Be Excellent To Each Other

Hi!

After being starved of technology in Devon for whole week (we could get freeview perfectly through a fucking loop aerial, but the mobile phone signal was none existent) I have thrown myself wholeheartedly into geekiness this morning.

As you may (or may not) know, the Granada TV region is going through the Analogue switch off very soon. I found this website http://www.freeview.co.uk/freeview/Reso ... n-Freeview which seems to imply that HD will be on pretty much from the second of November. But the internet is strangely quiet about this. Does anyone know what sort of TV card will be required to get this working in Win7 Media Center [sic]? I don't fancy having to buy a decoder box just for the world cup, but if I have to... I will!

A Freeview HD card will be needed. Ho ho!

All I've heard (and I'm covered by Granada) is what while HD broadcasts are beginning in November, receivers aren't expected until first quarter 2010.

I think it's a case of it all being very last-minute, what with us having stupidly decided to throw DVB-T out and use something new (instead of sensibly, like continental Europe, continuing to use DVB-T but with the requisite MPEG4 encoder).

This change even breaks the almost-entirely-software Sony PlayTV, with its being little more than an aerial socket, USB socket and DVB-T demuxer.

O RLY? Sony sold that on the grounds it would work with Freeview HD. Refund-me-do all around then?

They said that back before the standard was suddenly ripped out from under them (and everyone else).

Annoyingly, Aussies get HD in MPEG2 over DVB-T. OK. BRB.

Shit. I guess that means my telly that theoretically has an HD-ready tuner is also not going to work. FFS. Windows Media Center with a USB HD stick it is, then.

Nah, no TVs (except a very recent Panasonic, I think) have Freeview HD tuners in them yet.

ISTR reading some very small print on the Sony website somewhere claiming the decoder would be able to cope with the format that theoretically digital HD TV would probably be using, but it wasn't a headline feature. Not a major concern, anyway, Cambridgeshire isn't getting Freeview HD until 2054 or something, because most of the six-toed inbreds round here still think those mysterious glowing picture boxes are the work of some kind of devilry.

Further digging has revealed a new standard by the name of DVB-T2. There are currently no tuners available, but the transmission will begin in a few weeks. There will be 3 (!) HD channels on Freeview, necessitating the removal of 2 of the BBC interactive streams. The BBC gets first dibs, leaving ITV, C4 and Five to fight for the other 2 slots.

Is that situation just temporary until the analogue switch off? Surely there'll be loads of bandwidth once they're gone, or are they in a completely different frequency range or something?

Nope. One HD channel takes as much as one analogue channel, or a whole multiplex of digital channels (anywhere from 4 to 6 depending on bandwidth)

So the grand vision for the future is to go back to handful of channels only they'll have more pixels for videophiles to wank over. Fucking brilliant.

Amen brother. Although, I'd prefer 10 excellent channels to 50+ shopping and repeats channels.

(must stop saying channels)

The slightly disappointing aspect of Freeview HD is that (and I might well be wrong here) originally, BBC, ITV and Channel 4 were due to "share" the one or two HD channels that Freeview HD was restricted to if the Government wouldn't hand over much of the analogue signal. As a telly geek, that could (but almost certainly wouldn't) have led to lots of brilliant radio-DJ-style handovers between the various continuity announcers. Now, in reality it just would have meant the HD channels each getting their own channel number that was on air for a few hours per day, but still.

Precisely. A shame in-vision continuity is a lost art.