Regional/regional overlaps exist already and they are currently handled in a certain way (one of the channels allocated to 350, 351, etc.) so this doesn’t need to change.
Regional/capital cities overlaps exist already and are handled by the regional commercial channel being on a different number than the equivalent state capital. This does not need to change.
The only thing that would change is that regional commercial stations that don’t overlap with state capital commercial channels would have the same number as the respective state capital channel.
The main reason for this change is that it doesn’t quite make sense to have channel 7 on 6, 9 on 8 and 10 on 5 etc. unless there is a good reason (e.g. most people in a given market already receive channels with those numbers). There are historical reasons but with the change to many regional channel names, it doesn’t quite make sense any more for many of them.
The reason, I thought, was so the regional networks aren’t relegated to the 35x range in cases of overlap. They remain in a prominent position on people’s EPG’s so they’re not forgotten.
It also made sense since the regional stations were only affiliates of the metros and the affiliation was not fixed. With Seven owning Prime and Nine owning NBN, those areas could change to 7x and 9x respectively. However, there’s nothing to prevent another affiliation change for the other networks.
Where say a network in an overlap area owns both the metro and regional markets, what is to stop them running the same LCN set of numbers in both? This already applies to both ABC and SBS, so what makes the commercials different? Programming and branding is very much identical now, it makes no sense to keep a separate set regional LCNs running.
And when will all networks finally move their main channel HD services to the single digit main LCNs with 10 obviously for 10HD? Surely there can not be that many who still watch main channel SD anymore, as those services are so degraded now PQ wise it is not funny.
No regional news service on 7 Newcastle, 7 Wollongong, 7 Bendigo, 7 Ballarat, 7 Traralgon.
And over time, the regional news services will all be gone anyway, reduced to updates at best, if at all. Don’t say that won’t happen, remember how the commercials were able to lobby and succeed in abolishing Childrens content obligations, over time, the same will happen for former regional news content obligations.
My great grandmother watches 7SD and 10SD, even know she is watching a TV with MPEG-4 HD. Also sometimes I have to change the SD channel to the HD channel when I am with family. My aunts both have MPEG-2 SD TVs so they might have to get them fixed however.
Was playing around this evening and was comparing the quality of the Tennis between the Direct Feed from STS 2 on Intelsat19 and 9HD Toowoomba FTAfrom Uplink to FTA broadcast.
The 1080i H.264 Sat Feed was flawless with no pixelation even on high action shots and very wide MPEG Stereo sound
On 9HD you could see the Bitrate starvation with the motion blurring on action and the sound sounded much less wider in the stereo sound stage and not as clear as it was on STS 2 Feed.
I also noticed the same picture quality difference during the State of Origin Final.
I understand there will be a difference from the OB Truck uplink compared to FTA broadcast but geez I didn’t think it would be so noticeable.
Interesting test. The signal must degrade substantially between NPC and MHA.
I also think 9Life looks horrendous via WIN. I’ve observed WA VAST and Townsville terrestrial via IPTV and they both show the same issues. Pixelation and breakup during high movement and weird glitchy fade ins/fade outs. Like there’s never a smooth fade.
With Nine now doing 1080p50 and 1080p25 live streams, WIN and even Intelsat 19 are quickly becoming useless for us hobbyists! Especially since IS19 is missing Sydney feeds anyway.
I you want Nine’s direct stream links, send me a PM.
Local advertising and revenue. If metro gets priority and regional is sent to 35X, then those regional advertisers get way less eyeballs. Placing regional on 5, 6 and 8 ensures the same level of exposure as metro.
This is also why VAST channels for Remote Central & Eastern areas use metro logical channel numbers despite being the most regional out of all the networks. Because if their terrestrial relays are going to overlap with any market, they’ll likely be regional markets on the 5/6/8 range. Cobar is a Prime(lol) example of an intentional overlap
9SD also looks terrible via WIN. Imparja South is ahead of WIN Bendigo despite them using the same feed for programs, and the former also looks better.
Yeah they’re superior and not beholden to stat muxing on tight terrestrial muxes, but rather generous DVB-S2 satellite muxes. ABC and SBS channels are the best examples of what well-fed MPEG-4 should look like
Which leads to the unfortunately theoretical counter example of if there was an area of overlap between Darwin, which should be on the regional numbers but isn’t, and the remote services.
Batchelor I believe should be an overlap market, but just receives Darwin despite being separated from Darwin’s official market by a large amount of remote area - but that’s a win for practicality.
If I trust MySwitch - only ABC only very low power sites in the vague region, such as on the Tiwi Islands.
The closest Imparja transmission is a 250W at Jabiru, which would have no hope of getting to Darwin.
An oddity if the ACMA data is to be trusted, the town of Yirrkala, which is otherwise unserved by TV has a single “ACT41” service. I believe these were originally NITV prior to the SBS takeover, but might have switched to being ICTV - older versions of the ACMA transmitter list had a large number of them still operating in analogue post digital switchover, but the ‘TV’ tab is now gone and seemingly only one made the jump to digital?
As I stated earlier, if the metro and regional overlap is owned by the same owner, then why does it matter if the LCN’s are in the same range? As the owner of both signals gets the end benefit of the advertising dollar either way.
Which leads on to the further question, when Gold Coast and Central Coast finally end up with the same metro and regional owner, just waiting to see when the WIN owned NRN licence is ever sold to 10, will all three networks finally switch off the duplicated service? Is such a waste of spectrum.
