All posts by Briantist
Below are all of Briantist's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
Aerialman: They have move a few allocations around to ensure that Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland get some coverage, which has bumped The Wrekin off in England.
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sharealam: As per the older article, Channel 4 are very keen to have some of the slots.
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ian from notts: I thought Film4 HD was "exclusive" to Virgin Media and not on Sky?
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Aerialman: Much better news is that in 2019 all the 700MHz service will be moved down into the 600MHz band. That's going to be a lot of work for anyone who had a grouped aerial (other than group A perhaps).
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ian from notts: According to their website, "Channel 15 on Freeview Channel 315 on Sky Channel 428 on Virgin Media Channel 300 on Freesat".
However, there is a press release saying Film4 HD will be coming to Sky ... Sky customers to enjoy comprehensive access to the best of Channel 4 - Channel 4 - Info - Press
However, there are no listings for Film 4 HD on satellite I can find...
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Brian Wright: It is certainly interesting that Sky have been allowed to grab HD versions of channels on an "exclusive" basis, using their enormous marketing budget to gain exclusive deals.
It is certainly strange that channels from public service broadcasters (ITV2, ITV3, ITV4 etc) are not free-to-air on satellite when their SD versions are!
I suspect that Ofcom (or the Competition Commission) took the view that "HD" was too small a market for them to worry about.
Now that we might see the need to move to DVB-T2/MPEG-4 in 2019 to clear the 700MHz band for broadband, it is possible that "Sky HD exclusive" deals will happen less...
You have to realise that HD is good for Sky, in that it creates a "premium" product (like Tesco Finest) for their top-level customers (Freesat from Sky being Tesco Basics).
HD is just a technology upgrade, which needs a little more bandwidth (but less than three analogue channels) and some additional production values.
The way Sky HD is sold, it is a "differentiator product" for customers who wish to have something better than the plebs, so they can show their wealth off by making big profits for Sky.
It's not like Sky are the only company to do this...
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Rog : In the 1950s there was such limited bandwidth, that there was very little ability for competition.
Today, there are huge numbers of websites, newspapers (free and paid for), commercial radio stations that it is very hard for a media company to dominate.
Ofcom has done quite a lot of work on measuring media plurality for the Leveson Enquiry.
You can read their report here - http://stakeholders.ofcom….pdf .
So, to answer your point, the "firm ruling" has not been forgotten, but the media landscape has change and the laws have changed to match.
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... the intro mentions:
Plurality matters because it makes an important contribution to a well-functioning
democratic society through informed citizens and preventing too much influence
over the political process.
We have defined plurality as a) ensuring there is a diversity of viewpoints
available and consumed across and within media enterprises and b) preventing
any one media owner or voice having too much influence over public opinion and
the political agenda.
Plurality needs to be considered both within organisations (i.e. internal plurality)
and between organisations (i.e. external plurality).
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SamSim: Why not just pull the Sky viewing card from your box and look for yourself?
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Wednesday 6 February 2013 10:25AM
Services have been moved to Dundee Menzieshill (Dundee City, Scotland) digital TV transmitter | ukfree.tv - 10 years of independent, free digital TV advice