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[Bowdon]

I predicted this years ago that eventually Freeview would be dumped once we had fast reliable connections.

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2024/02/freelys-new-live-uk-broadband-tv-service-to-launch-q2-2024.html

https://www.freely.co.uk/

[Alex Atkin UK]

What a waste of bandwidth.  Though I guess on the flip side if over the air broadcasts go entirely, it can be re-farmed to long-range 6G?

[Bowdon]

I'm glad we're moving away from Freeview because not every house could get the full range of channels. The transmitter that is the local one to my town is like that. I had to get a bigger aerial and pointing to Winterhill to get all the channels.

[Alex Atkin UK]

I'd forgotten about that as I barely used it so unplugged the antenna as one less path for lightening.

Being on a hill I can get a signal from the local transmitter and the regional one, so get duplicated channels and have to pick which transmitter I want during setup.

If I pick the local one I can get our local station but lose some of the others, but if I pick the regional one I get more channels but not the local one.

[HPsauce]

Freeview has been somewhat rubbish for us ever since it started, so we installed FreeSat years ago. Not sure how long that will last....
We have 3 Humax FreeSat HD tuners, one is also a recorder.

On Freeview it's very weather dependant as to which of two transmitters, both about 30 miles away, "wins" the tuning battle. And which channels are actually detectable/watchable.

That said I'm currently watching Portillo on Ch5HD on my PC with a Hauppauge tuner picking up Freeview from, I think, Crystal Palace. 

[broadstairs]

My issue with Freeview is similar to others in that the full list of channels is from the Dover transmitter but that is often rubbish in high atmospheric pressure and the Margate repeater only has a subset of channels. IP-TV will improve that but I wonder how many current TVs and recorders will get any new app required to view it. Also wonder if recording will be supported as that is useful for commercial channels as that means we can skip the ads!

Stuart

[HPsauce]

The broadcasters love managing your viewing through an App as you can't fast-forward through the adverts, only the programs! 

[Chrysalis]

Problem is not everyone has fast reliable connections.  Do they need the freeview airwaves for something else?

[tubaman]

The broadcasters love managing your viewing through an App as you can't fast-forward through the adverts, only the programs!

Couldn't agree more. A lot of our watching is pre-recorded on YouView which allows very easy skipping of the adverts.

[Chunkers]

The broadcasters love managing your viewing through an App as you can't fast-forward through the adverts, only the programs!

So true, we have a NextPVR server so we never watch adverts as everything is recorded, sadly I guess this will come to an end.  Will only really affect my wife as literally the only thing I watch on telly is MOTD

Hard to see a positive from my perspective, clever really as it hands over the cost of most of the infrastructure to us. Unless it ultimately ends in a true pay per view and gets rid of license fee, I'd happily pay 50p to watch the occasional MOTD 

[dee.jay]

IPTV is the future, make no mistake about it

[Alex Atkin UK]

IPTV is the future, make no mistake about it

I always thought it would be, I just thought it would be multicast rather than unicast.

[noddy]

Problem is not everyone has fast reliable connections.  Do they need the freeview airwaves for something else?

Spot on our freeview is pretty good our ADSL ( with no hope so far of fibre  ) is rubbish

[dee.jay]

I always thought it would be, I just thought it would be multicast rather than unicast.

I've been enjoying IP based content for many years

[Alex Atkin UK]

I've been enjoying IP based content for many years

Of course.  Due to the increase in storms in recent years, I never got round to plugged our antenna back in.

There's also the fact when it comes to terrestrial I only really watch BBC so iPlayer has me covered.  When it comes to Dr Who and His Dark Materials, it was in 4K HDR on there, so vastly superior to over-the-air anyway.

But when it comes to live TV broadcasts, it seems insane to do them using unicast, but I can understand why given multicast is just not guarantee to work with your average consumer router.  So feed a single stream to the closest CDN and let that worry about having unicast the rest of the way.