Digital TV Technical Discussion

Well, my main TV is a Panasonic Viera plasma, got it in 2009.

Can’t complain too much, other than light reflection and image burning :neutral_face:

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I’m guessing it doesn’t decode the MPEG4 channels properly either.

I used to have a 2008 Panasonic LCD TV that didn’t recognise MPEG 4 video, but still played back the audio.

Do remember to go outside while you’re holiday, won’t you? :wink:

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Chris Hemsworth.

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Not in my household I’m afraid. Bought a TV of theirs. Had to get it repaired while under warranty. It then faulted again so I got it replaced with another unit, then that was a dud as well. The kind people at JB Hifi** I think took pity on me and for some additional dollars got it replaced with a Panasonic TV which is still going 8 years later without a single hitch.

** not a paid endorsement!

hotels that can’t have TVs tuned or displaying correctly is definitely annoying. A hotel in Tassie I was staying at last year had all the channels with a stretched 4:3 picture across a 16:9 screen. I guess the upside of that was I never saw a WIN watermark :stuck_out_tongue:

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I actually run the TV via the DVR.

But you are correct, no HD channels.

(It does get 7flix and 9Life - no MPEG required in metro, at least after Seven changed it).

Odd, considering I bought the DVR in 2010.

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Our government should have made it mandatory for MPEG-4 tuners to be available in all devices in the late 2000’s, but unfortunately Dick Smith and the like were still selling MPEG-2-only stuff even later than 2010. Missed opportunity.

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I agree.

Of course if you live in a major metropolitan market, all those HD tuners from the Late 2000s and (especially in the case of cheaper equipment) even the start of this decade are essentially MPEG2 SD-only tuners these days!

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This is hilarious.

Is this a case namesake? Or tinkered with HTML?

That’s a niche reference, even by your standards

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I would’ve preferred if the government had mandated that digital television be HD only. No SD.

IIRC high definition launched pretty much straight after digital television did in 2001, so I don’t know why SD was even considered as a format when there was a superior quality available. There weren’t any multichannels either so bandwidth wouldn’t have mattered. Probably would’ve been more expensive short term for early digital adopters but by 2009 HD was cheap. After that, all multichannels launched in 2009 (Go, 7Two, One) could’ve been MPEG-4.

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That’s exactly the reason. HD set top boxes were $500+ in 2001 where as SD boxes were going for about $200.

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The long term plan was for multi channels, and the national broadcasters were allowed to do so from day 1 IIRC, so that had to be considered.
Plus as also mentioned the lower cost of SD tuners provided a lower entry point for viewers to convert

It was higher than that at first. My first SD set top box was $600 in 2002. HD boxes were closer to $1000. And an HD box still only produced a SD picture on old CRT TVs which 99.99% of people had

An HD TV set with inbuilt tuner would set you back about $8000

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Second that - Digitec was the only HD STB available

image

At the time the cheapest HD TV available was around $4800 and those came with an analogue tuner!

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Multichannels were only allowed from SBS and ABC but they were so heavily restricted, they could only target niche markets and essentially couldn’t show anything the majority of people would watch. I think the first multichannels were ABC with ABC Kids (the first incarnation) during the day and then at night it switched to Fly TV with Triple J. On SBS, the SBS World News Channel was there but it wasn’t allowed to show anything in English.
Even when ABC2 first started there were lots of restrictions on the type of content they could show.

The first multichannels from the commercials became the Guide channels and later the breakaway HD programming.

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IIRC ABC2 was forbidden from carrying any content classed as “entertainment” during this whole period!

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HD equipment was more expensive, even in 2005, HD STBs were about $400 vs $200 for an SD box and none were MPEG4.

Using MPEG 2, fitting 3 HD channels plus audio into the available bandwidth would have been a stretch to maintain an acceptable picture.

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Yeah it was ABC Kids from 6am to 6pm and then Fly TV from 6pm. I’m not sure if Fly was on air through to 6am or what time it signed off at night. I didn’t really watch either of these channels although Fly did do a repeat screening of that reality show classic Sylvania Waters.

Yeh, lots of re-runs and timeshifted stuff from the main channel like Australian Story, At The Movies and The New Inventors. It became known as The New Inventors Channel in our house as it seemed every time we flicked past ABC2 that show was on! They’d also fill up whole blocks of airtime by showing each state’s version of Stateline one after the other.

They somehow snuck in re-runs of The Glass House while still technically not allowed to show “entertainment” but that was about it.

ABC2 started in 2005 but I think it was 2008 before the strict genre controls on the ABC and SBS multi-channels was lifted.

The restrictions placed on ABC and SBS were so tight IIRC that SBS could not even show English-language news bulletins on its World News Channel. I think ABC2 at least managed Four Corners repeats and they had a nightly show called Australia Wide, featuring some of the lower level news stories from ABC News across the country.

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Yep, it was about 2008 or even 2009 before things started getting a bit easier for the multichannels.

Australia Wide originally started as an hour long program I think or at least half hour before having a few revamps and getting shortened to 15 minutes. Australia Wide was like an early version of WIN’s All Australian News. Stateline blocks however were definitely a staple in the early days.

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On screen info from the Dgtec HD Box in November 2007 (the vertical bar is signal strength):

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