I’ve seen it as high as 23 seconds, going back to when playout was in Canberra.
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Now that you mention it, I do recall a huge delay between 7 and Prime7. When 7 had the rights to the Australian Open, the twitter feeds indicating who had won matches were updated before Prime7 showed it, lol.
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And I remember listening to a Wallabies game on the radio, and seeing the game on Prime at the same time, and it was like 26-27 seconds behind.
Still waiting for TV Networks to Convert to DVB-T2 which has Spectrum Effiency to Allow DAB+ Expand it’s Channel Offerings.
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And we’ll be waiting a while. If or when that happens, I’m not sure if it will allow for more DAB stations as I think some UHF TV frequencies will be reallocated a vacant VHF frequency in an effort to free up more UHF spectrum that can also be sold off to telcos.
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The aim was to pack all five channels in most areas (not sure what happens if you have six or 8) into three with DVB-T2. If they could do that then they’d only need 12 UHF channels (instead of 24) and 3 VHF TV channels (instead of six). That would free up space for 12 more DAB+ frequencies on VHF.
I’ve read it was to be 5 into TWO…
Ideally if it was able to be compressed into two RF channels, all of the main TXes could be on VHF only, with UHF only being used for the translator sites
I’m not sure that would be possible… I’d think we still need 5 ‘pairs’ of available channels (similar to what with have now with the 5 ‘Blocks’ A to E, that has been proven to be only ‘just’ workable without causing too much co-channel interference).
In many countries (including New Zealand), TV was moved exclusively to UHF. If they could indeed put 5 channels into 14 MHz then they might just move them all to UHF.
The next most likely possibility is that they’d keep 14 MHz on VHF for all areas that are currently on VHF, and all that are on UHF would remain on UHF. They might even be able to leave space so that the VHF channels could move over to UHF. (e.g. VHF 6&7 or 11&12 + UHF 30-39, leaving 28 & 29 for future use).
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That would depend on what digital dividend could be made. Is the demand for telco’s to use spectrum greater in the metro areas or regional areas? It’s most likely metro/both, so limiting tv broadcasting to VHF would probably be preferred in those cases, if possible.
NZ uses a twin-channel plan, were the main Tx sites transmit on say, odd frequencies, and infill is on even freqs. The next major site does the opposite. Fortunately our topography allows for this… I’m not sure how well it would apply in Australia… surely if it were possible, it would already have been put in place?
The lack of use of VHF for DVB-T is largely that the rest of the world generally settled on 7MHz channels on VHF and 8MHz channels on UHF, including in NZ. There’s some exceptions, including some places with 8MHz channels on VHF.
But in general, most of Europe and anywhere else that followed their channel planning, you’d have a weird imbalance on digital of some services having much less capacity, and doing translator stations would be much more difficult if one service was a 7MHz wide VHF station and the other was an 8MHz wide UHF service.
The European UHF band starts a lot lower down at 470MHz, so there’s almost as many extra channels before our UHF starts as we have on VHF - so in practice there’s a similar amount of channels available.
There’s no way we see any more of our VHF being put towards non-TV usage, the only issues are how much inconvenience to viewers who set up UHF only antennas if you restacked UHF markets into VHF frequencies.
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Meanwhile, huge swathes of the lower end of the VHF band remains vacant since 2013 (45-70 Mhz). I know it’s not suitable for DVB-T due to impulse interference, and there was talk of it being used for DRM transmissions, but are there any plans for it?
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I want DVB-T2 to be planned Sooner rather than Later.
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Watching the series Assassin and there is a lot of running around on roofs in Athens that are covered with very funky looking TV antennas.
A couple looked like this triple armed UHF unit.
Is this designed mainly to increase gain or is there some other purpose?
BTW - this is Mount Hymettus where they are pointing:
Also seen in the TV show
Greece shutdown analogue TV in 2015. It’s been UHF only DVB-T since then.
Many of the antenna towers there are for Military radar. Fun story is their chaotic transition to Colour TV in the 1970s. First SECAM, then PAL. Messy…
I imagine they are just better at dealing with multi path… high gain yagis usually are longer with more elements.
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Yes - was thinking whether it would be better for dealing with multipath reflections off buildings etc.
Also similar in London too with the same huge high gain UHF antennas within close proximity to Crystal Palace, and another thing the lack of phase array antennas.
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Yes, when I was in the UK last year, I saw very few phased array UHF antennas anywhere… nearly all yagis.
Must just be all they sell over there, but I think phased arrays are usually better at dealing with multi path and SFNs, so that surprised me a bit.
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