It should be great returning to Sydney towards the end of March, turning on the TV to find 7mate rather than the main channel broadcasting in HD on LCN-70! 
Yes, I know itās probably due to some contractual arrangement with the AFL but itās still annoying how most of Sevenās premium main channel content will only be shown in SD for at least six months in all but two capital cities.
If Seven is so contemptible in the treatment of their audience, why donāt they make 7Mate and Flix mpeg4 channels in HD - best of both worlds then!
Because they would immediately lose at least 50% of their audience for each channel due to older equipment not being able to decode the signal.
Well 50% of an extremely small audience (like less than 100K nationally) isnāt going to have much impact.
50% of the channel share for two younger skewing mutichannels would have a huge impact and be the difference between winning a week or even the whole year.
In total people Seven would have dropped 3% last week - had some of that gone to Nine, Nine would have won the week - same result for the previous two weeks as well. In terms of younger demographics, Seven would have dropped approx 4% network share last week in each demographic.
If you look at 2016 - Nine would have won that year in total people and the three demographics.
7Flix and 7Mate both get as high as 250k in Prime. That is 500k - not 100k. Significant.
The Networks have to stop pandering to the old, lazy & poor people who either cant afford/cant be bothered to get a new TV with the MPEG4 receiver, its a joke.
Yes I agree, plus the decision to move Flix to MPEG2 was incredibly shortsighted and only made possible by 4ME going off the air
Makes sense, Iām guessing it would be a tight squeeze since 4ME and Racing were only SD previously but surely possible
If they could previously carry
IMO Ignoring the poor & elderly in our society, the people who are least able to upgrade their TVās, would show us to be a very incompassionate bunch indeed. I too would love to see all channels in MPEG4 & HD at some point. Maybe the commercial networks should get together to supply STBās to the remaining poor & elderly people who havenāt been able to upgrade as yet to quicken the transition.
Letās be realistic here: Itās going to take a major public awareness campaign on the level of the analogue/digital transition to get some people upgrading their equipment to become MPEG4/HD ready.
And unfortunately, I can see this being a harder sell than the switch from analogue to digital because for the average consumer who upgrades their TV once a decade, the difference in the quality is hardly the same as going from 4.3 analogue to 16.9 digital or from VHS to DVD.
Be the change you want to be. Start an education program for pensioners, trying to convert them to MPEG-4.
Itāll be the most stressful 20 minutes before you realise youāre pissing into the wind.
Letās talk 7Mate. Itās demographic is for 16 to 54yo males. Does anyone know if Oztam has data on how many older sets are in use? And what % of this demographic would have them.
Cheers
FreeTV say itās around 20% (in 2015) - no accurate figures, mind the article I read from is pushing the Government for more bandwidth allocation for future Tx formats DVB T2 (35% better compression than mpeg4) and another format for UHD.
Not everyone has the priorities of the enthusiasts on this forum to keep up to date with TV technology. Many people who arenāt old, lazy or poor are quite happy with their 65cm TV that they purchased just 5 or 6 years ago or their PVR that doesnāt record MPEG4 but cost $600-750 to purchase and donāt see why they should have to purchase new equipment to replace items that are in perfect functioning order.
Furthermore, you canāt assume what demographic is more or less likely to upgrade their equipment. In fact it is possible that younger audiences that are the most valuable to commercial TV networks would be the least likely to want to spend money on upgrading their FTA equipment, a medium that they hardly use anymore.
I reiterate that were Seven to change 7Mate and 7Flix to MPEG4 they would shed 10% of their audience, drop to the number two network in total people and the younger demographics; lose the year to Nine as well and come April when MasterChef starts rank third in the three demographics. No network is going to sign off on that.
My point is that once you make the change & those people realise they cant get access to the channels anymore they will do something about it so they can get access again.
Its like if your car has issues, & if you want them fixed you go to a mechanic, if not, then you continue onā¦
Thatās a silly example because itās not as though MPEG-2 isnāt working like a car with mechanical problems.
More likely theyāll just switch to One, 9GO, Eleven, ABC2 or Viceland or download the specific shows they want or decide to get Netflix. It isnāt as if there is anything different about those two channels that canāt be seen somewhere else.
Edit - forget 7Plus.
It is terrible.
There has been nothing confirmed yet that 7HD is disappearing in Sydney, Brisbane and Perth, and all pronouncements so far are guesses and assumptions?
omgā¦are you serious right nowā¦the channels wouldnt be working anymore if they just switched them all to HDā¦so hence its a reasonable example.
My point stated is above the example anyway, so just stick to the point of my reason, if you cant accept my example.
Fair point, I see what I got wrong there. IMO the networks wouldnāt risk creating that kind of disruption even in 2017. In closed situations like subscription TV or venues where equipment is supplied, upgrading is easy if the money is there. Free to air on the other handā¦