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All posts by Nicholas Willmott

Below are all of Nicholas Willmott's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.


Dave Lindsay: (stuff I forgot) As for your bit about regional advertising, do people really pay attention to the adverts on ITV or ITV+1, whether it's Heinz Baked Beans or an advert that's aimed at a particular region e.g. Granada? If people are that keen to see correct regional adverts for their own region, they should watch ITV (C3) at the proper time; otherwise people in English regions outside London could just put up with local adverts for London amongst the national ads (such as Heinz Baked Beans) one hour late on ITV+1 London.

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What, if anything, is happening to Really, which I think is at LCN 20 or thereabouts?

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Does anyone listen to medium wave (MW) now? After dark it tends to sound "hossily" (whining background noise) which you don't get on FM. Why not switch off MW and use the bandwidth for extra DAB coverage?

Also, why not turn off the complete VHF/FM analogue radio 88 to 108, and reuse that space for extra DAB coverage?

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Briantist: If ITV still uses historic regional names, how about this to resolve the West Country (West/East) debate. As long as I remember the West of England (Mendip) area based in Bristol was HTV West. So how about calling it ITV West. As for the South West England area (Redruth, Caradon Hill, Huntshaw Cross, Beacon Hill, Stockland Hill) based in Plymouth was Westward TV until 1981, and TSW (Television South West) from 1982 to 1992. So why not call the area ITV South West (a flashback to TSW) or ITV Westward?

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Which MUX is it on? I doubt if it'll be one of the PSB muxes. If it's to go on a COM mux, Freeview Lite viewers won't get it.

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Thanks Briantist, so that means I won't be able to get them from the Bath relay, nor will any of the other thousands of households whose only means of DTT reception is from a Freeview Lite relay.

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Looking at the predicted coverages for Notts TV on both Waltham and Nottingham transmitters, it doesn't appear as though the centre of Nottingham itself will get Notts TV from either. What a farce if that TV channel is really intended to serve Nottingham

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Thanks Briantist for pointing out that the D3&4 mux now has an extra video stream, i.e. now it has 9 streams instead of 8, which is how Film 4 got put on to the 9th stream.

If there's enough capacity for 9 video streams on D3&4, surely there must be enough for 9 streams rather than just 7 as now on BBCA. The BBCA mux could then be:

1) BBC One
2) BBC Two
3) BBC Three / CBBC
4) BBC Four / CBeebies
5) BBC News
6) BBC Parliament
7) 301
8) 302 (save the BBC renting space on a commercial mux)
9) spare

Channel 5 could then rent the 9th slot from the BBC to put Channel 5 on BBCA, thereby freeing up its slot on D3&4 for ITV to fill with ITV3.

In Wales, 302 could be replaced with S4C, thereby removing it from D3&4, so in Wales E4 could thus be on D3&4 like the rest of the UK.

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Michael: I thought the BBC radio channels are in spare space that's not large enough for a video stream; removing them wouldn't create sufficient space for a video stream. What I meant was, if the BBC used the same compression techniques etc as now used on D3&4 there could surely be 9 video streams, and still have the spare capacity needed for radio.

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Does anyone listen to medium wave (MW) these days? Whereas FM has been stereo for 30 odd years, MW is still mono in 2013. Why is this? Furthermore sound quality is never that brilliant on MW, especially after dark when it tends to sound "hossily" (squeaking whining noise).

If they switch off the analogue MW broadcasts, what will they use it for? Back in March you said, in answer to my question, they wouldn't be able to use the MW radio band for 4G LTE due to lack of bandwidth. Similarly what will the FM band 88 to 108 MHz be re-used for? Back in March you said that too doesn't have enough bandwidth for 4G. Could they use the current FM band 88 to 108 for extra Freeview DTT muxes? Could it be used for wi-fi routers, wireless game console controllers, etc? Could it be used for PMSE which is currently UHF channel 38, and thus free up channel 38 for TV broadcasting?

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