Yes, I can imagine the whole “Capital 7” and “Capital 10” (or "“10 Capital”) thing could have been confusing for Canberrans given that it was on VHF 7 for the wider Canberra region, but also as a relay on VHF 10 in Woden (as well as Cooma and Goulburn).
It was a bit. My grandmother called it “Channel 7” to her dying days. When I did my internship at Ten Capital, many people still called it “Capital Ten” which is never was officially.
At the time of aggregation, many people upgraded their TVs and aerials ready for UHF. By '89 you couldn’t buy sets with the old knobs, they were all preset buttons (and had been for several years). The frequencies became a bit irrelevant except for setting up the buttons and tuning in the video.
There were many discussions about what number you put “Prime” on for example. Many people set it as 2 from the RVN days, then WIN on 4 and ABC was VHF 3. So you’d have 2,3,4 then argue about 7 or 10. Though many TV sets only presets going from 0-8. The TV below was our family’s “aggregation set” in 1989. Panasonic didn’t have the preset buttons, but a very clever scroll and skip
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Yes, we bypassed preset buttons, and went straight from a Sony with a rotary dial to a Sony with a stereo tuner, twin speakers and a remote!
We got that TV in 1989, and we put
SBS on 1 (RF Channel was UHF 45)
NBN on 3 (VHF 3)
ABC on 5 (VHF 5A).
And in 1992 when aggregation came we added in
Prime on 2 (UHF 54) and because 2 was a prime number as my Dad used to say, which made it easier for them to remember
NRTV on 4 (UHF 57).
ABC got retuned to UHF 48 in late 1991 as for some bizarre reason that had a much sharper picture, it wasn’t to do with reception, VHF 5A just had colours that looked decidedly washed out.
UHF 48 went to air from late 1991 in anticipation that NBN3 would switch to UHF 51 (just as WIN switched from VHF 4 to UHF 59 in the Illawarra). Which never happened of course, so ABC stayed on both VHF 5A and UHF 48 until analogue was switched off.
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I vaguely remember at the other holiday house in the Geelong area, we had an old CRT TV that was over 12 years old at the time and I remember that we had Seven on 6 and Nine on either 9 or 8.
I think it also received Prime Ballarat but we never watched it.
SBS was on I think either 28 or 10 IIRC, but we had preset 10 messed up with another network or it may have been the only preset that was aligned correctly. I don’t remember as this was over 10 years ago.
This was way before the issues that now occur in Geelong / Ocean Grove with interference and ducting from Tasmaina.
The TV also looked like the one that @CTC7-9-10 posted as well.
would the signal from Tasmania overlap with the one from Geelong?
Some of the posts in this area might be of interest
As per the first post my first there, TV had 12 presets. I tried to tune each to the associated VHF frequency for out-of area reception. TVO was on 1 IIRC 2,7, and 9 were as expected with Darling Downs ABDQ3 and Northern Rivers ABRN6 and RTN8. 10 was shared reception between DDQ10 and SEQ10. Channel 1 was tuned to the 12 button for SpE reception in summer. SBS ended up on 4.
I don’t think so.
I don’t know what it was but I remember noticing a definite difference when we first tuned to SBS on UHF. It just had a clarity to the picture that was just a bit better than VHF. I don’t know if that was an inherent quality of UHF or what. Maybe it was just a fluke.
I hadn’t realised 5A stayed on until analogue shutdown. I just guessed it had switched off when they switched to 48.
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Growing up in a metro signal area we just had the stations set to 2, 7, 9 and 10 as standard, though SBS remained on 0 even when it was UHF 28. Though I remember when we stayed out in Bairnsdale our grandparents TV was different due to the country stations - 2 was still ABC, 7 was Prime and 9 was WIN, but 3 was SBS (an interesting precursor to DTV LCNs), 8 was set as Ten Victoria from Traralgon (i.e. GLV-8) while they had the local Ten Victoria from Mt Taylor near Bairnsdale on 5 (again predating the DTV arrangements). In those days their house had a old mast with an antenna for receiving VHF from Traralgon, with a UHF antenna added on later to receive the local translators from Mt Taylor
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Our first colour TV (Pye, circa 1977) had 6 push buttons but not numbered. We just had them as 0 (ATV), 2, 7, 9, 10 (GLV) and a spare. When ATV went from 0 to 10 we just had to get used to going to the 10 button and we lost GLV (though we never watched it much so it was no loss). Then SBS came to 0. Then we tuned that spare button to 28 and we got a VCR so the 0 spot became the VCR channel.
Note the similarities here between the mid 80s NBN Television advert and Channel 7 advert… Anyone would think that NBN wanted to become the affiliate of Channel 7, moreso if you consider it started airing Home And Away in 1989, showing episodes one year behind Channel 7… Why would you start screening a show you know you won;t be showing in 2 or 3 years time???
Channel 7 advert (1984) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2A5QaFBvUQ
NBN Television advert (1985) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbVteroaeEM
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I always found UHF degraded differently, and I think more watchably. I don’t know how to describe it that well, but I think it’s down to the nature of the interference often being electrical noise in the VHF band. Channel 2 was particularly bad for it, and the most unwatchable of all the channels I had in the analogue days - at least after Channel 31 boosted their signal in the early 2000s.
It’s not the best comparison, but here’s a screenshot I took of DX reception of TVT-35 Launceston (from Geelong) -
While here was normal reception of the ATV-10 signal - note the banding across it - that would get worse, and I think make it harder to watch
I only have a very small number of analogue TV captures lying around on my PC that didn’t first go through a VCR - so it’s hard to demonstrate what I mean. I suppose UHF became ‘dotty’ while VHF had more banding/rolling?
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I can’t explain how, but I have a memory from when I was young (playing with the TV settings) where I thought that the UHF channels (SBS, Ch31 Sydney) came in with better picture clarity than the VHF channels. I thought ‘hey it must be a higher frequency so the picture must be higher in definition’.
Coming from a long history of watching poor analogue signals…
WIN signal appears to just be weak, but more prone to interference because of it
TEN signal is just interference, possibly another signal was often sneaking into your region*
- Don’t you hate it when that happens!
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I don’t know if it’s because some of the transmitter equipment was changed towards the end or whatever else, but the ABC’s VHF-2 signal here in Sydney wasn’t particularly clear for the final two years or so of analogue from my experience.
Down in Ocean Grove where we had the old TV. I do remember Melbourne reception to be quite good with I think the rolling effect that you posted.
I wish I was older back then so I could have the know how and DX 
Also, UHF seemed to be better but the only interference that I could think of that can happen on UHF would be the odd faulty electronic and maybe a high powered radio system but those would be rare.
Before I went to school on the day of the Analog Switchoff. I decided to turn on the TV out the back and it looked spotty just like this video
Just shows how good Analog was 
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The quality of Channel 2 reception certainly took a dive as the years went on. I certainly in the dying days/years of analogue it was very spotty. I don’t know why so someone more technical might be able to say, but I guess there was so much more electric interference compared to earlier years? Probably just from devices within the home??
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Yes I do remember when reception of ABV2 got worse in the last 15 years before analog switch off, in particular in Geelong, didn’t know anyone there who could receive it clearly. Digital TV cured these problems.
Also UHF on analogue had much better picture resolution than VHF, SBS used to tout this fact in their promotion of moving exclusively to UHF. I remember staying at a motel in Goulburn in 1990 watching Full House on Prime (on UHF) I coul’dnt believe the sharper picture quality than when I watched it on HSV7.
I was surprised in the summer of 1991/92 going to the Goulburn Valley region for holidays just how sharp the UHF picture was for ABC and Southern Cross with just an indoor rabbit ears antenna. It was better than VIC TV on Channel 6. And we were probably considered on the outskirts of the main coverage area (Goulburn Weir).