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[dave.m]

Hi Yorkie,
All about where your TV pictures come from.

http://tx.mb21.co.uk/emley/emley.php

When the old mast collapsed I was home on leave and we went up to see it a couple of days later and it was 'something' else.
Lived at home in Barnsley at the time and it was only about 20 minutes from us to go ans have a look.
I remember it was ruddy cold and some of the collapsed guy wires were still covered in ice. They had about 3" of ice on what had bee the top edge and there were icicles about 2 feet long and very fat on the underside. No wonder it came down. There must have been hundreds of tons of frozen water on all the ropes and on the sides of the mast.

At least you are now getting your picture from the UK's tallest  self-supporting television mast in Britain.

dave

[oldfogy]

I used to enjoy watching them de-ice the mast at Sutton Coldfield, sometimes they would use small explosive charges and the ice falling was amazing.

I purchased a USB Freeview dongle a while back and with it connected to the main roof aerial received 60 DVB-T Channels.
On my ordinary (normal) Freeview setup I get 87 channels in total, although "most" of them are of absolutely no interest to me, such as Music, Shopping, Text and News channels, which then leaves "about" 21 freeview channels of any interest.

[Yorkie]

At the risk of sounding geeky, that was quite interesting, I didn't know it had collapsed, and I would certainly be old enough to remember. Didn't know it was partly concrete, always imagined it as a super oversized pylon on some bleak inaccessable moor.

Have to agree with you about the shopping channels, I'd heard of QVC but didn't realise there were others.
Watched a film last night, which I haven't done for ages, was pleasantly surprised, 'cos I thought it would be unwatchable with all the advert breaks (heard people complain about this with sky) but they were about the same as the 'normal' channels.

Sorry I'm a big kid with a new toy, even bought a digital TV guide

[oldfogy]

Sorry I'm a big kid with a new toy, even bought a digital TV guide

Now that's asking for trouble.

I did the same when I first had cable, even marked "ALL" the programs for the week which I would want to watch. which was a BIG mistake as I found myself then watching TV 7 days a week until the early hours.
Then I discovered most of the programs are repeated, repeated, repeated, repeated, and repeated again, so don't worry if you miss a movie or something.

My main complaint with Freeview & Cable, is most of the time if a program is split into 2 parts, I forget when the next part is on.

[jazz]

What a wonderful time for you to enjoy the full benefits of digital as the Tour de France starts today and goes on til 23 July!  ITV4 show a good "highlights" programme each day at 7.00pm for an hour (actually starts a little later tonight at 7.15).

Even if you don't enjoy the cycling all that much (and believe it or not there are occasionally people who don't!) you will certainly enjoy the scenery - esp the days in the Pyrenees (12/13th July) and the days in the Alps (15/16th July).

EDIT: Alps is Day 15/16 of race (21/22 July)

[Yorkie]

Not sure I'm into watching men in spandex shorts. 

[jazz]

  I don't blame you for that - but the cycling is excellent!

[guest]

Rizla, and others, might be worthwhile reading this - BBC are starting fresh trials of HD TV under a new standard they are calling "DVB-T2" (sounds like a Hauppauge product line to me ).

Might be worth a peek - unfortunately there isn't much (any?) information on the standard, but might be worthwhile looking up what this DVB-T2 is all about - it might be MPEG-4 based rather than the near-obsolete MPEG-2 standard currently used!

There's simply no bandwidth space for HDTV using MPEG2, that's why they're only talking about converting one mux to HDTV by the end of 2009.

Even in the UK you're going to be hard-pressed to find anyone in the BBC/govt who is dumb enough to suggest that viewers will have to upgrade their set-top boxes within a couple of years of buying their existing (already obsolete) boxes.

We no longer have the engineering management to handle projects of this scale in the UK with anything resembling competency.

DVB-T is as dead as Labour IMHO.