All posts by Mike Dimmick
Below are all of Mike Dimmick's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
fab: Channels can offer as many audio soundtracks as they want. Usually there are two: the regular soundtrack and audio description. TVs that understand audio description properly won't show the audio description as a separate soundtrack, as it's supposed to be mixed in with the regular soundtrack to help people with sight problems understand what's going on.
The soundtracks are otherwise labelled with the language that the soundtrack is in. The code comes from ISO 639-2. This might be 'eng' for English or, for BBC Alba, 'gla' for Gaelic. 'und' means 'undetermined', which is appropriate for crowd noise only!
I suspect the reason for the 'und' stream could be so that the service can ask the TV to add the specific commentary on top of the crowd noise, and save some bandwidth. The BBC still try to remain compatible with some equipment that doesn't support MHEG interactive content, so they don't apply this to 'proper' channels, only to 301, which is normally accessed through the 'Red Button' MHEG program.
Do be careful selecting this, as some equipment remembers your last language choice - either for that channel or for all channels!
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KAREN SMITH: Make sure you do a full reset, deleting all the existing channel information. Many boxes/TVs have two stores for channels, a temporary one and a permanent one, with the temporary store cleared when you turn the power off. If scanned for channels, some of them don't overwrite channels they already have in the permanent store, putting them only in the temporary store. You may have one of these.
To do a full reset, look for an option called something like 'First Time Installation', 'Full Retune', 'Factory Reset', 'Default Setting', or 'Virgin Mode'. It may be on a System or Software Update menu rather than on the tuning menu. Some manufacturers have provided specific information for the model at TV Re-tune .
If it still doesn't store the channels properly, it may have a limited amount of permanent channel memory. In this case, do the full reset with the aerial unplugged. When it completes the scan, do a manual retune and tune in C46 first, then C24, C27, C42 and C39. You can ignore C45 as it only carries duplicates of some BBC services, and Sky Sports 1 and 2 which are only viewable on BT Vision or Top-Up TV equipment with a suitable viewing card.
Next Wednesday, you should repeat the same process.
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Marc: This is a self-help website. To contact the broadcaster - BSkyB - see Broadcaster complaints details | ukfree.tv - independent free digital TV advice .
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Sue: No problems are reported for the Thetford or Tacolneston transmitters. (See the BBC Reception Test link next to your post.) My best guess is that the power to the distribution amplifier in your building has failed. Check with other residents to see if they're having problems.
In either case, contact your landlord or agent. See PARAS - Professional Aerial Riggers Against The Sharks for thoughts on who to talk to.
You could also talk to them about getting the aerial changed to receive from Tacolneston instead of Thetford, though they may want to charge for this and all the users would have to agree to it: all users will have to retune after it's done.
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Zoe: See Compare TV | ukfree.tv - independent free digital TV advice for a comparison of the channels available on Sky's free service and the Freesat-branded service.
To watch HD channels you need an HD receiver as well as an HD TV. BBC One, BBC HD, ITV1 HD and 4hd are free-to-air on Sky and Freesat. Channel 5 HD is still encrypted but the free/expired viewing card is sufficient. Sky's HD fee is for viewing the subscription channels in HD.
If you don't already have an HD receiver it may be cheaper to get a Freesat box than to pay Sky for an upgrade (you have to sign up for 12 months HD pack to get the free box, or the standalone free offer is £175).
If you're not that bothered about HD you can still connect your existing Sky box to the new TV, assuming it still has some SCART inputs. Manufacturers have started reducing the number of SCART connections as they take up a lot of space compared to the HDMI connectors, you may find that new models only have one SCART input.
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Ross: The proposal on the table at an international level is to make broadcasting and mobile data 'co-primary' from 2015. That would mean countries would be allowed to launch mobile phone services in 700-800MHz as long as they co-ordinated it with each other and with broadcasting.
Ofcom's starting position does seem to be to reduce the broadcasting spectrum still further. Their consultation Ofcom | Securing long term benefits from scarce spectrum resources - A strategy for UHF bands IV and V has recently closed, but they haven't published any responses yet.
Co-primary does pose a problem because TV multiplexes use 8 MHz bandwidth, while LTE uses multiples of 1.4, 3, 5, 10, 15 or 20 MHz, ideally 20 MHz for maximum speeds. Within the band defined - it probably would be a new band as the US-defined bands are weird and have gaps! - the spacing between downlink and uplink channels is supposed to be fixed. (The US bands can only support 5 or 10 MHz because of this.) That would probably make fitting LTE in around TV transmissions effectively impossible.
The specifications do allow for Time-Division Duplexing, where signals from phone to tower use the same frequency as from tower to phone, rather than Frequency-Division Duplexing, where the phone-to-tower transmissions are on different frequencies from tower-to-phone. At present, though, the TDD bands are all above 1800MHz, and there aren't many deployments. All existing UK phone networks use FDD.
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Gerard Hunt: There are two possibilities. Either there is stale information stored in the TV's permanent channel memory, and it's not overwriting this when you retune, or it just doesn't have enough permanent memory for all the channels.
Do a 'first time installation'/'factory reset' (can also be called full reset, full retune, default setting, virgin mode, and it might be on the software update or settings menu rather than the tuning menu) to clear out the entire channel list and retune from scratch.
If you still have the problem, it's probably the second situation. For TVs with limited memory, one approach is to manually tune the multiplex with the most unwanted services, then delete the services you don't want. Repeat with the next largest multiplex, and so on.
There are specific guides for (at least some) Philips equipment at TV Re-tune productmanuals
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Nick: For the BBC, it is the list of UK Public Services defined in the BBC's Agreement BBC - BBC Trust - Charter and Agreement , with any changes made by the BBC Trust since that was last revised. Basically, anything with 'BBC' in the name, plus CBeebies. On top of that you have the Qualifying Services: ITV1/STV/UTV, Channel 4/S4C, Channel 5, and the public service teletext provider (position vacant). That's it.
The +1 services are not counted as Qualifying Services, they are licensed as general TV services.
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Kev Mitchell: There will be a fifth slot available on the BBC B multiplex after the Olympics have finished (while the Olympics are on, this will be 301 HD, the HD version of the first additional Olympics video stream - there is already a placeholder on channel number 304). There are suggestions that Channel 4 might have leased the space to run some E4 HD/Film4 HD service, as C4 changed the names of the service licences fairly recently to mention '(HD)'. Nothing has been published, though.
After that, additional capacity can only come from launching new multiplexes, or converting existing ones to higher-capacity modes. New multiplexes are now unlikely until 2015 or later, because Ofcom are looking into releasing C49-C60 for mobile phone/broadband, following a decision at the last World Radiocommunications Congress to put that on the agenda for the next WRC. There's space available, and costs and template contracts had been drawn up, but releasing those frequencies means that the space available for new multiplexes would most likely have to be used for existing services instead.
Converting existing multiplexes is also fairly unlikely in the short term, as the existing services would then become unavailable to anyone without a Freeview HD box. It will depend on how quickly people take up Freeview HD, or another TV service that carries the same channels.
It's technically possible to put an HD channel on an unconverted multiplex, but it would occupy about one-third of the capacity, meaning four SD channels would have to close (at least - four slots would have to be freed up, and many slots are time-shared for different parts of the day) so it's pretty unlikely to happen.
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Tuesday 19 June 2012 3:10PM
Nick, Mark Fletcher: No, it's up to UKTV to decide to forego Sky's subscription payments and broadcast free-to-air instead, relying only on ad revenue. Dave isn't available on Sky's free service either - it's encrypted and requires a subscription.
After going free-to-air, Dave could then join Freesat's service. It reportedly costs £30,000 a year to be listed in Freesat's EPG: JML fails in Freesat EPG listing appeal - Tech News - Digital Spy . This would be on top of Sky's charges to appear in *their* EPG. (Sky charge £21,000 per channel, but there's also a Platform Contribution Charge based on viewing figures: Dave is charged £520,910 at present though prices are changing in July).
UKTV may review their position as their contracts with Sky come up for renewal, and as Freesat grows.
Free-to-air channels are still viewable from Sky and Freesat boxes even if the channel provider doesn't pay to have them appear in the EPGs, but you have to go to Other Channels and tune them in manually. For the majority of people, that means they're invisible.