Digital TV Technical Discussion

Quality of Imparja and Nine West. Really hope 9HD comes about after renegotiations in 6 months time.

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Is there going to be another swap??

Maybe the Nine West picture quality looks ever so slightly better than Imparja’s quality (something to do with the lack of coverup, perhaps?) but both look poor IMO.

I really doubt it. But Nine West’s affiliation agreement was for 2 years. 1st July 2018 is when it expires. I assume Imparja also renegotiated at the same time as I noticed a sudden surge of 9Now and 9 News app promos at the time.

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I thought Nine West was for 5 years like the SCA deal.

IMO, WIN should have stayed with Nine in TAS and WA.

Cabling issues inside Mediahub that weren’t ever rectified.

2 years according to The Australian article. Thanks @TV.Cynic

Maybe something like this?

images-3

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I kind of agree as we’d still see higher rating Nine content in HD and the full suite of multi-channels. But part of me thinks Bruce made his bed and should bloody well sleep in it.

I just wish SCA agreed to operate playout for all the JV Nine’s on a contract with WIN. Then we’d have 9HD at least.

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Maybe there wasn’t enough space on the VAST transponder to accommodate HD?

That’s definitely one of the factors. What about Mildura?

In JV situations, one network handles sales and the other network handles the technicial side of things - playout, engineering, etc. In WA and Mildura, Prime handles sales and WIN technical = no 9HD. In Tas, WIN handles sales and SCA handles technical = 9HD since day one.

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SCA does the playout for the Nine/SCA JV Ten Darwin but there is no Ten HD in Darwin, is there? Maybe it’s related to the individual agreements rather than who does the playout?

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maybe down the track could sca handle two stations like 9 and 10?

I hope we see 9LIFE return at least…

Don’t know why PQ via mediahub for SD channels is so low. WIN SA has GEM in Crystal Clear High Definition™, wasted on 1950’s black and white movies. Same with WIN and 7MATE.

The irony is, these SD channels only look clear when watching via an old CRT TV

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Cabling issues inside Mediahub that weren’t ever rectified.

Something to do with a damaged fibre optic cable too.

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Not on 7MHz DVB-T with MPEG-2 SD.

You can do essentially anything you like on a multiplex depending on just how degraded of a video the viewer will accept - 9 and 10 programming on the same one would not be impossible, especially if done without ad channels.

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I’d originally done this with just the SD channels, but because it demonstrates my point better, put in the HD channels as well.

In a quick sample I took at the time of posting - 9HD was averaging 3.65Mbps, and Extra at 1.8Mbps, so these aren’t crazily outside the range that channels can run at - and if you’re comparing with a service provided by WIN, the overall picture quality will be vastly improved…

One sacrifice is audio, most stations are 192kbps true stereo MP2, and some are 256kbps . SBS’s radio stations run stereo 128kbps MP2 audio, and it’s probably a bit too noticably compressed, joint stereo improves audio at the expense of stereo separation.

The PAD column is just an average of the amount of extra data needed to support the channel - the portion of the EPG data, captioning, and other extra data needed to tell the receiver what to do.

It’s not to say I’d want to receive channels like this - and it would look awful if more than one channel was showing sport at a time - but if it’s the only way to deliver a Ten affiliate into regional areas (as I suggest the question was hinting at), it’s not impossible.

If you be more realistic and drop the attempt to include HD, you could get SD to more respectful bitrates.
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One general comment is that stations need to be more aggressive on reducing the bitrates of stations with HD simulcasts - you either care about picture quality and will watch HD, or you don’t care so the bits are wasted.

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With the news that Seven West Media is currently in negotiations for a 2nd horse racing channel on free to air TV (covering the NSW/Queensland races, with RACING.COM continuing to focus on Victoria/SA races), how do we think Seven is going to fit this new channel on the multiplex?

Could we see 7Flix become an MPEG4 channel or do we think they’ll simply reduce the bitrate of the HD channel (which IMO, already looks a bit softer than the MPEG4 HD channels from other networks) and call it a day?

Defiantly, or make the new channel HEVC??

???

High Efficiency Video Coding. Also known as H.265.

I’m not even sure if that has been ratified as a standard by ACMA for DVB-T use in Australia. Anyone know? TV tuner compatibility would be very low, a lot lower than the current H.264 that is being used for the HD channels now.

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