES-Astra own the satellite and the BBC channels are compatible with the Sky EPG as they are on the Freesat one? As far as I know, it was not launched on their behalf and even on Astra 1A, they only had 4 of the 16 transponders initially.
Regards
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Thanks Briantist for the detailed reply. I remember the arguements that went on back in 1998 but did not know all that detail. I had a Pace Sky box (still working) for October 1st 1998 but no card until 3 days later.
Regards
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sid: In Worcester, your nearest high power BBC DAB is Turners Hill which I received here in Cheltenham long before there were local ones near here. Perhaps Turners Hill had the problems?
Regards
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Ofcom consults about Freeview HD two-multiplex upgrade plan in
Thursday 7 February 2013 6:04PM
Cheltenham
Thursday 7 February 2013 6:04PM
Cheltenham
An interesting article and comments. As Charles Stuart said, nothing will convince him to subscribe to Sky and more so, I understand that some people paying £10/month for HD are opting out and some being persuaded to stay by this being reduced to £2.50/month.
From this, it is possible to conclude that HD is not a big enough attraction by itself without good programme content. For me, only sport and wildlife are important in HD and for other programmes, nice to have.
A very difficult choice lies ahead for the broadcasters to go with HD or SD?
Regards
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Transmissions on ensemble 10C have started (just data at the moment) in preparation for the Muxco Gloucestershire service due to start full test transmissions next month, August 2013.
As I recall, these were originally planned to start around 5 years ago but the service will be vey welcome now.
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Thanks Brian. Really interesting to look back.
In the early days, I knew someone who worked there and it was a very very local cross boarder and almost a family affair.
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The end is near for analogue radio... Part 3, satellite Freevi
Friday 30 August 2013 11:58AM
Cheltenham
Friday 30 August 2013 11:58AM
Cheltenham
Thanks Brian for providing some realism and making this a fact driven debate against some who seem to pluck absolute certainties out of the air.
I am now long in the tooth, once with golden ears and recall similar debates on the changeover from AM to FM and records to CDs. I was amazed when I built my Jason FM1 Tuner around 1959 by the sound quality where there were cries from many about the backward step it was and they would never transfer to FM as it was harsh and they liked the AM sound and refused to listen on FM. As we know, people got used to the higher fidelity sound.
In 1983 when CD players were first introduced, there was a similar experience. Many people liked records with their particular sound characteristic and refused to accept (and still do) that CD sound was a truer representation of the original. It was again a revelation to me as I had stopped buying records because of the very variable quality with all the attendant pops and crackles. I was accused of being too fussy and told I should just concentrate on the music.
Around 1990, I went to broadcasting house in London where there was a BBC Radio Exhibition and the Engineering Information was demonstrating how good FM was with a reference receiver and an A:B test of the studio feed to Wrotham and the reference receiver. It was not difficult to tell the off-air from the studio feed mainly by frequency response but more so by the signal to noise ratio. The first BBC Radio analogue transmissions from the Astra Satellite were a revelation in quality and signal to noise ratio far exceeding that of FM although they did get the channels reversed on the first day.
About 10 years ago I bought my first DAB receiver, a Technics ST-GT1000 and what a success it has been particularly for Radio 3 @ 192kbits/sec. Radio 4 is fine @ 128kbits/sec but would accept that Radios 1 and 2 are slightly better on satellite and Freeview. I completely accept the compromise of lower bit rates of some stations for the extended choice. As you pointed out Brian, Radio 3 HD can be listened via the internet and on my Squeezebox is another revelation. In addition having DAB in the car is a vast improvement in overall quality and choice. Traffic announcements work just fine as reverting to FM where DAB coverage is not complete.
Thanks again for your excellent informative site and comments.
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Saturday 16 April 2011 11:45AM
Cheltenham
Brian Slightly off topic but in relation to your answer to David; do you know why the Central West version of ITV1 HD on 10936V is encrypted?
Regards