That’s really crunching SBS HD and Viceland. Not good.
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ABC TV channels are off air tonight
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Seems to have been nationwide, and everything. Terrestrial, satellite, streaming, even Australia+
Back now.
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So that’s what that switch turns off
I better label it appropriately
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I’m surprised it didn’t cause more of a response on social media or even get a statement from ABC. Too late for their audience? Some reports suggested iView was down as well.
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Probably as close as we’ll get to a statement:
An ABC spokesperson told TV Tonight , “We got onto it as fast as we could – and apologise for any inconvenience to viewers.”
Link originally posted at ABC operations - #1510 by JasonF
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Will commercial TV Broadcasters like SCA put their radio stations on TV if they have at least one radio station like SBS, ABC.
Nope, that’s forbidden under the act.
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I get that there would be a restriction on out of radio licence area broadcasting, but would there be a restriction on say SCA putting their digital-only audio stations on Digital TV?
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no because SCA owns Hit and Triple M and also Regional TV Stations
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I’d have to keep digging in the legislation, but while I’d initially planned on typing that there was a specific rule against commercial TV operators having digital radio operations, so far I can only find the in effect rule of the pre-transition laws.
Essentially, a broadcaster used to be limited to 2 SD and 1 HDTV mutlichannel services, with all other services needing to fit within the one other allowed type - datacasting. The advertising channels for example - like TV4ME or things like the Program Guide channels - fell under the definition of datacasting.
Datacasting has the specific rule:
Each datacasting licence is subject to the condition that the licensee will not transmit matter that, if it were broadcast on a commercial radio broadcasting service, would be a designated radio program.
So the limitation was really just an in effect one - that because an extra datacast channel was previously the only means to add channels beyond the normal limits, and that radio was specifically disallowed, it meant radio wasn’t possible.
There seems to be nothing I’ve found so far that would prevent a radio channel, especially not if it was done as a video station (so even a static slide) other than rules around captioning, classifying and content requirements effecting it.
Maybe it’s in there somewhere, but the rules around TV were pretty gutted in a cleanup a few years back, large sections were repealed in their entirety.
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Bit rates on SBS this morning video + audio in Mbps - some very low numbers for especially the HD channels
| 3 | SBS ONE | 2.2 |
| 30 | ONE HD | 3.2 |
| 31 | VICELAND HD | 3.4 |
| 32 | Movies | 3.0 |
| 33 | Food | 3.0 |
| 34 | NITV | 3.6 |
| 35 | Watch | 1.4 |
ONE, Food and NITV are MPEG2 with the other MPEG 4.
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Very interesting. Those bitrates on the HD channels are way too low.
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Really need to make Food and NITV MPEG4. Don’t know why they didn’t do so with the launch of WorldWatch
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Also Food & NITV are higher bitrates than ONE, can’t explain the reasoning behind that, though it could’ve just been what was showing at the time, or are these numbers average bit rates?
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Could be a way of moving people to the HD channel?
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That was the average over one hour this morning. But it will still vary for example if sport is on the main channel I expect.
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Update - ran it for 3 hours this afternoon
| 3 | SBS ONE | 2.2 |
| 30 | ONE HD | 3.1 |
| 31 | VICELAND HD | 3.4 |
| 32 | Movies | 2.8 |
| 33 | Food | 2.8 |
| 34 | NITV | 2.4 |
| 35 | Watch | 1.4 |
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You can get away with low bitrates on channels that are mostly talking heads and not much motion. That said, anything below 4Mbps for 1080i in MPEG-4 is pushing it.
It’s interesting that Watch is 1.4 Mbps MPEG-4. I’ve had to cram an SD channel into that sort of bitrate before. It’s hard to make it look and sound good.
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