All posts by Briantist
Below are all of Briantist's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
KMJ,Derby: Thanks. As I have just written above, the costs of splitting a TV region outweigh the costs of leaving the infrastructure alone and have a few extra low bitrate radio services.
From what I recall, the dual service on the Ridge Hill transmitter is a full replication of PSB2 for the West region.
It's not an otherwise empty multiplex with just ITV for the West in it.
I don't think the Freeview EPG system could cope with a version of BBC One being on the wrong multiplex.
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Anthony: Thanks.
As I've been saying, it's not technically possible to split the Freeview BBC regions without causing excessive expense.
Even when the BBC was well-funded I don't think that the cost of new equipment - not to mention the testing and possible consumer problems - would really justify breaking up the regions.
Remember that the services are multiplexes: they are high-speed flows of bits which contain lots of different services: video streams, audio streams, EPG data, MHEG-5 services all chopped up into fixed sized transport packet of 188 bytes (4 header, 184 payload).
It actually quite a complex task to break-out from these: and very expensive. That's why all the transmitter sites just do a bit-for-bit relay of the services.
You may recall the the Freeview transmitter name field used to often list the wrong name (all of Wales got "Wenvoe") in the past.
If you're interested in the technial side: see MPEG-2 Transmission .
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Anthony: Two additional thoughts.
There are still some areas that don't have BBC Local Radio (or indeed any local radio) on DAB. Derby is a good example. This plan would help these stations.
Another possible place for the services would be on the LocalTV "Comux" such as the three ones at Winter Hill However, these are designed to cover cities (ie, Liverpool or Manchester), not counties (Merseyside, GM)
Winter Hill (Bolton, England) transmitter | ukfree.tv - 11 years of independent, free digital TV advice
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PJH: That's true, which you might expect from UTV and their UTV Radio radio "empire" that includes Talksport: UTV Radio - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I can't see ITV wishing to provide for ILR stations on PSB2, however.
The Beeb can afford to do this kind of thing to complement it's TV services: for ITV they would be competitors.
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Paul: Just a guess, but Film 4 changed from Multiplex COM6 to PSB2 in the last year.
It's quite possible that your recorder hasn't quite understood this properly.
I would totally erase your EPG (but not your recordings, of course).
You can do it following the instrucitons for your box, or do this -https://ukfree.tv/helpme.php?faqid=1107051116 - if you can't find another way to do it.
This sorts out 99% of problems as you describe.
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Peter Webber: The local TV service is for Norwich, it is not directed at Lowestoft. You are outside the reception area.
Look at the LNRH coverage on Tacolneston (Norfolk, England) transmitter | ukfree.tv - 11 years of independent, free digital TV advice .
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Anthony: If and when the BBC local radio services start, I would expect that they will be provided to the "editorial areas". Any overlap will be down to the larger TV regions.
Compare Maps | ukfree.tv - 11 years of independent, free digital TV advice and Details of BBC Radio Lancashire (FM) analogue radio station | ukfree.tv - 11 years of independent, free digital TV advice .
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Anthony: I've covered this at Whatever happened to Central South, Meridian Newbury and ITV Thames Valley? | About UK Free TV | ukfree.tv - 11 years of independent, free digital TV advice
The extra ITV service from Ridge Hill, which is provided to the south, east and southeast of the mast is due to the removal of the ITV Central South/ITV Thames Valley region.
The BBC still have smaller regions (BBC Oxford) and therefore they are happy for Cheltenham and Gloucester to be remain editorially part of BBC West Midlands.
The problem for the ITV network was that Cheltenham and Gloucester had been part of Central South, and then got put back into ITV Central West when ITV Thames Valley was created and then forgotten about when ITV Thames Valley was merged into the massive ITV Meridian region (which goes all the way to Dover).
The ITV Meridian service is covered by BBC Oxford, BBC South(ampton) and BBC South East (from Tunbridge Wells).
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PeterD: In the first instance, can you have a look at Single frequency interference | Freeview Interference | ukfree.tv - 11 years of independent, free digital TV advice ?
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Sunday 2 March 2014 5:04PM
Don: Yes, I've been pondering my maps of BBC regions at BBC nations and regions - overview map | ukfree.tv - 11 years of independent, free digital TV advice and I agree: BBC Radio Essex will need to be on the PSB1 London multiplex.
As I said in the article above, it's not possible to split the regions without excessive cost, so BBC Essex would be broadcast to Crystal Palace (and relays), as well as Sudbury and Tacolneston and their respective relays.
Just to explain a bit more.
Each "region" on Freeview requires a piece of very expensive - and critical - bit of computer equipment: the multiplexer.
Into the multiplexes you pour high-bitrate uncompressed video and audio streams, and out the other end comes a constant flow of bits containing the "lossy" compressed services encoded for broadcast.
The whole ability of a broadcaster to provide N services with 100% (not 99.9999%) reliability depends on this piece of equipment.
It's easy for the "commercial" multiplexes: they have the same set of services nationwide. That's one box per multiplex, located in one place.
For the PSB multiplexes, because of the BBC regions (on PSB1), ITV/STV/C4/C5 regions on PSB2, and the mix of regions on PSB3, each and every region requires a multiplier.
So, it's bad enough, for the BBC (or their contracted service provided Arqiva) to support 18 regions for PSB1. At least when the bits are out of the door (so to speak) they just get relayed on, bit-for-bit.
To be able to split, say, BBC East into a Sudbury and a separate Tacolneston service would double the costs, double the monitoring and support costs.
Or... just live a bit of overlap for the local radio services and the costs of adding in a few local radio station is just a bit of reconfiguration of existing equipment.
This is quite interesting: http://downloads.bbc.co.u….pdf