NCIS: Los Angeles starts its new season on Ten tonight and unfortunately it is still shown in SD.
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The Presidents Cup Golf replay on ABC HD looked better than the usual upscaled rubbish.
Wouldnât the networks be looking at broadcasting in UHD over HD now?
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Looking forward to ABC UHD coming some time in 2030.
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They probably have enough trouble getting people watching the HD channels now over the normal 2, 3, 7, 9 and 10.
Maybe if the Fibre-to-the-Premises NBN had happened⌠without it we donât have over-the-air broadcast bandwidth to watch UHD (Netflix says 25 Mb/s for a single UHD stream, and thanks to the LNP Iâm stuck on less than half that).
Even if FTTP had happened, there wouldnât be enough bandwidth for UHD at 25mbps - on a 100mbps (the maximum offered to residential properties) it would max out if you had 4 TVs on. Plus, the backhaul networks would struggle to keep up with that level of demand nor do the ISPs operate with contention ratios low enough to support it. By the time those issues are sorted, FTTN will be a thing of the past.
Even then fibre usually did 1 Gb/s so it was always future-proofed to be upgraded; now thatâs gone.
Youâre right that the ISPâs havenât provided enough backhaul, but some of that is probably because the âmulti-technology mixâ meant they thought they could get away with keeping their old crap, thinking theyâd never see significant increases in bandwidth use.
Backhaul is easier to upgrade (when the demand justifies it) compared to replacing wiring going into every home in the country.
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Also the wholesale prices of NBN - which have actually come down over time - so were still sky high under the original FTTP plan.
At nearly $20 for 1mbps just to get the data from the NBN to their own network, they need to run a contention ratio of somewhere around 30:1 to avoid having to charge consumers ridiculous prices - which is 100% fine for ordinary usage with lots of people not using the internet at a given time, and lots not maxing out their connections⌠however this becomes a different story if you have a few million connections trying to watch TV over the internet at the same time.
Yes and no⌠that assumes that every household needs to be upgraded at the same time - the reality is that a lot of people wonât need to go faster than FTTN for a while yet, with some still only using it for a phone service.
Iâm not defending the decision to change technologies - consumers and ISPs are both getting confused by differences between technologies which are essentially being sold as the same product, despite having different limitations and requirements. Plus, history shows us the infrastructure will be cheaper now rather than in the future. However, the situation isnât as bad as some critics will have us believe.
HEVC wont take much bandwidth up.
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I agree pricing was ridiculous but letâs not get too far off-topic here.
(There is an element of chicken-and-egg with the lesser bandwidth probably holding back/delaying some new tech because of a lack of enough potential customers able to use it.)
With FttN many people wonât get anywhere near 50 Mb/s so not even two UHD streams (using Netflixâs current bandwidth numbers), and thatâs even ignoring bandwidth for any other concurrent uses in the same household.
I wonder how long it would take to implement a system similar to the UK where they have all FTA channels available in SD on DVB-T, and any HD channels exclusively on DVB-T2. Here, forced âoops hereâs new technologyâ upgrades is really all that authorities can be bothered scraping together, if at all (a-la MPEG-4).
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The UK does TV wonderfully, DVB-T2, Full Branded UK Stations in other countries.
Bandwidth would be the problem with the DVB-T system we have have now.
They would probably only be able to fit 1 x UHD channel and nothing else on an RF channel.
I actually have 1gbps FTTP on the NBN. It is coming for all who got FTTP but thatâs unfortunately only probably a small population of Australia. The 1gbps is in trial only in a few select locations at this stage. The NBN fibre to FTTP homes can do 2.4gbps with the existing NTDâs. It was a future proof for UHD and beyond and then we get FTTN.
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After years and years of having muddy, blurry low bitrate SD as their only option on FTA. Yes, they now have HD - but they did have to wait nearly a decade longer than us to get it.
The NBN - at least in FTTP form (I canât see documents mentioning FTTN specifically, but the tech would support it) supports IP multicast - which would negate most of the potential issues regarding backhaul and the amount of simultaneous users.
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Youâre saying this as if our networks utilised HD well for many years. Gem HD was shitty black and white movies and 7mate HD was pawn shows and Family Guy.
Even now most local news isnât HD in Australia, even though Nine and Sevenâs main channels are.
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They did - up until the HD multichanneling mess, they did a good job, most of prime time was HD, a good chunk of local productions, and towards the end even HD sport was coming along nicely with Ten doing all their AFL games in HD, and Nine were doing cricket in HD.
The point is that if you wait and wait you can do things with newer tech - but it means you get a worse result in the intervening years - and that badly thought through regulations on multichannels can ruin things just as quick.
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Stupid government, only 100km away from you but we got stuck with the nodes. Both Hobart and Launceston have gigabit plans available. Our work also paid to have fttp with a recent refit. I believe weâre the first in Tasmania who have done the upgrade but it definitely cost a bit as the fibre doesnât run to the node.
Anyway, sorry that was all off topic so back on topic - HD and the entire DVB-T rollout was stuffed by the LNP government taking so long to arrange for anything or give a reason to upgrade. Tassie was the only place where it was taken up at a decent rate because of TDT. Digital radio rollout is not even heard of in Tassie and NBN was buggered too. Only common factor is the LNP!
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Due to my dongle not able to receive the DVB-T2 transmission, I had to cap it in only SD.
It was a bit worse than here but it was alright, HD tho was awesome!