Govt “keen to encourage” shift to HD broadcasts
Some hope that more high definition broadcasts may be on the way?
- Published by David Knox
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While frustrated viewers complain about a lack of high definition broadcasts for sports finals, the government is “keen to encourage” all Australian television networks to make the full shift to MPEG-4 broadcasting.
MPEG-4 is a superior compression to HD used by MPEG-2 in Australia, and is currently used in a number of European countries.
Fairfax reports so far it has only been trialled in Australia for Nine Network’s 3D broadcasts during the 2012 London Olympics.
Most Australian digital television sets less than 10 years old should support MPEG-4, including those with the Freeview logo.
But the good news would come at the expense of Community Television networks, forced to lose broadcasting spectrum by the end of 2015.
Under current regulations, networks must broadcast their primary channel in standard definition despite the completion of analogue switch-off at the end of 2013.
Last week a TEN spokesperson told TV Tonight, “We have asked the Government to get rid of the regulation currently preventing us from broadcasting our primary channel, TEN, in HD. Once the restriction is gone we will be able to provide more premium HD content to viewers.”
7 Responses
“Once the restriction is gone we will be able to provide more premium HD content to viewers.”
Of course, they can do that now in simulcast with their SD channel, at least partially. Like they did for the first decade or so of digital TV.
Looks like another STB to be attached to my TV or better still let Foxtel do it for us on their IQ3
The problem with simply putting MPEG-4 broadcasts on top of the existing DVB-T digital transmission standard (as NZ and several other markets have done) is that it’s then a non-standard implementation, DVB-T officially only supports MPEG-2.
The government should be looking at introducing the later and much more efficient DVB-T2 standard, which includes MPEG-4 as well as other changes that save even more spectrum than simply transmitting DVB-T with MPEG-4. But that’s a much more difficult transition as virtually no existing TVs or STBs support DVB-T2 (currently the UK is the only market using DVB-T2 that I’m aware of) and so everyone will have to buy new equipment all over again to use it… Clearly it would have to be phased in over several years, and given that we’ve only just finished the DVB-T transition that seems a big ask.
Also to be kept in mind is that MPEG-4 is no…
Another example of Australia’s governments stuffing up our TV system, where NZ and other countries can get it right. What genius also put channels 3 and 4 originally in the internationally-used FM radio band, only to have to move them later to accommodate FM radio?
It’s crazy that there should be any regulations preventing them from providing higher quality broadcasts.
More importantly than Europe, MPEG-4 is also what is used in New Zealand, and most tvs and pvrs are made for both markets.
“Most Australian digital television sets less than 10 years old should support MPEG-4”
Actually, this isn’t true. A surprising number of digital TVs don’t support Mpeg4, or support it poorly (such as Panasonic’s early implementations). Anything made in the past 4 years or so will very likely support it, but if you have a set from before the current decade, there’s a better than even chance it won’t (and that includes ‘brand name’ sets).