In the area around Baulkham Hills I found it very easy to get the Wollongong channels - pointing the antenna towards Artarmon also points to Wollongong, and reception is identical to the Sydney channels.
I donāt know that we"ll see many new UHF installs because of it, but certainly could have a small impact on 7s ratings for those who can already get Prime7 Wollongong.
Other difference in programming is the āall nightā home shopping on Prime7, which will probably look even worse in HD (most likely upscaled).
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[quote=", post:1, topic:279, full:true"]
ABC is changing to HD
ABC main channel is making the transition to (HD) HIGH DEFINITION on December 6th 2016. Viewers with HD compatible TVs (with MPEG-4 functionality) will be able to experience ABC in spectacular HD, including this yearās New Yearās Eve fireworks.
Viewers without an HD compatible television will still be able to continue to watch ABC in standard definition on channel 2 and 21.[/quote]
More info, Q&A here and introduction video since it canāt be embedded here: http://about.abc.net.au/press-releases/abc-is-changing-to-hd/
Glad to see them beat Seven to the punch. And this year too when they were originally targeting next year! 
Whoops, I didnāt realise there was already a mention above! 
Good to see that the ARIA Awards on TEN are in HD.
I was a bit worried at first when at the end of āThe Projectā, they had a cross to a reporter at the ARIAs that didnāt look to be HD.
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[quote=āMegalomaniacally, post:517, topic:279, full:trueā]
hearing rumours that Prime7 are getting jumpy with Channel Seven and looking at moving to HD sooner rather than later.[/quote]How pathetic of Seven if they were to be beaten by both Prime7 and SCA7 in the implementation of HD services on their main channel! 
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Hopefully there will be many happy returns, unlike the pre-2010 incarnation of Nine HD!
And kudos to Nine for being the only network to still get its HD (mostly) right, and being first amongst the commercials as well
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As Iāve previously mentioned, Iād like to see the networks launch all their channels in MPEG4 only.
It could be a gradual rollout based on individual households who would be likely to have MPEG4 compatible TVs.
For example, the first rollout could be GO, 7mate and ONE.
6 months later the second rollout: 7flix, GEM, Eleven
The following 6 months: 7two, 9life
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Are most tvās in stores MPEG-4 capable ? Or are cheaper ones the ones that do MPEG-2only?
I think since 2009, all digital TV receivers on sale in Australia have been required to have MPEG4 capability.
Obviously there seems to be enough people out there who still use MPEG 2 equipment to prevent MPEG 4 from becoming the norm.
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Same, although personally I think it will take around 5-10 years or so for all channels to go MPEG4 HD or better. Youād probably need a major analogue switchoff-style public awareness campaign and a gradual market-by-market changeover for the public to go along with a MPEG2 > MPEG4 transition as well.
That may be true for the major brands, but Iām pretty sure that the cheaper brands were still doing MPEG2-only Digital TV equipment until relatively recently.
These days, Iād imagine that all digital TV receivers (even the really cheap and nasty ones) currently on sale in Australia should be able to receive MPEG4 channels.
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Thatās true. My grandparents bought a TV from Aldi in around 2011-12 and surprisingly it isnāt MPEG4 compatible.
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Thatās surprising.
Another thing is that some TVs donāt have MPEG 4 on by default, you have to go into the āSettingsā menu to enable it.
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I made sure to check all the setting menus but there were no MPEG4 options, unfortunately .
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I know for sure the last time I bought a TV - around this time last year - there were still MPEG2 only ones.
It is a bad idea to undertake a wider switch now, DVB-T2 and HEVC are the new current tech, it makes no sense to do such a disruptive switch to what is outdated tech.
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Itās the Government fault for not ensuring that MPEG4 wasnāt mandated for ALL new receivers (regardless of brand or price) earlier.
And that they havenāt really even moved on DVB-T2 yet (even more efficient again, even when using MPEG4).
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Well this is a government who bring us FTTN , so doesnāt care too much about new technologiesā¦
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When they drew up the Australian digital TV standard in 2001, the MPEG-4 H.264 standard was still being drawn up. The government was extremely eager to get us on the HD bandwagon so used a standard (MPEG-2) that would be obsolete before the TV screens that could view them were affordable.
Thats why most countries use MPEG-4 for HD - they didnt launch their HD service until several years after us!
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Most planning preceded the explosion in the internet as a video delivery service. Their thoughts were mostly in interactive TV, multi angle sports coverage and making large amounts of spectrum available for datacasting.
HD was mainly just the broadcasters wanting a way to lay claim to a whole frequency each despite multichannelling being disallowed, rather than any care about picture quality.
The main recent missed opportunity came with the digital ready labelling scheme - they should have uniquely highlighted MPEG4 ready devices, not just have HD ready as the top level.
The failure of Freeview has some blame too - that the broadcasters couldnāt convince enough manufacturers to get labelled as Freeview capable, because āFreeview Readyā is easier to communicate than MPEG4 ready.
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