According to this document, SBS at the Wyrrabalong translator is fed off the satellite feed, whilst at the Bouddi & Gosford translators, it’s fed by an off-air signal from Artarmon.
This sort of mirrored the old analogue services, where SBS in Bouddi & Gosford was fed off-air from Artarmon, whilst its Wyrrabalong translator service was fed off-air from Mt Sugarloaf.
I’m not sure that’s correct, I’ll have a look when I’m next at Forresters Beach late next week.
The only receive antenna pointed towards Mt Sugarloaf is the old one for WIN Ten, which I think are now fed via DDA microwave link or Telstra microwave link.
SBS I’m pretty sure isn’t fed off the satellite, because last year when someone cut the cable on the satellite dish, they lost ABC but not SBS at Forresters Beach.
Thanks! Interesting that SBS uses different input feeds when both North and South are sited at Bald Knob.
Therein lies some of SBS’ pain: years ago they just had one program nationally which was time-delayed as per each timezone and daylight savings. Eventually they started running TVC’s but could only do national adverts. When their playout system at Artarmon became due for upgrade their business case was if they had new playout they could have a program for each capital city market and do local adverts as well which could increase the $$$ they made. To do the upgrade they had to borrow money from Treasury and the extra advertising $$$$ were going to make the repayments - except it never worked out that way. Very few local ads were ever sold and they went in the hole.
Next iteration was outsource to a playout provider, which they did but their provider went broke so SBS had to kick $150k in at short notice or go dark(outsource does not always equal good). Eventually Telstra bought that business and that’s were SBS playout is at today.
Multiple program sources at places like Bald Knob and perhaps Forrester’s would date back to that era. Metro market vs regional.
And they have separate ad feeds for metro and regionals in each state too - I’ve seen this at home with SBS Sydney and SBS NSW feeds.
ABC off air across the east coast on main channel. News was running - sound cut out first then slide.
Returned at 12:26 with an old Media Watch repeat. Break lasted 10 minutes.
12:42 - Midday News just came back on air but from Parliament House studio acknowledging still having technical problems.
Adelaide has also switched to AEST program feed.
Last night (Saturday June 3) ABC Northbourne 7pm provided both ACT and NSW weather. Did ABC NSW take ACT 7pm bulletin as no mention was made at the start of the bulletin?
Looking at iview for last night’s ABC News NSW bulletin, ABC NSW did indeed took the 7pm ACT bulletin.
A couple of weeks ago we were discussing SBS TV on the NSW Central Coast & the question was posed where does the feed come from, with a document @TV-Expert posted indicating Gosford came from Sydney, but Wyrrabalong/Forresters Beach came from Newcastle.
Well I was on site at both places today & checked up, & can confirm what I said before was correct, ABC at all 3 Central Coast sites are fed off the satellite, SBS at all 3 sites are fed off air from Sydney (Artarmon).
The only channel at Wyrrabalong to be fed from Newcastle (Mt Sugarloaf) off air is WIN Ten, 7 Regional is fed from Microwave link as is NBN/Nine Northern NSW & SBS is connected to the TX Australia VHF antenna & fed off air from Sydney (Artarmon) along with 7, 9 & 10 Metro networks.
SBS at some point in the past (probably analogue days) was fed via a DDA Microwave link, so Wyrrabalong could’ve had a different feed to the other 2 Central Coast sites, but as far as I know, for at least the last 6 years I’ve worked at TX Australia, SBS at all 3 sites have a Sydney feed, not a Newcastle/NSW feed.
Thanks for confirming!
Speaking of WIN 10 on the Central Coast, have you heard anything more about them extending their coverage to the Gosford / Rumbalara Trig and Bouddi sites?
It was all planned to be done months ago, then WIN closed up BTS & all the techs moved to BAI, at about that time it was pretty much scrapped, it may happen at some time in the future, but it’s all gone quiet so probably won’t happen.
So same fate as SC Ten?? 
Does 7 Regional use the same microwave repeater station at Mangrove / Somersby as NBN does?
From ACMA it goes Mt Sugarloaf - Mangrove / Somersby and then feeds at least NBN tv to Gosford, Bouddi, and Foresters Beach translators.
On a seperate note how does Media Hub send the play out to ABC, WIN and Prime?
I could not see any microwave links on ACMA, unless it is all done over fibre links, or upconverted to satellite?
MediaHub was put at Ingleburn because of its proximity to the inter capital fibre runs down the Hume. ABC and SBS regional transmission sites mostly get their program off Satellite (usually Optus) but MediaHub likely would only have TVRO on their roof to monitor off air. Uplinking is probably done by Optus at Belrose. Telstra would also be able to uplink for Intelsat from Oxford Falls. There is also a contract satellite facility at Everleigh.
Playout providers produce an ASI feed for each commercial market and the most common way it gets to the transmission sites is via fibre, often Telstra DVN. WIN would also use their DDA microwave to a lot of sites but their headend may not even be at MediaHub. I have also seen Optus fibre to a Launceston studio and then microwave up to Mt Barrow.
Normally the commercial broadcaster has to get ASI to the Pie rack next to the transmitter and its often cheapest is best, so there is no real standardisation. You do see a lot of Telstra DVN DS3 interfaces but not everywhere.
I could see the Digital Distributors microwave links from the Win Studios at Mt St Thomas to Knights Hill, but nothing from Media Hub linking back to WIN, same with Prime and the ABC.
Nine has microwave links between North Sydney, TXA Artarmon and their play out centre at Frenchs Forest.
No, 7 Regional used to use a DDA microwave link at all 3 Central Coast Sites, not exactly sure where it went?
NBN TV use a TPG microwave link (old Soul Pattinson Telecoms), both the dishes at Wyrrabalong point in different directions, one goes towards Mt Elliot I think?
7 Regional have recently installed Telstra Broadcast DVN2 links to all 3 sites, I’m not sure about Bouddi, but it was too expensive/dificult for Telstra to install fibre to Gosford & Wyrrabalong so they installed a microwave link instead, the Wyrrabalong site link comes from the Long Jetty Telephone exchange tower, Gosford might go to the Telstra microwave link site at Mt Elliot, but it may go up to Somersby?
The old DDA network is about to be decommissioned I’m hearing, it went along with BTS when WIN decided it no longer wanted to do that work, the BTS & DDA techs went to BAI, BTS ceased to exist, but DDA is still operational, for now.
They’re all backup paths, Nine has Fibre to & from NPC & North Sydney, from NPC to the transmission sites is Fibre & Satellite, Nine have multiple fibre feeds taking different diverse paths into Artarmon from NPC & North Sydney.
Do you think eventually the Sydney translators / Central Coast Sydney translators will switch from off air to fibre feeds?
Has been discussed, even planned, but it’s very expensive to run fibre feeds, especially considering most sites have no fibre anywhere near them & they have to be of broadcast reliability with pretty much 99.9% up time & immediate repair response should a fault develop, as well as ongoing costs.
Central Coast off air seems to be pretty reliable anyway from what I’ve experienced, i think there was only really that one outage a few years back when extreme ducting from Taree (I think) wiped it out…
I’ve been hearing that since I was in Wollongong! Glad to hear it’s still kicking…
It cost me $15,673 to get a single mode fibre run to my business - a 5km air gap…
