And they were right - the economics didn’t add up - which is why digital surged once the original HD simulcasts were replaced with multichannels. The bulk of people care about content and more channels, not picture quality.
It took the best part of a decade for HD simulcasts of main channels to return (and they still aren’t back in some regions) - with it only happening because it became possible to do it and an extra SD channel in the same space as a single HD multi channel used to take - plus the fact people kept watching the former HD multichannels once they were downgraded to SD only.
The majority of people watch TV for content regardless of picture quality. Using up all of their capacity on a 4K simulcast doesn’t add value for a commercial network.
I’d love to know what portion of Foxtel subscribers pay the $10 for HD. Or how many people with 4K screens pay the premium to Netflix to get 4K streams.
Did some of these smaller, non-aggregated regional/remote markets (that may have been lucky to even have Digital TV let alone HD/multichannels) even have HD main channels from their commercial broadcasters before the circa 2009-11 multichannel explosion?
From memory, Southern Cross GTS/BKN weren’t running any HD services back in 2009 (before the launch of a Channel Nine service, let alone additional multichannels) when I had a short stay in Broken Hill accommodation which had a TV on the wall with an integrated HD tuner.
My hypothetical was for a DVB-T2 only environment, with DVB-T turned off. Alternatively, for those who don’t care about video quality and don’t watch to upgrade, keep a single DVB-T mux with about 10 SD channels running at 2mbps SD MPEG-2.
I don’t see a scenario where the networks retain a full multiplex.
The DVB-T2 transition will be driven strongly by a digital dividend in the 600MHz band for 5G services. Maximising the value means minimising the spectrum used on over the air TV.
I’d make the argument that given TV networks have lobbied themselves into not paying significant license fees, they have no rights to spectrum handouts. Selling it off for billions, and getting people faster internet to access the TV services they actually want to watch trumps any argument that legacy broadcasters will make.
If we assume we go down from 5 muxes to 3 and 30 Mbps per mux, that gives 18 Mbps per network or 4.5 Mbps per station (assuming 4 stations per network). That would essentially allow for every channel to be in reasonable quality HD.
It’ll be very interesting to see if Seven Queensland finally broadcasts their main channel in MPEG4 HD (7mate is still MPEG2 HD up there…I think) whenever the new playout arrangements eventually begin.
For the first time a Grand Slam tennis tournament is being shown anywhere in the world in 4K. BBC is showing all centre court matches at Wimbledon in 4K via iPlayer as part of a new BBC trial.
For the people who want a little bit more Testfotage and try out their gear a little more, the EBU is currently doing some test broadcasts at the European Athletics Championships in Berlin in 4K 100fps HDR and somebody over at tvforum.uk was nice enough to record a sample from the test feed: https://tvforum.uk/forums/post1126608#post-1126608
Foxtel’s new 4K TV broadcast was announced just two months after Broadcast Australia and FreeTV completed 4K broadcast tests in Sydney.
While the trials were successful, FreeTV chief executive Bridget Fair said engineers were still analysing data collected from the trials and it could be years before 4K broadcasts were adopted by free-to-air providers.
She said a transition to 4K broadcasts should be significantly shorter than the 12 years to move from analog to digital TV, however.
“It’s all very early days,” she said. “There’s a lot of moving parts before we know what the time frames are and what the pathway is.”
Hopefully Foxtel’s 4K channel will put the end to the disclaimer in Harvey Norman catalogue and newspaper ads which says “ultra high definition not broadcast on free-to-air or pay television in Australia”.
MPEG-DASH is a streaming technology used for Web Streams, the 4K channel will be distributed via satellite (the Article explicitly mentions that it will be available to satellite customers).
VP9 is a Codec developed by Google expecially for Youtube and MPEG-DASH, so it is not really suitable for a DVB broadcast.
There is no MPEG4 HEVC. It’s either MPEG4 AVC (currently used for most HD channels and also known as H.264) or HEVC (also known as H.265 or MPEG-H Part2, currently used for various 4K channels around th world).
