How many new transponders is the BBC going to need?

[Huevos]

BBC News HD, BBC3 HD, BBC4 HD, CBBC HD, Cbeebies HD in a few weeks.
Then a few months later BBC2 HD for Scotland/Wales/NI.
And now there is talk about BBC1 HD for all regions later in 2016.

So how many transponders is that? And where are they going to put them all? 2F I guess.

 

[timo_w2s]

BBC News HD, BBC3 HD, BBC4 HD, CBBC HD, Cbeebies HD in a few weeks.
Then a few months later BBC2 HD for Scotland/Wales/NI.
And now there is talk about BBC1 HD for all regions later in 2016.

So how many transponders is that? And where are they going to put them all? 2F I guess.

I've read that BBC3 HD/CBBC HD will replace Red Button HD after the Dr Who special, so that can go on the existing BBC HD 2F transponder.

That leaves us with BBC4 HD/Cbeebies HD, BBC News HD and three BBC2 HD regions left. So at least one new transponder to start with. Hopefully they don't try and squeeze too many channels on each transponder...

 

[Huevos]

Hopefully they don't try and squeeze too many channels on each transponder...

Which kind of defeats the whole point of HD.

 

[mickwig]

If you think back to the olympics - there were always 4 HD programmes on any one of the Red Button TP's and 8 SD's. There is still a free slot on 11023 on 2F

 

[timo_w2s]

Which kind of defeats the whole point of HD.

Well quite, but I was just thinking how Sky have started putting five HD channels on each transponder due to "improved encoder efficiencies" or something.

 

[mickwig]

Higher bitrate - 29500 FEC 3/4

 

[PaulR]

If you think back to the olympics - there were always 4 HD programmes on any one of the Red Button TP's and 8 SD's. There is still a free slot on 11023 on 2F

Didn't Eurosport donate one (or more?) of their TP allocations for the duration? Perhaps there were other borrowings? And wasn't it just before the point where the Beeb were giving up one of their transponders as a costcutting exercise?

 

[Analoguesat]

Sky provided/funded all the Olympics tp's.

 

[hexah]

At least 95% of the content will be upscaled. A total waste of transponder bandwidth.

What idiots are going to pay for all this waste?

Exactly.

As PaulR said the beeb was cutting down on transponders and there is less competition in pricing now it seems Eutelsats frequencies are reduced so what is going on?

 

[timo_w2s]

On the Digital Spy forums they are saying that the BBC have plenty of spare capacity so no new transponders needed for the new HD channels.

I guess BBC4 HD/Cbeebies HD and BBC News HD could fit on 10847V but that would be 5 HD channels on that transponder. One of the BBC 2 HD regions could go on 11023H along with BBC3 HD/CBBC HD assuming Red Button HD is removed so that's another 5 HD channels again.

Then that leaves maybe one of the BBC 2 HD regions to perhaps squeeze on an existing DVB-S transponder? Still need one more HD channel though.

 

[timo_w2s]

Oh and I forgot there is going to be a BBC1 +1 (SD) too that needs to fit in somewhere...

 

[hexah]

There are quite a lot of null packets on some of the BBC transponders but to shoehorn all of the HD channels in I imagine some SD channels must take a hit on their bit rates.

 

[C0re]

For the regional programs of BBC One the BBC could go the same way as the German Dritten channels like WDR and NDR. Only during local programming the video/audio streams of the several SIDs are being split with a lower bitrate then.

 

[timo_w2s]

I remember reading about a similar discussion about that on a forum somewhere a while ago and I think there was some technical reason why it wouldn't work for them or something?

 

[Pietclock]

yes, the BSkyB proprietary platform system does not support the dynamic PMT feature, which is actually part of the DVB norm. That's why the BBC need to broadcast all those variations of the BBC 1 24h, although just 60min or so per day are local. Dynamic PMT is used in Germany (both satellite and terrestrial), Austria, Sweden and Denmark.