Imparja Television

Thanks! I have family that live in Western QLD, so I usually only see Imparja when I’m out visiting. It’s been a few years now, so it would have likely been before that change. Last I remember, everything was in AEST.

So, does anyone know what timezone the 9GEM feed runs in?
I went to Imparja’s website and looked at the TV guide.
It’s obviously not correct, because it says “NINE NT NEWS” airs at 7pm ACST, 7:30pm AEST, 7:30pm ACDT, 7:30pm AEDT.

If 9GEM was being programmed in AEDT, that would make sense as 7:30pm AEDT would mean the NT News would be airing live.

This is from a lineup that just aired on 9GEM Imparja.

My VAST TV Guide has Nine NT News at 1830 AEST, The Firm at 1932 AEST and Almost Human at 2241 AEST, so 9GEM is in AEDT.

To clairfy this the timings… VAST works as follows.

Commercial SD channels operate in 3 zones:
-“North East” for Qld and NT, based on Brisbane time (AEST).
-“South East” for Vic, Tas, NSW and SA, based on Melbourne time (AEDT).
-“WA” for WA, based on Perth time (AWST).

Commercial HD channels operate in 2 zone:
-“South East” for Vic, Tas, NSW, SA, Qld, NT, based on Melbourne time (AEDT).
-“WA” for WA, based on Perth time (AWST).
This is due to the large amount of bandwidth required for HD channels.

ABC1, SBS1 and SBS HD operate in 7 zones - Vic, NSW, Qld, NT, SA, Tas and WA - based on local time for each zone.
ABC2, ABC3, ABC News 24 and SBS 2 operate in 5 zones - South East (Vic, NSW, Tas), Qld, SA, NT and WA - based on local time for each.

Spot on. You’d think with a complex arrangement like that, the commercial channels would denote “EST” or “EDST” at the bottom of their lineups and on promo enders, especially when they already put in the effort to make their own lineups and promos. Missed opportunity I reckon.

Given that imparja is now played out at media hub, is anybody aware of imparja doing some work on imparja HD? If WIN and NBN is working on theirs, surely imparja could be working on imparja HD by now?

It wouldn’t surprise me if it takes a while longer for Imparja HD to launch.

From memory, GEM via Imparja is the same feed across the whole Remote Central/Eastern Australia TV region while the main channel has two separate feeds for the “North” and “South” regions. Imparja would have to provide “North” and “South” versions of the main channel in HD. That leads to an important question: Does Imparja currently have the space on the satellite for two HD channels?

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Imparja HD is meant to replace GEM and GEM will be shifted to a new SD channel. The same as 9, WIN and NBN

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I can’t see Imparja or WIN WA doing anything for a while. Only because they both utilise VAST to deliver signal to their terrestrial sites. According to the networks, VAST can’t launch new channels without getting government approval and funding for additional satellite transponder space. Racing.com and Food Network are also yet to appear because of this. Maybe now that parliament has fired back up we will see some progress.

As for what Imparja may do is still a tough one. They could either launch 4 brand new channels - ImparjaHD x2 and 9Life x2. Or they could just do a single national 9Life in AEDT. Then there’s the question of whether they’ll split 9Gem into AEST and AEDT when they convert it to SD, or keep it as a single national channel like it is now.

Current channels:
Imparja North
Imparja South
GEM (national)
GO! North
GO! South

Prediction:
ImparjaHD North
ImparjaHD South
Imparja North
Imparja South
GEM North
GEM South
GO! North
GO! South
9Life North
9Life South

Another prediction, cheaper option:
ImparjaHD North
ImparjaHD South
Imparja North
Imparja South
GEM
GO!
9Life

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I think that in imparja case I think imparja will use the cheaper option. Possibly the same for regional WA.

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Another option is to only launch the HD channels on VAST and create an MPEG-2 SD simulcast at each transmitter site. 100% of VAST viewers use MPEG-4 equipment so they don’t need the MPEG-2 simulcast and the costs of doing the simulcast onsite could be way cheaper than running 2 of them on the satellite. Doing it this way would mean no ImparjaHD on-screen graphics but that’s a decent compromise.

Do these sites have the equipment in place to do this? How much do they actually need to do to turn the VAST signal into the DVB-T signal?
There are 50-odd sites in the Remote Central & Eastern zone (ie. Imparja), and even more in the Western zone, so it would take a lot of money and work if they needed to install new equipment.

I agree that Imparja (and WIN WA, although isn’t it a statewide broadcast for all channels anyway?) would most likely go for the cheaper option!

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They’ve got gear in each site that converts MPEG-4 services to MPEG-2, which is way more sophisticated than an average transmission site which is usually fed an entire mux ready for broadcast. I have no doubt they’re able to strip down an MPEG-4 version of ImparjaHD, convert it to MPEG-2 SD and add it to the mux.

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On an all-MPEG-4 platform there’s really no logical reason for having Imparja (or WIN WA) in both SD and HD. Indeed given HD main channels are now allowed, they could even convert it to MPEG-2 HD for broadcast locally.

They could do it with no net gain of total channels - just a slight adjustment in bandwidth allocation from the single Gem feed to the two HD Imparjas. I would expect you could just squeeze that out of the other channels, rather than need expanded satellite space.

ImparjaHD North
ImparjaHD South
GEM (national)
GO! (national)
Life (national)

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They probably need to have the same feed for both terrestrial and satellite.

My guess is that terrestrial transmitters in towns like say Roma, are fed by the same VAST signal… Not sure how they would go with converting / re-muxing the stream locally to change HD from MPEG4 to MPEG2 in each and every town - sounds expensive…

They do. Imparja North is the feed used in all Qld and NT terrestrial sites. South is used for the remaining sites. Like I said, the transmission equipment they use is sophisticated enough to transcode encrypted satellite feeds on mixed transponders. If they currently have the ability to convert MPEG-4 to MPEG-2 and adjust bitrates, then they could easily modify screen resolutions too.

Shiny new ident for Imparja. Today’s the first time I’ve seen it. I like the shot of Imparja’s studios featured in the balls.




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As Con the fruiterer would say, bewdiful!

I wish 9 in the metro areas and Darwin and Newcastle could make a similar logo to imparja.

Very polished. Just in time for HD!

If they’re making new idents, why are they persisting with this IMP brand during programming?