Interesting, thanks for that!
Had a look through last night’s recordings - nothing that immediately gives away that something was up, and I note this morning that there are none of the PRG changes we saw earlier.
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With the PRGs and watermarks unchanged this afternoon, we can probably safely say that any playout switch from BCM to NPC that might’ve been scheduled for today has been delayed.
Moving right along…
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This problem is now showing up on the SD versions of SBS VICELAND on VAST. Aspect ratio is set to 720x576 as expected.
The 1080i and 720p versions aren’t affected.
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That’s normal for standard def. The way to combat that is to set the encoder to 704x576 instead of 720x576, that way the picture goes right to the edge (has to be done on the broadcaster’s side, of course). Normally when people watch SD content (terrestrially), they’re not watching it through an HD set top box with their TVs set to show the whole picture, but rather have the normal SD overscan hiding those black bars.
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Up in Port Macquarie tonight for a weekend getaway and two observations on the TV front.
- Each commercial network has a different take on location names on the LCN. Its:
Prime7 Taree
Nine Port Macquarie-Taree
WIN Port Macquarie
Unusual to get three variations like that. In most regional markets, at least two of them are usually the same.
…
- At the Port Macquarie Breakwall Caravan Park, every caravan seemed to have this type of antenna pointed at Mt Moombil (Coffs Harbour site due to a hill blocking the signal from the local Middle Brother site).
Though I wondered why there seemed to be two different sections to it? Are they for horizontal and vertical polarity signals?
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9Gem HD is now available on 231 for Foxtel viewers.
It also happens in the South Coast.
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How are they shown there?
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Based on my last observations earlier this year, the LCN names are as follows:
Prime7 Sth Coast
9 South Coast
WIN South Coast
Oddly enough, Bold & Peach still had “One South Coast” & “Eleven South Coast” respectively, even more than 4 months after the brand change occurred. At least that was the case back in March, unsure if it has been fixed since.
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When SCA owned WIN, it was Ten Taree, or SC10 Taree.
Yup. Very common on caravans now
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And NBN was NBN Mid North Coast.
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I think its still in use at Coffs Harbour.
Taree-Port Macquarie was an extra feed created.
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It’s “Nine Mid North Coast” from Mount Moombil. It still has Port Macquarie and Taree ads on it.
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Yes Mount Moombil and Middle Brother have the same feed for all 3 channels. I sure there is only 4 feeds - North Coast, Mid North Coast, Newcastle and New England North West.
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9NBN also has the Central Coast & Gold Coast as separate feeds, complete with different ads & its own local news/sport/weather* inserts on NBN News.
‘* - NBN News on the Gold Coast has a separate weather insert 7 days a week, whilst down on the Central Coast, they only have it separate on weekends, as they share with Newcastle on weeknights.
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Central Coast and Gold Coast have their own feeds too.
I think Prime7 and WIN have seperate feeds for Coffs Harbour and Taree-Port Macquarie. The only exception is Sky News on WIN which is one feed for the whole of Northern NSW.
NBN News is interesting because on weekdays the whole North Coast gets the same bulletin but maintain seperate advertising feeds specific to the respective regions. On weekends the bulletins are split between the Mid North Coast and Far North Coast.
Has been years since I’ve watched NBN Gold Coast so that’s for confirming that.
When did Prime change? The Mt Moombil service always had ads for Taree right thru to Yamba. Nothing really Coffs Harbour centric that I recognised.
NBN News has two separate editions within the North Coast 7 days a week: The Mid North Coast (Forster-Yamba) & Far North Coast (Lismore/Ballina/Byron/Tweed).
I didn’t know that Prime had a single advertising feed for the whole Mid North Coast at one point. I don’t know when it changed, but by the time I went up there for the first time in November 2008, Prime had a separate advertising feed for Port Macquarie-Taree.
In fact, according to page 121 of this document, Prime already had a separate advertising feed (at least for Coffs Harbour) by January 1997.
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I’m pretty sure the whole north coast gets the same bulletin on weekdays because Lismore stories make it into the same bulletin as stories from Taree. I noticed the same while staying at Kingscliff in March. The weather forecast covers the whole north coast from Tweed Heads to the Great Lakes. The only thing different is the advertising feed.
On the weekends, Coffs only gets weather forecasts from Grafton to the Great Lakes where as Lismore only gets forecasts From Tweed Heads down to Yamba. Stories are from across the whole north coast.
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Well I have an even stranger story. Just stayed in a cabin in Nambucca heads NSW and for some reason the channels were coming from Alice springs. I think they may have been running though some kind of vast set up. As one of the Channels was just vast info.
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