How long are we going to keep pushing the crappy SD video on Freeview
and Freesat / FTA? It wastes bandwidth transmitting SD and HD, and there
are hardly any HD channels because there's no incentive to switch, also crappy 5G mobile phones stole a huge chunk of radio spectrum that was
used for TV for crappy mobiles - and a number of HD channels got the axe (but are still on Freesat).
Transmit all the SD channels in T2 (MPEG4) saves bandwidth. Axe ALL
BBC1, BBC2, ITV, Channel4, Channel5 that are in SD and only have HD
option. Move the HD from 101, 102 etc. to 1, 2, 3 etc, in the EPG.
Why is the UK so backwards? Look at now much HD stuff is free to air on foreign satellite, especially Germany.
Surely every TV by now has HD capability, you can't blame pensioners
having ancient TV's and old Freeview boxes for not having the switch over.
On 31/08/2025 03:53 PM, NY wrote:
"Steve" <steve@nospam.invalid> wrote in message
news:105dm1v$23nes$1@dont-email.me...
On 10/02/2025 19:11, MikeS wrote:
On 10/02/2025 13:11, Ar wrote:
Surely every TV by now has HD capability, you can't blame pensioners >>>>> having ancient TV's and old Freeview boxes for not having the switch >>>>> over.
My mum's TV can receive T2 so she can *watch* HD versions of programmes.
However her PVR (HDD), bought at the same time AFAIK, can only
receive/record T1 so she can't *record* any HD programmes. If mainstream
channels ever went T2-only, she'd lose the ability to record anything.
I don't see her ever replacing the PVR. She's of the very understandable
mentality that an item should have a usable (non-obsolescent) life of
more than 15 years or so. It should work till it breaks, not until the
technology no longer works with the broadcasts. Having had to upgrade
from VHS to PVR when analogue was switched off, she's reluctant to have
to change yet again. (Even if "yet again" is 20 years later!)
VHS / Beta machines didn't become *totally* useless overnight when
analogue was switched off. True, they could no longer record broadcasts under their own stream, but they could be fed with a video signal from a
set top box or even a Sky box if one wanted to keep a recording for
whatever purpose.
"JNugent" <JNugent73@mail.com> wrote in message news:mhja1oF4e7bU1@mid.individual.net...
On 31/08/2025 03:53 PM, NY wrote:
"Steve" <steve@nospam.invalid> wrote in message
news:105dm1v$23nes$1@dont-email.me...
On 10/02/2025 19:11, MikeS wrote:
On 10/02/2025 13:11, Ar wrote:
analogue was switched off. True, they could no longer record
broadcasts under their own stream, but they could be fed with a video
signal from a set top box or even a Sky box if one wanted to keep a
recording for whatever purpose.
Agreed. But they became obsolete in the sense that a timed event on the
VCR could no longer set an external tuner to the required channel - it needed manual intervention to change the STB to a different channel,
even if the VCR itself could still be timed to start/stop recording
(from the baseband video input rather than an analogue tuner),
I did have a VCR which claimed to be able to control STBs by sending IR pulses which mimicked those from an STB's remote control. But there was
a fundamental flaw: it only worked with a small subset of STBs. I tried
each of the presets in turn and could not get the VCR to control the
STB. It would have been a much better design if the VCR had been
trainable during setup: menus prompt you to press each of the remote's buttons in turn so it learns what IR to send to turn the STB on/off and
to send each of the digits for channel changes. But instead they chose
to implement it as presets for boxes that I didn't have - I tried an
Pioneer On Digital STB and a couple of other makes of STB.
It would have been a lot better if there had been an industry-standard control bus so you connected a control cable between VCR and STB, and dispensed with need to communicated by IR, especially as an IR emitter
on the top surface of a VCR requires the STB to be positioned very
carefully so a sensor into vertical front panel of the STB can see the IR.
You've reminded me about a Panasonic VCR I had which could send IR signals to the Sky box. It would turn it on, set it to the channel you wanted and then record through a Scart cable. It did have to be positioned underneath the Sky box, or was it above it?! It was a long time ago...
"Steve" <steve@nospam.invalid> wrote in message news:10f8coa$35hc2$1@dont-email.me...
You've reminded me about a Panasonic VCR I had which could send IR
signals to the Sky box. It would turn it on, set it to the channel you
wanted and then record through a Scart cable. It did have to be
positioned underneath the Sky box, or was it above it?! It was a long
time ago...
Brilliant idea, utterly ruined by the fact that it would only work with
a predefined set of STBs, so if you box wasn't one of them, you were stuffed. I remember trying my VCR, set to each of the presets in turn,
and none of them would turn on/off/set channel for my Pioneer OnDigital
STB tuner. And that was with the STB propped up so its sensor was right
on top of the emitter in the VCR. I later tried it with a few other
makes of OnDigital or Freeview STB. Same result. The list of compatible devices were makes that I'd never heard of, so I wonder whether they
were brands that were only sold in America (despite the VCR being PAL 625/25) or in mainland Europe (despite its tuner being UHF rather than
VHF).
My dad bought a camcorder editing suite which used an IR transmitter to control a VCR, to allow crude assemble edits (crude because VHS produced coloured fringes at every edit if you pause and then un-pause). That was implemented much better because you trained the editing controller by shining the VCR's remote at it and pressed each button in turn when prompted. They should have done the same with the VCR controlling an
STB: shine the STB's remote at the VCR's sensor so it knows what IR to
send to turn STB on/off or to select channels with the digits 0-9.
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