Crystal Palace DSO is looming...

[petertheorgan]

Otherwise known as Heatercathodeshort and Petertheorgan !

[pichacker]

Fame at last

I've got my speccy analyser ready to take a few more snap shots next week and after the 18th. These will be posted and then...........well it's all over for the VSB AM stuff.

[raditechman]

I like the idea of the Crystal Palace transmitter being illuminated for the switch off.(mentioned at the end of the video report). Must go and see that.
John

[ppppenguin]

Originally Posted by raditechman

I like the idea of the Crystal Palace transmitter being illuminated for the switch off.

No doubt the commentator on the day will say "It's all lit up"

Somewhere near me is a tiny relay for CP "Finchley" which I think is rated at 2W. I know roughly where it must be but I've never found it. It must be on top of a building in Finchley Central with an aerial that looks like a yagi. It's meant to serve the Dollis Valley which is badly shadowed from CP. Can't say I've seen more than a handful of vertically polarised aerials down there. Most have CP aerials on very tall poles. Or have satellite/cable. Not sure it was worth the money doing DSO on this TX.

[Ray Cooper]

Originally Posted by ppppenguin

...Somewhere near me is a tiny relay for CP "Finchley" which I think is rated at 2W. I know roughly where it must be but I've never found it. It must be on top of a building in Finchley Central with an aerial that looks like a yagi...

Here you go...http://tx.mb21.co.uk/gallery/gallerypage.php?txid=40

[ppppenguin]

Thank you. I've walked past there 100s of times but never noticed. I thought it was actually a little further south but obviously wasn't reading my maps accurately enough. The description of the location is slightly wrong. Golders Hill is over towards Hampstead Heath. I think he meant Golders Green, though the relay doesn't serve the low lying area near Henly's Corner (A1/A406/A598) which is where I grew up with chronically poor TV reception.

[jenkinsrichard]

On 4th April, when BBC2 analogue is switched off, we are told to retune our digital Freeview box (if we have one) to pick up BBC2. This implies that the digital Freeview multiplex containing BBC2 is going to be changed at the same time. Does anyone know why it is necessary for them to switch BBC2 off before all the rest in this way? Hasn't the Freeview BBC2 been independent of the analogue BBC2 signal?

[ppppenguin]

I think that at many transmitters they could actually do the entire switch in one go. Part of the reason for the 2 stage process is so that viewers who haven't prepared get a very real practical warning and have 2 weeks to do something.

[paulsherwin]

The Freeview transmission of BBC2 is unrelated to analogue BBC2. As Jeffrey says, it's done in this way so that digital refuseniks aren't suddenly left with a complete loss of reception.

[KeithsTV]

I don't know if the Crystal palace DSO will be similar to the Emley Moor DSO but up here BBC2 analogue on channel 51 was turned off, ITV analogue moved from channel 47 to channel 51 and the PSB1 (BBC) multiplex moved to channel 47 in the first phase of switchover.

So we had the situation that BBC2 was only available on digital and the analogue channel that was BBC2 turned into ITV. Must have confused or surprised some people.

Keith

[hamid_1]

Tonight's the night...
It looks like the same thing will happen in London region as well. Analogue ITV1 will be switched off tonight, not the BBC2 frequency. Afterwards, the analogue BBC2 channel will show ITV1 for the next two weeks, and BBC2 will no longer be available on analogue. Meanwhile, the BBC Freeview channels will move onto the old ITV1 analogue frequency, which is why Freeview viewers will have to re-tune. People served by relay stations such as High Wycombe will not be re-tuning as such, they'll be tuning into a small selection of Freeview channels for the first time.
To confuse things even more, analogue viewers who wake up tomorrow will get ITV1 when they press BBC2, and nothing but snow when they press ITV1.
It's interesting that BBC and ITV are basically swapping frequencies on both analogue and digital. I guess the broadcasters don't actually own the frequencies.
I'll see if I can record the switchover of BBC2 and ITV1 from the High Wycombe relay transmitter at my parents' house (they can't receive Crystal Palace directly, there's a hill in the way.)

[Tazman1966]

Well I've not long been in from work and the swap has certainly happened (on Crystal Palace) although I don't know precisely when it took place. The analogue end is nigh

[AidanLunn]

BBC muxes on Emley Moor have gone off this morning. I assume this is something to do with the Crystal Palace switchover? Does Crystal Palace supply the DVB-T link to the rest of the network?

[dsergeant]

The reason is that as part of Ofcom's digital dividend Channel 33 is no longer used for DTT after switchover, being part of the spectrum available to other users. Hence it was not possible to simply put the new BBCA multiplex on the old BBC2 analogue frequency - and to prevent interference with analogue TV for the next two weeks it could not go on one of the inbetween ones. Yes it will confuse some people, particularly those programming their VCRs.

Will be retuning my box later.

[Aub]

At a slight tangent to this, I find it annoying that Radio Times, this week, has large adverts for how to receive digital TV. It's annoying because I get the Midlands version of RT and we DSO'd months ago. I don't recall any such ads when we were going through it. Looks like the publishers/editor can't be bothered to exclude the ads from areas already DSO'd.


Cheers

Aub

[pichacker]

Luckily I was up last night when the first stage of the DSO took place. At the end of the program on BBC2 they made an announcement that the Analog was about to close and then ......snow.

This morning ITV had indeed moved to CH33, all the other still in place.

I captured the spectrums before midnight, just after BBC2 ATV closed and then this morning once they had sorted out the movements during the night. You can see that CH23 has been replaced by a high power MUX, and the C25 MUX appears to be missing.

The remaing analogs appear to have reduced in power. CH5 remains unchanged.

For reference I used my now nearly defunkt Promax analog aerial meter to measure the signals last weekend. (At the output of the distribution amp)

Ch V S
Ch23 76dbuv 69dbuv
Ch26 78dbuv 65dbuv
Ch30 75dbuv 63dbuv
Ch33 72dbuv 56dbuv
Ch37 72dbuv 58dbuv

Photos attached, 1st April 1600, 4th April 0020 (note no Ch33 carrier) , 4th April 0800

[emeritus]

I recorded the final hours of BBC2 Analogue on SVHS so as to get the final BBC2 teletext: it's not error free, but useable. BBC2 went off as described, as did ITV, but so did BBC1 and Channel 4 ( I think in that order), leaving only Channel 5.

ITV then came back on the old BBC2 channel, and the others were all back by 2.30AM. Presumably it was necessary to temporarily turn off BBC1 and Channel 4 as well to reduce their power. Not that I noticed as we have good reception here.

[Tazman1966]

I thought they'd reduced power too. Certainly here in St Albans the remaining channels are noisy.

[pichacker]

Guess that's to save a bit of money and enforce the need to change soon...

After all only a minimal number of people are supposedly still watching a 1Mw AM carrier or 4.

[Station X]

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