Digital TV Technical Discussion

WIN and Prime both use the Digitally Distribution Australia microwave network (owned by WIN) to distribute their signal across most of Eastern Australia. Belrose is connected to this network.
I wonder if this outage affected any other WIN or Prime services.

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Currently

Meanwhile Bruce is on the other end of a phone somewhere, demanding the screening of more scenic shots saying this television channel is currently not available.

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I’m sure you’re looking forward to Daylight saving finishing Sunday morning. I can recall a couple of years in the past when this caused the broadcast EPG to out by one hour on some networks. So if you rely on a PVR that gets its program info off the EPG it might be worth checking the program guide before Sunday night comes around and you’ve missed the latest insult on MKR or other favourite show.

New DVB service:

LCN 36 Service name

SBS Arabic 24

Also a new name for SBS HD, it’s now SBS ONE HD.

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Why would they bother doing that when they haven’t had SBS One for years?

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SBS Arabic 24 has been one of their DAB+ stations for a while now and was planning to officially launch via Digital TV on Monday, my guess is that they’ve either started early or have done a “soft launch” of the service through that platform.

SBS ONE became SBS in July 2015, so not that long ago! :slight_smile:

Unless SBS knows something about the On-Air Branding of their main channel that we currently don’t (not likely IMO), I personally would’ve thought it would make more sense to drop the “ONE” from the LCN name of the SD channel rather than adding it to the LCN name of the HD channel.

Please help someone who is not well versed in the technical side of broadcasting.

Metro, regional and remote services use alternating LCN sets primarily for signal overlap. However, what happens in regional markets when signals overlap, both for localised transmitter feeds on a single station, and for overlapping regional markets (e.g. NNSW and SNSW).

Wouldn’t they all just go in the 350 and up range?

The channels with the lowest signal go to LCN 350-

Yes except for ABC & SBS which use the same LCNs.
As you’ve suggested there are overlap areas including with repeater transmitters, and even if the rebroadcasts are on different channels they’ll send the same LCNs.
As mentioned in one of the threads recently (and early on in the Long Distance Television thread) when there are multiple channels with the same LCNs tuners prefer the stronger signal and store the others in high-numbered, 350+, LCNs

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The 350+ range should however only be used when there is a real difference between the two stations with the same LCN ie different service areas. If multiple signals are received but all from the same broadcaster in the same region, only the strongest should be listed.

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So would that mean that if the metro stations merge with their regional affiliates in the future, based on this operation (with no affiliate owners), would they be able to use the same LCNs like ABC and SBS do nationwide?

When I was in Hobart for a holiday last month, the TV at the hotel room I stayed in had 9Gem on LCN 50, 9Go! on LCN 55 & 9HD on LCN 800. As for the WIN channels, WIN SD was at LCN 81, One at LCN 83 & 88, WIN Network (the placeholder that lists all the WIN channels) at LCN 84, TVSN at LCN 85 & Gold at LCN 86.
The only Nine Tas (TDT) & WIN channels that were in the correct LCNs were Nine SD (LCN 5 & 51), WIN SD (LCN 8), WIN HD (LCN 80) & Eleven (LCN 82). At least that same TV had ABC HD included & at the correct LCN (20). :slight_smile:

Is this how you’d like it to work?
Because it doesn’t do that.

350+ is an automatic technical measure in the tuner; tuners have no idea if the content is the same or not; LCNs (and the channel titles) are meant to distinguish that, and overall - in percentage terms - areas with multiple signals of good strength should be quite low.
But any automated system can only do a best-guess based on logic programmed into it, and sometimes it won’t be what a viewer wants.

When the programme content is the same it doesn’t matter which gets relegated to 350+, and that’s usually the case (e.g. for repeaters), and for ABC & SBS (apart from the state border areas), but obviously there are times/areas where it does matter, such as where news programmes are different, for example in the Gold Coast where all three commercial neworks’ main channels have such differences (e.g. NBN9’s NBN News vs QTQ9’s 9News Gold Coast & Brisbane).

BTW when I was in Hobart earlier this year the hotel’s TV had stored plenty of duplicates in 350+ and they appeared to have as strong signals.

The operative word is “should” - that is the Australian standard, some tuners don’t fully comply.

However, the tuner does know if the transmissions are the same as each has a network identifier. If the ID is the same, so are the transmissions. For example the QTQ relay on the Gold Coast has a different ID to the Brisbane transmitter but the Sunshine Coast relay has the same ID because all the programming is identical. ABC and SBS have different network identifiers for their metro and regional broadcasts so in fringe metro areas the regional station will be stored in the 350 range.

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Yes, both my Samsung TV and Panasonic PVR will only store the strongest signal of that LCN Channel name.

But my Topfield STB will store multiple transmssions of that LCN Chnnael name into the 1000+ channel range.

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Excuse me while I call One Nation for comment…

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I’d be interested to know what their reply was!

A "Please Explain " perhaps?

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