Yes, since the ABC FMs are at Dulong too. It would be odd for more than one site in the same market to be off air at the same time outside of a major weather event.
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DTV transmission coming back on but seem to be drop outs.
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That would be consistent with one DTV site such as Dulong being off.
The master for the Sunshine Coast SFN was Bald Knob(where the regional program microwave/fibre terminated) and Dulong, Peregian Water Tank, Luther Heights, Sunrise Road and Black Mountain were all SFNâed off Bald Knob.
Typically if one site is off you may pick up some of the others, but the levels will be much lower than when the site your antenna points at is on.
It may have also changed since I was last there too: Sunny Coast was a bit unusual because the master at Bald Knob was just 100W Txâs. Bald Knob was also co-channeled with Mt Tamborine back in the day so the SFN inputs often picked up Tamborine instead of Bald Knob during ducting. The whole layout may have changed since the days of yore to fix those issues as well.
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This from the ABCâs outage page-
ABC Radio & TV Nambour/Sunshine Coast
There is currently an incident impacting the Dulong Lookout transmitter, that services the Nambour/Sunshine coast area. Radio services have been restored as at 12:50pm AEST. ABC TV services are still impacted with no expected resolution time available at the moment. We will endeavour to restore services as soon as possible and we do apologise for any inconvenience caused. You can continue watching ABC TV services by going to iview.abc.net.au and selecting Watch Live or via the ABC iview app on your Smart TV.
More faults and outages
Show less above
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TV services have been running for a couple of hours now.
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Could be power issues at Dulong such as a switchboard fault or even a TV transmit antenna fault. Obviously there is some power on at the site for the FMâs to be working.
BAI will no doubt be in attendance
All ABC FMs were also off air today.
A hint to their future intentions how they are directing people to Iview.
We have probably already seen how FTA TV will end at Mildura recently: old equipment no longer able to be maintained and no commercial reason to replace. Could also be a contractual dispute or insolvency.
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Not with a bang, but with a whimper?
If they donât maintain the transmitter probably a bang
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They attended and found the Genset had some sort of fault so got a temp genset onto site to get services back
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Quality still 100%, quality is king.
What Iâm waiting for is the Government to fund DVB-T2 Equipment for a long Overdue Launch, which will allow Multiplexes and Additional Spectrum for DAB+ Expansion once All Channels are Switched to the Newer Equipment for DVB-T2.
It will never happen. The broadcasters arenât interested. They havenât even got rid of SD MPEG2.
And the Government wonât spend taxpayerâs money on something with zero political upside. In fact, as far as the majority of viewers go it would be a costly annoyance.
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A reason why the government might want to switchover to DVB-T2 is to one day free up the 600 MHZ frequency band so that they could auction it off to mobile carriers. In that case DVB-T2 might provide the extra bitrate that would allow them to reduce the number of broadcast channels required.
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And DVB-T2 will mean broadcasters can share transmitters, so there is a cost saving there too.
Thereâs no real need to make the DVB-T2 change at this point. The networks have pretty much managed to get through a transition to being able to make most of their channels MPEG-4, and this provides enough of a benefit. At this point, the limitation on channels is more their profitability, than their bandwidth requirements.
The issue that creates is that thereâs no content youâd siphon off to a DVB-T2 multiplex in order to drive adoption - none of them would be dumb enough to give away 4K for free - when itâs a no brainer to paywall that behind Paramount+/Stan/??? - assuming they could get the clearance on their programming to do so.
So without a way to drive audiences to convert, it would be years before trying to do a shift like that would result in freeing up adequate levels of spectrum.
The problem basically comes with its own solution - the two least financially viable things are translator sites servicing small towns, and regional television. Equally, these largely use up the UHF band.
Abandoning the allocation of the 6th channel spectrum on UHF, combined with the end of spectrum fees if they scale down from 3 to 2 in aggregated regional markets, funded by the 5G auction. You could free up ~50MHz to auction by then restacking on the basis of 6 into 4. If you could end the usage of the E block, which is mostly low power translator sites, then you could entirely stop using Band V UHF for TV.
Metro translator sites are a problem - but you could solve this by ABC or SBS being in SFN with adjacent regional markets, freeing up the additional channel required to give 7/9/10 metro translator sites a full multiplex.
That all said - you probably have to start with a non-binding bidding process - explore the prices Telstra/TPG/Optus would be willing to pay for 600MHz spectrum, and tailor a package of proposals to TV broadcasters based on that. At the moment theyâve already got a boost coming out of what they can reallocate after the closure of 3G, and that might tide them over for a few years to come and result in less value.
Either way, you need to ensure there is a genuine profit in it, or just wait TV out and sell the whole lot in 15 years.
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This, most likely. At least Australia still untilises VHF, which has little use for telcos. In NZ, weâre all-UHF, so our only soloution, if broadcast is still desirable then, would be satellite, which could still be a better option for the outback.
But then again, in 15 years time, things may be somewhat different, who knows?
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