BBC4 HD Seems to have appeared on the Midhurst xmitter

Isn’t BBC 4 being closed down? Or at least going online only, as BBC3 was for a few years. Now, they’ve returned BBC3 - full of rubbish to attract younger people- and are scrapping BBC4 to save money.

The COM7 mux has been totally closed down, some channels (e.g. forces TV) have simply gone, it was the last mux remaining in spectrum sold off for 5G coverage. I don't think midhurst ever had COM7 so you shouldn't have lost anything, but you might have gained some channels (e.g. BBC Four) that have been moved to other muxes.

From the uk.tech.digital-tv group it sounds like the move may not have gone smoothly for everyone, have you tried a full rescan? I can't say here as I use satellite for everything now.

They're talking about it, but that's an "over the next few years" thing, not today.

Its on Crystal Palace as are certain other channels form the bbc that are had versions of the old ones. That seems to suggest that there is more changes round the corner. Its odd that bbc 3s ciomeback is still there in both formats, but not back.

BBC news is still on in sd I see. There are a couple of other channels like CBBs, CBS and one of the shopping channels also saying back soon. Mixed up in all these are Together which has to be via the Web as it switches mode and says loading. Horror is now Legend, One of the CBS channels is plus now. There were numerous channels above 700 that it asked me to delete as well.

The whole thing seems to be becoming a bit of a shambles to my brain. Brian

Gaining BBC4 in HD is a big bonus for me because I watch a lot of BBC4 programs and being limited to SD was annoying, especially since I pay the license fee, but the people who watch Cbeebies in HD do not !.

Yes, I did that on my Samsung 22H5600 tv, which is how I noticed. I'll leave the Humax HD FOX T2 for a later date.

Long story. It was on the COM 7 mux (that Midhurst never carried) but COM 7 closed on Thursday. It was only ever a temporary mux.

The BBC are putting BBC 4 HD on PSB 3 (which all transmitters carry) but owing to supply chain and technical issues it is delayed. So for the time being there is just a holding caption being broadcast.

It happens that Andrew formulated :

Same here, BBC Four is as normal on 9 SD, but 106 BBC Four HD showing '...returns soon'.

What is a 'supply chain' for reconfiguring a multiplex? I assumed was all software. Does it mean shortage of staff, or is it some Brexit consequential?

No, it's pretty much all hardware, scores and scores and scores of encoders, and then software on top of all that for control and monitoring

It's several bays of equipment, plus a duplicated  standby set.

Several bays worth, and several million quid. The whole facility is being rebuilt to cope with all the extra BBC 1 and ITV HD regions, because the existing facility is running on 12 year old kit, and is not equipped to deal with multiple stat muxed regions.

Adding BBC 4 HD is a sub-set of the work that has been long overdue to introduce all the BBC 1 and ITV English regions to HD

Thanks for that explanation - authoritative as usual.

Reminds me of that pink Floyd song about their reaction to modern life '45 channels of s*it on the TV'

Only now its 60 channels of *high definition* s*it, on the TV.

I have retuned and I am getting the message that BBC Four HD will be returning. Does this mean it will re-appear automatically or will I need to retune again when the day comes?

It should just pop up when it goes live on that channel (106), so no retune should be required

I *think* that the tables which list channel name versus streams (video, audio, subtitles) associated with that channel already refer to the streams for BBC Four HD and CBeebies HD, even streams with those IDs are not yet present. So as far as I am aware, when the new multiplexing computers have been commissioned and the streams are present, the channels should kick into life.

When you re-scan, you are taking a copy of the relevant tables in the broadcast and making a local copy of them on your TV/PVR, so that if you say "give me BBC Four HD" it knows what frequency it needs to tune to (that of your transmitter's PSB3 mux), and what data streams it needs to extract from the many packets of data are streaming past it on "the conveyor belt". Only if the stream IDs change for a channel do you need to retune that mux.

I wonder how the engineers are getting on with commissioning the new multiplexers. Has the equipment even arrived yet? Shame that COM7's frequency had to be vacated before its replacement (new equipment for PSB3) was proved to be working. But there was probably an agreed handover date that could not be delayed - without penalty.

All stations new and old just 'pop up' on the multiplexes. Any changes of channel usually require a retune.

Well, different people like to watch different s*it. Sometimes even in HD. Some don't like watching s*it, they read s*it, listen to s*it, or whine about s*it in online forums. But if it all keeps a range of people amused in the weird variety of ways that they happen to like, what's the problem?

#Paul