Ofcom woos theatricals and delays digital dividend

UK regulator Ofcom has published a consultation on the harmonisation of 800MHz across Europe, and proposes shuffling the digital TV bands already in operation and finding a permanent home for wireless mics at channel 38, by paying off the luvvies. Europe is hoping to make a chunk of spectrum at 800MHz available across the …

[Steve]

Ofcom

Now I am wondering if we will all have have to buy new Freeview boxes?? Or is the Frequency already picked up by the boxes... Or certain makes/models might need replacing.

Ahh well we shall see... Wonder if they will send out Channel 5 stlye men who used to come and retune your video player before channel 5 went live.

[Luther Blissett]

Tums 'n' bums 'n' ears

It's not just wireless mics that are of interest to "luvvies". Anyone on stage with several kW of amplification should be using in-ear monitoring, or they might as well drill out their ears and save themselves the anxiety of slowly going deaf. Try to find a non-wireless IEM solution.

It would be interesting to know if any of the other Ofcom-named stakeholders in this "digitial dividend" have a real health issue involved, and whether Ofcom thinks it is so much bigger than the Elves and Safeties and luvvies that it couldn't really give a toss.

[Mage]

Tuning

The existing boxes are obsolete anyway, but actually can tune this and usually automatically.

[Zimmer]

Churches compensated too?

I am hoping our church UHF wireless system is capable of using the channel 38, 614-620 MHz , I will have to go check.

The latest units advertised appear to cover 518-866 MHz but ours is a few years old now... so, if churches up and down the country have equipment only capable of frequencies in channel 69 will they be eligible for compensation too?

[Thomas Bottrill]

@Steve

I don't think that Freeview boxes will need replacing. The issue before was that older models didn't have enough memory for the table which tells the box which channels are available. This frequency change should just require this table to be updated, which is what rescanning for channels does.

[Red Bren]

@Steve

Your freeview box/tv/pvr will probably need replacing anyway if OFCOM go ahead with their plan to use a different standard for free-to-air HD.

I'm sure OFCOM will compensate us for our loss... oh wait, we're just consumers; here to be shafted.

[SImon Hobson]

Oh great !

Not !

So 61 & 62 move to 39 & 40 - so does that mean people with group C/D aerials will have to replace them with wideband ? Or will they shuffle everything about (yet again) ?

[Harry]

"The latest units advertised appear to cover 518-866 MHz"

Yes, that's the way they were advertised, but it was COMPLETELY MISLEADING.

UHF equipment does not cover the entire range, only parts of it -- and then only if you buy the right variant. For example (taking Sennheiser EW-300 Gp 1 as an example):

A covers 518-550 only

B covers 630-662 only

C covers 740-772 and

D covers 790-882 and

E covers 838-870.

If you've bought one for the UK, it will usually be the E variant, so will cover only 838-870. No amount of retuning will put it below 838. You would have to replace the internal board, assuming that they start up a production line to make boards for obsolete equipment, because there never was a range that covered 614-620.