New Channel BBC on Astra 2 - BBC One going HD

mikeisyou

mikeisyou

Feed Hunter
My Satellite Setup
Octagon SX88+, Static 1.2m Raven Dish (22w to 33e), Motorized Dish (9e to 52e)
My Location
England
www.thenorthernecho.co.uk

BBC One to go live with HD channel for the North East and Cumbria from next month

All BBC regional versions of BBC One will be going high definition.
www.thenorthernecho.co.uk www.thenorthernecho.co.uk

BBC One HD regions will go live on 21 October, next month.

BBC One:

Cambridgeshire HD
Channel Islands HD
East HD
East Midlands HD
London HD
North East and Cumbria HD
North West HD
Northern Ireland HD
Oxfordshire HD
Scotland HD
South East HD
South HD
South West HD
Wales HD
West HD
West Midlands HD
York and Lincs HD
Yorkshire HD
 
Is there an official source for this? I saw it on some regional newspaper sites that the BBC has confirmed it on Twitter, but the account linked to is an unofficial BBC fan page. I thought it was only going to be for iPlayer and perhaps Freeview, though it would solve the problem of putting BBC Three onto Sky channel 115.
 
ozumo said:
Is there an official source for this? I saw it on some regional newspaper sites that the BBC has confirmed it on Twitter, but the account linked to is an unofficial BBC fan page. I thought it was only going to be for iPlayer and perhaps Freeview, though it would solve the problem of putting BBC Three onto Sky channel 115.
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I have spent an hour looking for an official source but I'm unable to find one. Will keep my eyes peeled, in the meantime if anyone else spots anything please post it on here.


In addition BBC Alba and BBC Parliament are also set to go HD
 
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IMHO this is extremly unlikely to happen on satellite on Oct 21st - simply because the test labels should already be active if it was happening.......
 
Analoguesat said:
IMHO this is extremly unlikely to happen on satellite on Oct 21st - simply because the test labels should already be active if it was happening.......
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I also doubt the BBC has the budget for what 4 or 5 new transponder to rent?
 
mapperuo said:
I also doubt the BBC has the budget for what 4 or 5 new transponder to rent?
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I reckon when they do it on satellite it's more likely that they'll add a couple of them to each of the two existing BBC DVB-S2 transponders (which aren't particularly full as it stands), which would leave them needing probably two more transponders. Rather than renting more capacity they could well squish some of the SD versions on their existing 4 DVB-S transponders together (or remove some like ITV have done) and use the space freed up by that.
 
I'm surprised they never came up with a system that seamlessly changed to the correct SD channel for regional content. Just seems like a waste of bandwidth to broadcast 18 HD versions of the channel which are identical for 23hrs a day.
 
ozumo said:
I'm surprised they never came up with a system that seamlessly changed to the correct SD channel for regional content. Just seems like a waste of bandwidth to broadcast 18 HD versions of the channel which are identical for 23hrs a day.
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You could say the same about SD. Eventually HD will replace SD but this still seems far off.
 
ozumo said:
I'm surprised they never came up with a system that seamlessly changed to the correct SD channel for regional content. Just seems like a waste of bandwidth to broadcast 18 HD versions of the channel which are identical for 23hrs a day.
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Definitely pretty silly, the German channels on 19.2°E certainly manage it - in both SD and HD. As far as I know it was apparently to a certain extent down to early Sky boxes not supporting it, so by the time the regions launched on satellite it wasn't a possibility.

Seems to work fine on any receiver I've ever tried on Astra 1 though!
 
ozumo said:
I'm surprised they never came up with a system that seamlessly changed to the correct SD channel for regional content. Just seems like a waste of bandwidth to broadcast 18 HD versions of the channel which are identical for 23hrs a day.
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The new Freesat boxes prompts viewers to switch from BBC One to BBC One HD if the programme is available in HD.
 
statalite said:
You could say the same about SD. Eventually HD will replace SD but this still seems far off.
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The SD channels are here to stay until they come up with a way to replace all those SD only boxes, but there doesn't seem to be any desire to do that :(
Adam792 said:
Definitely pretty silly, the German channels on 19.2°E certainly manage it - in both SD and HD. As far as I know it was apparently to a certain extent down to early Sky boxes not supporting it, so by the time the regions launched on satellite it wasn't a possibility.

Seems to work fine on any receiver I've ever tried on Astra 1 though!
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Thanks, I never realised this was happening on 19.2°E! Is there a name for this system? I'd happily sacrifice the picture quality of regional news if it meant everything else was improved.
 
ozumo said:
The SD channels are here to stay until they come up with a way to replace all those SD only boxes, but there doesn't seem to be any desire to do that :(
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I wouldnt have thought there would be that many of the old SD boxes still going - they were either desperately slow or prone to capacitor failure.
 
ozumo said:
The SD channels are here to stay until they come up with a way to replace all those SD only boxes, but there doesn't seem to be any desire to do that :(

Thanks, I never realised this was happening on 19.2°E! Is there a name for this system? I'd happily sacrifice the picture quality of regional news if it meant everything else was improved.
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I'm not sure of the name, but technically it works by the service IDs for each regional service in the MPEG-TS tables pointing to the same VPIDs/APIDs as each other most of the time, and then during regional content dynamically updating to point at separate PIDs as necessary. Most receivers show the content of the PIDs as told to them by the service information, so take into account any live updating.

Here's an example of it on the new-ish WDR HD transponder on 19.2°E (11523H) - DVBS DVBS2 DVBS2X Bitrate Monitoring 11523 H Astra 19.2East

As you can see in the bitrate graph, most of the time there is just one ~15Mbps video stream shared by all WDR HDs, but then during "Lokalzeit" it splits into 11 separate streams. Köln is the "master" stream so it keeps the same PIDs throughout, whereas for the other services their PIDs dynamically change.

You can see this in action if you watch one of the WDR HDs (other than Köln) at 6:30pm UK time, including today. On most receivers it's a pretty seamless switch, sometimes a second of glitch or so. You may of course notice the picture quality go a bit soft because of the lower bitrate, but as you say - it's much preferable to have lower regional news PQ as a trade-off for better general quality for 23 hours of the day.

The same applies for most of the other German regionals (NDR, MDR, RBB, BR), as well as for those handful of SD RTL/Sat.1 opts (RTL HB NDS, Sat.1 Bayern etc)
 
Adam792 said:
As you can see in the bitrate graph, most of the time there is just one ~15Mbps video stream shared by all WDR HDs, but then during "Lokalzeit" it splits into 11 separate streams. Köln is the "master" stream so it keeps the same PIDs throughout, whereas for the other services their PIDs dynamically change.
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I'll try this on my Pace Sky+ HD box this evening to see how it handles it. A clip I made of BBC One HD the other day was running between 3 & 4Mb, so 3.1Mb should be plenty for regional news.
 
Adam792 said:
Definitely pretty silly, the German channels on 19.2°E certainly manage it - in both SD and HD. As far as I know it was apparently to a certain extent down to early Sky boxes not supporting it, so by the time the regions launched on satellite it wasn't a possibility.

Seems to work fine on any receiver I've ever tried on Astra 1 though!
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I've long assumed that Sky UK & Ireland receivers, or at least some of them, are not capable of PID switching that the likes of the Germans & Austrians use when dealing with regional opt outs on Satellite and that is the big reason the BBC have had to send parallel streams full-time for each English region.
 
The Pace Sky+ HD would only allow DVB-S channels to be added, so I used the 'alt' 12422H transponder. All channels on the Pace & Openbox V8S showed the same Lokalzeit programme with no obvious regional branding. I rescanned on both boxes which showed no change, the Openbox indicated that the VPID was the same across all channels. Perhaps the weekend show isn't regional?

edit: Looking at the EPG the weekday Lokalzeit has the region name added to it, so perhaps it is correct this Saturday version is the same across all regions. Will try again on Monday.
 
Fisty McB said:
I've long assumed that Sky UK & Ireland receivers, or at least some of them, are not capable of PID switching that the likes of the Germans & Austrians use when dealing with regional opt outs on Satellite and that is the big reason the BBC have had to send parallel streams full-time for each English region.
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I'm sure if Ofcom had any teeth they could make Sky update the boxes to make it work. As it would mostly benefit PSB channels I would not be surprised if it was a deliberate choice by Sky. The BBC could use it as selling point for Freesat.
 
At 6:30pm the Pace Sky+ HD box switched almost seamlessly from 720p HD to the 576i Lokalzeit Dortmund programme, and back again to 720p at 7:00pm. Assuming Freesat and subsequent Sky boxes do the same I can't think of any reason why the BBC couldn't employ the same method.
 
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