Viewer Access Satellite Television (VAST)

The transponder Imparja is on has about 10mbps of Null Bytes.

Enough to upgrade some services to HD. They just need to make sure to stay under the capacity of a single DVB-T mux for the reTX sites.

Negotiating more bitrate with Optus will likely by the bigger problem. Imparja might not be able or willing to pay up.

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Optus will want to make sure that 10 Mbps is free for fitting everything in when the time comes. But yes, cost is likely why Imparja haven’t gone HD in the past.

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The VAST Regional News service was given a nip and tuck yesterday. No loss of bulletins, just a reshuffle resulting in the removal of 6 channels. Prime and 7 QLD are also finally grouped together.

I can’t capture anything right now, but digitalbitrate.com shows the following:

  1. WIN Cairns Tsville Rockha
  2. WIN SunshineCst Toowoomba
  3. WIN Orange Cbr Wollongong
  4. WIN Gipps Ballarat Bendig
  5. WIN Shepp Tas 9 Darwin
  6. NBN GoldCst Lismore Coffs
  7. NBN Tamwth Newcstl CenCst
  8. 7 Cairns Tsville Mackay
  9. 7 Rockhamp WideBay SunCst
  10. 7 Toowoomba Coffs Tamwth
  11. 7 Orange Wagga Albury
  12. 7 News Updates
  13. SCA - 7 Tasmania
  14. SCA - News Updates
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Got this e-mail to me from the ACMA this morning, looks like they are now proposing to make VAST available In the Mildura/Sunraysia region but you have to wonder how many viewers are going to disk out $800 for a Vast setup:

https://www.acma.gov.au/consultations/2025-01/proposal-make-vast-available-mildurasunraysia-tv1-licence-area

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Will be interesting to see what comments they get

if you’ve had foxtel via satellite in the past its not that expensive. $279 for the STB

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Can multiple households put money together to buy a VAST setup and share it between them? For example, if 10 households band together to buy a setup that’s $80 per household.

Can’t see how that would work… I imagine the $800 is for the equipment (dish & STB), can’t easily move that between houses.

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They’d also have to watch the same channel.