Is that what Nine told you? Or are you guessing?
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What’s the story with the demise of Your Money? Could this just be an act of good will given Your Money is now gone and once they get another datacasting channel signed up then the bandwidth could be gone.
I certainly hope not though. If Nine persist with this it should hopefully force Seven and 10’s hand to add a secondary HD channel too.
Your Money wasn’t a datacasting channel as it was counted by ACMA as contributing to Nine’s Australian content quota.
Yes, hopefully 9Gem HD stays.
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There seems to be enough first run Australian content across Nine, 9Go!, 9Gem & 9Life for the network to meet the quota?
With Seven having moved on from informercial/datacast channels (unless the Racing on 78 somehow counts?), it wouldn’t overly surprise me if Nine have too.
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If 9Gem HD stays on, would it be better to shift it to channel 91? Then the two HD channels are together and it’s also right next to 9Gem SD by happy coincidence.
It’s also a bit redundant to have a copy of 9SD.
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Makes sense for the people without MPEG-4 capable sets - flicking between all of Nine’s channels with the up/down buttons rather than the numbers.
Glad for 9Gem HD given the Ashes are coming up, but otherwise it’s hardly the best channel for native HD content. 9Go would have been the better channel to upgrade longer term.
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Perhaps they could do a share of 9Go Content 9Gem content on the Second HD channel. I would rather that , not a re-run of crap programs channel. 
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That’s a silly compromise. Let’s aim higher than that.
Should in fact be the opposite, put 9Go and 9Gem in MPEG-4 HD exclusively and add an MPEG-2 SD channel with a share of content from both for those still with older MPEG-2 equipment.
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Even better still, there should be a push from the government and broadcasters to phase out MPEG2 and mandate DVB-T2 with MPEG4 and subside such set top boxes to those on low incomes.
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The Sydney DVB-T2 test apparently was HEVC not MPEG-4. Wouldn’t it be better to go with a later standard - HEVC?
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Possibly.
A long term plan for Nine’s channels for 2020:
Channel 9 - Channel 9 [City]
Channel 90 - 9HD [City] - MPEG4 HD
Channel 91 - 9GEM HD [City] -MPEG4 HD (1080i)
Channel 92 - 9GEM [City]
Channel 93 - 9Go! [City]
Channel 94 - 9Life [City]
Channel 95 - 9Go! HD [City] -MPEG4 HD (1080i)
This will see three channels in one network to be upgraded to HD.
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I don’t think there’d be enough space to fit 4 MPEG2 SD channels and 3 MPEG4 HD channels on a single 23mbps multiplex without the picture quality of all services suffering.
Here’s what I would like to see happen in the future. With SBS soon going to have 3 in MPEG4 HD, three in MPEG2 SD and seven audio only/radio channels I’d imagine it’d be possible for Nine to do something like this if they were to switch 9Life to MPEG4 and cut down the bitrate of the MPEG2 SD Nine/9Gem services to barely watchable quality:
9: Channel Nine SD (MPEG2, as the case is now)
90: Nine HD (MPEG4)
91: 9Gem HD (MPEG4)
92: 9Gem SD (MPEG2)
93: 9Go! (MPEG2 SD)
94: 9Life (MPEG4 SD, probably the newest one you could get away with switching over without there being major complaints from viewers. No SD broadcast if given the HD spot)
95: 9Go! HD, 9Life HD or possible new HD channel (MPEG4)
Even if the 9Gem simulcast turns out to only be a temporary broadcast until they finalise a content deal with Disney or someone for a new multichannel, I really hope that will remain in MPEG4 HD as a point of difference to the other commercial networks.
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Maybe make it 9Disney
They could probably get away with removing SD channels soon, I’m sure most people have MPEG4 support now? I don’t remember the last time I watched Channel 9 on the normal SD LCN.
Has anyone with Foxtel seen 9Gem HD appear yet? Would be interesting to see what logo they implement on the iQ3 and iQ4, as well as the Foxtel Now boxes.
Mandate that any new channels or simulcasts from 2020 onwards must be launched exclusively on DVB-T2 in HD. Keep the current lineup on DVB-T but use the shift to DVB-T2 to encourage users to switch if they care enough to want HD. In 2-5 years, shift all non-primary HD channels to DVB-T2.
Similar to the situation in the UK. All channels are on DVB-T but HD channels can only be found on DVB-T2.
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It’s different in the UK as the multiplexes aren’t owned wholly by one network like they are here so I believe different networks share the single DVB-T2 multiplex that was established.
Also DVB-T2 has to be implemented on the entire multiplex. If one network did it then they’d lose all backwards compatibility with DVB-T receivers. More likely a shared DVB-T2 multiplex like the UK would be setup here. This has been discussed in the Digital TV Technical Discussion thread so I won’t continue on here.
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Trying to out-do each other 
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I think it’s pretty much a tie there!