ONE HD: SC10 & Foxtel ‘fess up
Updated: So will regional and Foxtel viewers be getting ONE next week? TV Tonight puts the hard questions to Southern Cross and Foxtel.
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UPDATED: ONE may be launching next week to city viewers but regional television viewers will be waiting until mid year to see the new 24hr sports channel on Southern Cross Television.
Greg Dodgson, Chief Operating Officer for Macquarie Southern Cross Media, told TV Tonight the delay was caused by extensive changes to upgrade its facilities to 23 markets.
“We still haven’t built our infrastructure and we’re still testing to be able to carry it across all the sub-markets and towns in our broadcast footprint,” he said.
“We’re committed to carrying ONE but we’re still in a testing phase. And we’re still building to be able to put it across the 23 markets that we’re going to carry it in.
“It’s likely to be the middle of the year, which is not far away.”
So far some Southern Cross viewers are seeing high definition testing pictures.
“What you’re getting on the HD service is pretty pictures from around the country. It’s what we call a loop tape. That’s our programming that we’re putting out the moment because we’re building the infrastructure and testing to carry ONE.”
But not all regional viewers (ie. Central Australia) will wind up getting ONE because government regulation only requires the HD signal in specific markets.
“There’s not a requirement to broadcast in HD in those areas and you can appreciate the cost involved in broadcasting. We’re not going to put it any further afield then we’ve got to,” he conceded.
TV Tonight has made available maps of four key regional markets: in Queensland(Aggregate market A), Northern NSW (Aggregate market B), Southern NSW (Aggregate market C) and Victoria (Aggregate market D). Tasmania and Darwin maps were not supplied.
In tight economic times Dodgson concedes the arrival of ONE is a taxing challenge.
“The metros (TEN) have only got to put out in 5 markets. This takes my Playout Centre that I look after from 35 to 63 Channels. There’s nothing like it in the rest of Australia. It’s just substantial.”
SC 10 says when the time comes it will be promoting the start date on-air and in its regular program guides.
Meanwhile Foxtel, which no doubt views a 24 hour sports channel as direct competition, says the onus on adding extra channels is dependent on channels covering the costs of adding to satellite capacity. Each network has separate retransmission deals.
Foxtel cable viewers who have the IQ2 and currently receive TEN HD will be able to access ONE HD.
Until an extra satellite is launched later this year, satellite viewers in other cities will be kept waiting.
“Currently Foxtel cable subscribers have access to all FTA standard definition and FTA HD channels via Foxtel, including TEN SD and TEN HD,” said a Foxtel spokesperson. “Any additional channels launched by the FTA channels will be available to cable customers subject to each channel’s retransmission agreement.”
Until an agreement is reached over costs, the standard digital version of ONE will not be available to Foxtel viewers either.
“In relation to satellite Foxtel customers, Optus will be launching a new satellite later this year – providing additional capacity – and we may retransmit the additional Channel TEN channels subject to Channel TEN agreeing to cover the cost of obtaining the satellite capacity to retransmit its new channels.”
UPDATED 16 March: Greg Dodgson has qualified statements made in relation to SC10 owned markets (Aggregate Markets A, B, C, D) over markets that are shared with other companies (including Tasmania and Darwin). Contrary to earlier information there is a requirement to broadcast HD into Tasmania and Darwin, however they are not fully owned SC10 stations. This means Tasmanian and Darwin viewers WILL get ONE in HD on SC10 at the same time as other markets.
“I’m confident they’ll get them in the middle of the year like other viewers but we don’t fully own that signal,” said Dodgson.
SC10 also has no plans for its secondary digital channel.
“When we broadcast ONE HD in the middle of the year it will come out as HD. But we don’t have any plans yet with our SD2 channel.”
TV Tonight apologises for any confusion (particularly for Tassie & Darwin viewers!) in the ever-changing landscape that is digital television! Please note in order to avoid further confusion, previous comments relating to these markets will be deleted.
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104 Responses
i also make comment of the idiotic comment from Russell. scale of economics- what a load of bullshit. regional networks have been streaming from Metropolitan affiliates for generations now, why can’t they do the same with ONE in an SD format just like Ten will in Metro areas??
sports fans that don’t live in Metro Areas are going to be left way behind in terms of coverage, because the content that Foxtel showed that is now only on TenHD or ONEHD is unavailable to us, case point- Marcos Ambrose’s win at Watkins Glen last year (10.08.08 AEST), we read about it before we saw a 1 hour highlights package (24.08.08). Foxtel is available nationally and in NZ, and if they have the technology to do that, why don’t the FTA Metro Stations? there would be nothing stopping them broadcasting around the state on digital services! another way that we’ll miss out was touched on earlier, the Grand Prix PRIX- ONE will air 7 hours of live coverage on Friday to which we won’t see, and another 1.5 hours after F1 Qualifying on Saturday Night. we miss 2 V8 Races due to SC10. Ten is the only network that deprives fans in regional areas of sport coverage.
SC10 should run their 2nd SD Channel just as Ten are, with ONE HD content in SD format, and they already have SD facilities hence, there should be nothing stopping them from streaming ONE SD by 26.03.09. and you would think that they would’ve started working on this operation earlier given that Ten announced it in Spring last year. what i also find amazing is that SC10 have one facility for regional Australia, unlike 10 which has 1 in each of the 5 metro areas. so if SC10 can broadcast across Australia, why can’t Ten broadcast across the state??
There are licenses for separate markets, just as Foxtel is city, Austar is regional.
It sounds like the government media body was right to investigate SC owning 2 stations in the same market in both Tas and Darwin. The ONE issue proved the media laws are a big mess which often leads to confusion. If there was no 50% rule of existing stations owning Ten in both Tas and Darwin and if those markets were treated the same as other regional areas the confusion will never have happened and people would have been less emotional and angry than they are now.
Yep Macca – football fans have been staying up or getting up in the early hours for nearly 30 years thanks to SBS. Toughen up girly man!
Andrew B – what is wanted is3x the content in the best possible (and available PQ/SQ). ONE SD is not what people would be excited about but ONE HD is. As for Ten being SD only now, well, the government need to switch to MPEG 4 longterm or allocate more spectrum – no other options. 15 unique content channels in HD or better SD should be the minimum not 10xSD plus 5xHD (simulcasts). Seems a better option in the long term to limit ONE HD to HD only and use the SD allocation for something else like other new third content stream or TEN HD.
As I thought, the mixed ownership structures have lent NT and Tas to be last served in the process (seems logical). Also shows how interpretation of statements can lead to confusion in the apparent clear understanding that SC explained on the weekend. They look at it with the fact mixed ownership can prove troublesome in guaranteeing what will happen whereas Macquarie Media shoul dbe able to say yes or no to their exclusive service. Seems promising for regional viewers with such a quick clarification.
When are the new channels coming? Soooooon! Very soooooon!
I’m still waiting for channel 7 to show up on my Foxtel (satellite)!
They have been promoing ONE extensively on our DDT feed in Darwin. If they in fact don’t deliver on the start date promised – isn’t it fraud?
@Russell, ONE HD is replacing TEN HD which launched about 8-10 months ago. It should not take more than a year for SC10 to show HD content. It should be launching on TEN and SC10 at the same time. It will not be the first time that TEN has shown programs on its HD chan nel.
except russell that these promises have been made for years now, it is always just a few months away, it’s like the boy who cried wolf, they said it so much that now no one believes them.
What is the problem?
The network launches in March to major markets, and 4 months later to smaller markets. It’s called scale of economics. Larger cities usually get things before smaller cities. Waiting 4 months is not going to kill anyone…
Barry I’ve had PayTV (Austar) for years but that’s not the point, F1 has only ever been on FTA in this country, no FoxSports or other coverage and the F1 GP in Aust is a once a year event, we will never get that coverage back once it’s aired in 2 weeks. Why is it the non capital cities that always looses out, last to get things but I can accept that not everyone gets every thing at the same time. no what annoys me is I got a HDTV over a year ago for the additional HD coverage and locally we have had the ‘test pattern’ for longer than that with no signs of getting 10HD (or 9HD).
ha, so with that update this now means that once SC10 finally gets the regional parts of australia some HD service, they could end up with a better deal than the cities (probably not for many years though) because they are not dedicating 2 channels to the same content, they are willing to have 3 separate channels, unlike 10. maybe all those who missed out on 10HD exclusive shows do stand a chance of seeing them somewhere down the line on this 2nd SD channel.
Surely Tassie has the capacity to have this channel as soon as it launches on the mainland already? TDT HD [Ten HD] over here bears no test pattern – it is ten HD as it is on the mainland??
@Barry Goodtimes: you may not pay the networks directly but all the money they make comes ads which are charged by how many viewers they get so it is us the viewers who are giving the networks their business which means they should be listening to what we what so we dont switch off. i don’t see the need you have to come to a tv site and tell people off for talking about tv, no one said tv is the most important thing in the world but this is a tv site and that what people talk about hear just like people talk about sport on sport sites and tech on tech sites, that don’t mean that all we care about is tv it just means the this is a site that talks about one specific subject.
Barry Goodtimes says stop whinging and just get Foxtel. I think you are a bit of a tool and obviously live in a capital city Barry or you would know that people living in the regional areas can’t get Foxtel and are stuck with Austar who don’t have HDTV! This is the whole reason why SC10 not showing ONEHD is starting to get people upset.
@ Rob: Suggest ONE HD is here to stay, only possible change would be that ONE HD stops being full time giving way for normal 10 shows to be in HD (the biggest complaint about it) leaving ONE SD as the full time sports channel with the HD channel a combo of both (or even different content).
Its TV and It’s free so why complain about it?? None of you are putting up the cash to get these projects off the ground so you can’t really complain.. get foxtel and if that doesn’t meet your high standard of television bradcasting requirments then you can complain cause you’re actually paying for it… better yet stop watching tv and get a life
9 years ago I bought a c-band dish to pickup F1, i’d never have thought back then that I would still be needing it in 2009 to watch F1 live….as an avid F1 follower – best $500 I ever spent!
I reckon ONE is not being setup on SC10 as it’s being “trialled” in the cities, and if it’s not popular they’ll axe it and SC10 would not have wasted money setting it up regionally 😉
Well I think that if only all Australia had access to the major channels at the very least. In central Australia they don’t even have Ten, let alone ever having OneHD. I don’t understand how we are supposedly one country yet we can’t even deliver the basics to everyone.
People have to remember that people do live out of the capital cities. No wonder people can’t be encouraged to live out in these areas, they get forgotten time and time again.
When they say “mid year”, which year are they talking about?
While we are at it, why don’t we include WIN Television in this HD farce. At least SC10 have changed their HD content (read loop) over the last eight years whereas WIN can’t even manage to do that.
My HDTV will have to be replaced by the time HD programs are scheduled on these two pathetic excuses for television stations in this so called “digital age”.
I’m over this crap.
@Rob. I have a PVR, recording the race is not an issue, I like to watch it as close to ‘live’ as I can. I hate hearing the result next day if I haven’t watched the race.
rob you are being sarcastic aren’t you
Scott (the Monto man), Seven doesn’t give a razoo about Queensland. The “Love You Queensland” revival is as hollow as Freeview. 7’s not even covering the QLD election count next Saturday, instead going for a networked schedule, while Win will take Nine’s Election coverage/50th spectacular on news.
A low shot for a network who prides itself on being “Queensland’s news leader”.
As for SCONEHD, I wouldn’t put my pumpkin on SC launching One until this time in 2010 at the rate they are going…
If Southern Cross cannot afford to run the channel, then they shouldn’t even be in the business. The testing phase story is just that, a story. They aren’t testing anything, they are just trying to figure out how to make money on it. We have seen in the past that SC10 are totally capable of retransmitting anything that is on Ten HD. When are they going to put their customers first? When will they realise that people are not going to sponsor or advertise on a channel that shows nothing but a HD loop. Its their responsibility to make the first move. Macquarie should never have been given the chance to be in control of such a large market. They appear to be way out of their depth and should have their licence removed..
@David I know 10SD will have the F1 but it’s ‘limited’ to about 10 hours over the weekend, ONE HD will have some 22 hours of extended coverage for the Aust F1GP over the weekend, which I would love to see in 2 weeks.