If I do that, some equipment tunes to the wrong transmitter; some tunes to the right transmitter, but uses wrong LCNs.

Retuning is only a simple process for those who only receive a single transmitter. Here, being in the trade, I have two antennas, on Crystal Palace and Hannington. Retuning on individual channels rather than a full auto retune is the only sensible way. On my own box a full retune totally clears my 'favourite channels' and I have to manual set them all up again. Then I have various TVs coming in for repair, some of which will need a retune for a period after the change, and there again I often don't know which transmitter their antenna is set up for. Different boxes store the channels from multiple transmitters in different ways. Every retune is a nightmare for many of us.

Apart from this thread, there seems to be very little about this retune anywhere - it doesn't seem to have been picked up by ukfree.tv for instance. It all sounds far too rushed for what is a pretty major change based on the couple of years run-up to DSO.

DMOL Has been consulting for years ..... and It was well known that after DSO there would need to be a update to the EPG ... and it also provides a "reset" after the Mux changes from the Olympics/Paralympics ...
But it needs a communications plan - but would you publicise it now - when everyone is either on holiday or watching sport!

The obvious place for the Information Channel in the long-term would be the Public Teletext space, and hopefully we won't see a 9th stream on Mux 2.

We've already had THREE retunes this year. This will be the FOURTH.

Not to mention I'll have to spend time going around retuning peoples boxes yet again!

But in France the regulator makes the capacity available then advertises for each individual service meaning that changes and the launch of waste of space channels are less likely than in the UK.

Furthermore the capacity available in the UK has had to grow and shrink to accommodate the robustness of the platform changing over time, coupled with the massive improvements in compression technology overtime.

At the start we had 6 64QAM multiplexes which gave around 144.6mbps of capacity, with around 36 channels.

The collapse of ITV Digital saw the switch to a robust transmission mode with 120.6mbps of capacity and about 32 channels (some of the loss counteracted by improvements in compression technology) and the launch of numerous radio stations.

Over time compression technology improved allowing even more services to launch.

At this point services in Germany started to launch - in a big bang approach which meant they went from nothing, to one multiplex (on it's final allocation*), to multiple multiplexes (on their final allocations) within a matter of weeks. * Aside from changes required for Save 800MHz clearance.

Then DSO in the UK happened - this resulted in the switch of transmission modes and the switch to DVB-T2 for one multiples leaving about the same capacity available on DVB-T multiplexes - 120.5mbps in all, but the addition of some HD services.

As part of the DSO some of the multiplexes didn't adopted there planned final power levels and when it was realised this wasn't actually a problem they switched transmission modes to a slightly less robust one but with final powers to compensate for it - 129.5mbps capacity in all.

In areas with local tv that is likely to see 135.5mbps of capacity

We are also likely to see HD capacity rise from 40mbps to 120.6mbps, then over time the SD capacity start to contract as we migrate to HD,

Have any other countries in Europe seen such changes to their platforms? No - they let us do all the development work and then went straight to their final modes!



Our LCN's might not be perfect but they are much better than the lack of LCN's you get elsewhere - my FTA satellite (Astra 1) system decided the best service to put on channel 1 was "Gayboys Live XXX" - where as the major channels like ARD, RTL etc were shoved way up in the 300s - can you really imagine the reaction of the UK media if our satellite or terrestrial services ended up with a similar situation?

Lets face it five services on a once a decade retune (1982, 1997 being the last two) is manageable (although the amount of TV's in uni halls during my first year of uni with Carlton on 2 and BBC TWO on 3 shows that perhaps it wasn't) but 100 odd channels on an evolving platform really isn't for most people.

Meh that's nothing.

There were six the East Midlands went through last year - two pre-DSO multiplex moves, the two DSO moves themselves, a Freeview retune day, and then the final DSO mode-change...

As has been pointed out there is no need to retune this time, although it would be helpful when the channels say "on channel 101" etc - I'll probably just sort my mums box out at xmas (typically I'll be home for the week just before the retune ).

And yet again, I'll have my relative on the phone, because her friends will have told her that they're messing with the telly again and she'll need to press something - and yet again I'll have to explain to her what she has to do: absolutely nothing (because she has Freesat ).

(to be fair, AFAICT on modern Freeview boxes you shouldn't need to do anything either).

Cheers,
David.

So that's three retunes in Tyne Tees land, Sept 12th for DSO 1, Sept 19th for this, and Sept 26th for DSO 2 there !

Would it not have made more sense to have made the UK retune Sept 12th, to minimise confusion on the NE ?

This was something that formed part of the DMOL consultation process. I posted this extract earlier, but I'll re-post it (taken from the DMOL doc linked to much earlier):


So technical simplicity was the factor, with the likelihood that there is less to go wrong (knowing that either switchover date involves quite a bit of work anyway)

Interesting to read Sky's rather bullish opposition to change, when they play about with the Sky EPG so often for commercial reasons rather then viewers expectations and benefit.

http://www.dmol.co.uk/__data/assets/.../78170/Sky.pdf

A retune for my parents is very onerous. They are in a main transmitter / repeater overlap area using a box that makes a mess of that (Humax HDR Fox T2) so they have to manually tune the 6 muxes. And then they have to re-enter all of their recording schedule, because the HDR Fox T2 deletes it on a retune.

It's the achilles heel of the HDR Fox T2, it's a great box for everything except retunes.

So where will this information channel 100 move to when the 5th HD channel launches? And what exactly will this information page contain, it's far from clear what the point of it is.

It's a trial, so presumably the trial will ends when the HD space is required.

As for what it would contain, this is from page 37 of the DMOL document:

Why put Teletext Holiday on LCN 201.When it is leaving freeview at the end of September.Would it not of more Intelligent to places it at the end of the texts Genre.

Based on your quoted description I would say the Information page on channel 100 is a complete waste of time. Even my elderly Aunt can grasp what the genres are quite quickly based on groups of channels. What she has more trouble understanding is why the shopping channels are lumped in with all the "real" channels ("real" being her term).

Well, the respondents to the consultation seemed as if they could not care less one way or another (maybe more people should have responded, at least then we would have gained a better picture of what people wanted and did not want).

Some felt that it would be a worthwhile exercise here we are. Indeed, the way that some DS members come up with fantasy EPGs based around genres, it would seem to be a popular move here.

I haven't looked at the original consultation, but it does appear that some wanted such a page to mirror what might be available on satellite. Judging by DMOL's comments, the same functionality cannot be achieved on Freeview, so we get a halfway house.

But anyway, it's not looking like it will be a compulsory page to view, so if it's there and you don't need it, don't go to it (or don't view the contents)

I'm concerned that it may become a permanent fixture on the HD mux and thus rob the HD channels of yet more bit rate.

Sandy Heath had six DSO retune events, so don't feel too badly done by.

Also the notes seem to imply that this will be deferred until 26 Sept for Tyne Tees land, so you may only need two retunes anyway.

I think most people would agree with your Aunt - and shopping/auction chanenls being mixed in with entertainment channels is one of the things that won't change!

Happily, both my TVs allow channel deletion.

It'll just be an MHEG slide (to start with, might have additional functionality later). There's no way it will take up the entire space of one HD channel.


I'm very disappointed with the lack of responses from individuals, given the amount of discussion on DS about the EPG layout and the fact shopping channels should have their own genre group.

If people had actually bothered to respond, even just to make one point about shopping channels, if might have made a difference. As it is now, DMOL aren't even going to revisit the creation of the shopping genre at the next review. Mind you, that's partly QVC's doing. From what I gather from the summary (I haven't read their actual response yet) they basically said "Genres are pointless, get rid of them. Stop re-consulting on things (ie. the creation of a shopping genre) that have already been rejected". They know they will be forced to move eventually.


Not really. Ofcom have handed the space to the BBC for now, intending to re-advertise it at a later date. They are probably in discussion with C5 as to when they might be able to take it on. In the meantime, we get something commercial. Maybe the temporary service will then gain carriage on one of the temporary 600MHz HD muxes, if they happen, and C5 HD will take over the slot.

Since Freeview HD equipment is designed to update things such as new channels appearing and LCN name changes etc automatically, will an intervened retune still be required?

The BBC was already advertising the mux space at the end of March, as discussed in this thread:

http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1644069


From the first post in that thread:

Bonkers. The BBC should hang on to precious HD bandwidth which Ofcom have handed back to them.

If it were my decision I'd create BBC2 HD as a new channel, leaving BBC HD to carry the HD content from BBC3 and BBC4. With the BBC's plan to just change BBC HD to BBC2, there will be nowhere for HD content from BBC3 and BBC4 to be shown. Criminal.

I totally agree with you on that, but it does ignore the effects of DQF on their plans, and I think that perhaps Ofcom might have stipulated that it must go to a commercial broadcaster.