HD Broadcasting

have you still got 7mateHD?

isn’t H264 basically the same as mpeg4?

Australia likes to use out of date technology eg the NBN.

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It may be the best we can get. Can you picture Australia switching to DVB-T2 within the next 10 years? Ah well, we can dream…

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Yeah, both MPEG4 and H264 are pretty much the same as I understand it.

To a certain extent, Australia is very much a “we like things the way they are” country that’s fairly resistant to major changes (even if those major changes are good) in many ways but that’s a debate for another time and topic.

I agree.

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So only Prime and regional Qld not seeing the main channel 7 channel in HD?

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Pretty much everywhere except the five main metropolitan markets and Tasmania are not seeing Seven’s main channel (or their local affiliate’s version of it) in HD.

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I still think it’s completely weird and incredibly annoying that Seven can’t be bothered to turn on 7HD in Regional QLD.

What even is the point in not changing it over when they are broadcasting 7HD in all of their other O&O markets.

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Over a decade ago, Ten used to be great with native HD content, I remember always had to wait for a green flash on screen to know if a program is in native HD.

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It’s possibly more complicated to make the main Ch7 in each Qld sub-market HD than everyone thinks. I work in media with someone who used to work at Seven Affiliate Sales and Ch7 wanted to take 7Qld sales in-house a couple of years ago but decided against it because their internal booking system couldn’t handle all the sub-markets so they left it with Seven Affils. I don’t understand why playout from BCM would be different but maybe it requires a bit of an upgrade to get another 7 x HD feeds out in regional Qld?

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Yes still 7mate HD (MPEG-2) here in Prime7-land (& I understand the same situation in their GWN7 branded coverage area). :persevere:

I can understand what you mean, but they do currently provide 7 x HD feeds of 7mate in Regional QLD without problem.

The only issue I’d suspect is maybe something more complicated required for them to provide the 7 x HD feeds in MPEG-4.

But they previously provided 7flix in MPEG-4 in Regional QLD when it first launched, so there seems to be nothing stopping them from providing 7 x 7HD feeds in HD MPEG-4 in Regional QLD based on what they currently and have previously done here already.

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Something to do with having a separate feed just for the “HD” watermark addition, perhaps?

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Playout would be the issue; as you’ve said there are a lot of sub-markets in the regions, but how long has it been now, and Seven & Prime7 are going to have to do it sooner or later.

Prime7/GWN7 really doesn’t make sense because they outsourced their playout to MediaHub late last year, apparently for this reason, so MediaHub should’ve been ready to do 7HD & 7flix by now (they would’ve had plenty of advance notice to prepare/procure additional new HD-capable equipment).

For 7 Queensland’s playout limitations, look at SCA’s 9HD; the local ads here are SD because of SCA’s mostly-old playout facilities but with the addition of some new gear at least the programmes (& the promos in the dirty feed) are HD so viewers don’t care (except maybe advertisers).

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Maybe it’s equipment? 7Qld uses different systems compared to the rest of the network and for some reason 7 don’t invest any money to bring it in line with the other O&O markets, I wouldn’t be surprised if they haven’t spent any money upgrading anything else at 7Qld.

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If they can provide the current feeds in HD each with a separate watermark and adverts for 7Mate, there isn’t any reason that it couldn’t be a 7HD feed instead.

Having it broadcast in MPEG 4 at the transmitter shouldn’t be a problem either as they already broadcast the racing channel on 78 in MPEG4.

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Yeah, this is exactly what I mean.

You would think so, and it definitely could be. But it just doesn’t seem likely given that they already successfully broadcast 7 x individual feeds of their channels, and successfully broadcast channels in MPEG-4.

It would be great if Seven would actually reply to my previous correspondence I’ve sent asking why they still haven’t implemented 7HD in Regional QLD, but until then, we’re really all just guessing.

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Maybe the current equipment they use can only provide a certain number of different feeds perhaps? When you have 7 different feeds for 7, 7Two and 7Mate (It’s been a while since I’ve been home to Rocky so forget if 7Flix is a state feed or not sorry) that’s already 21 different feeds or 23 if you include a statewide 7flix and Racing. You then have all the Metro stuff plus the feeds for SCA, Prime and WIN where they broadcast 7… maybe BCM can’t handle anymore feeds without an upgrade?

Even in the metro markets, Seven doesn’t seem to do quite the same level of HD content as Nine especially when it comes to local programing.

Now that’s definitely an issue Seven will need to address before too long because once Nine News Queensland gets it’s HD upgrade, it probably won’t be long before we see heavy use of a “Nine News HD” logo as part of the branding (similar to how Nine uses the Nine HD logo for most of it’s general station branding these days) and “Nine News: The only 6pm News in High Definition” promos airing on a very high rotation.

But Seven Queensland doesn’t broadcast an SD version of 7mate, right? Even if they do, can the Regional Queensland versions of 7mate be streamed online without the “HD” watermark addition?

Yeah, 7mate is only provided in HD in Regional QLD.
The HD watermark addition is used really sporadically with 7mate Regional QLD mostly only during sport, and my observations so far is that the watermark addition is included on the online streams whenever it’s also on the TV.

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