Future of Analogue TV and radio?

[Buleste]

That's shocking you're happy to pay for bad service because you get more channel's. Thats why Sky feel they can rip people off. If you are getting shoddy service then complain or cancel with them but don't carry on.
As for the Digital switchover it's just another shoddy cock up by the government. For some reason in my area if i stay with a Central TV transmitter i will only ever get 22 channels when switchover happens (in the final phases of switchover i might add) whereas if i change to a Granada TV transmitter i'll be able to get 57 and rising channels. That's my first whinge of 2008.
If Stephen is 17 then I'm in trouble as i've got quite a few T-shirts that are oldeer than him.

[AlexJ]

That's shocking you're happy to pay for bad service because you get more channel's. Thats why Sky feel they can rip people off. If you are getting shoddy service then complain or cancel with them but don't carry on.

It's not as if there's much choice. If you want more than the basic channels then, after quickly discounting NTL/Virgin, Sky's the only option.

[Stephen Coates]

In the Broom area, I get a very good analogue signal fron the Emley Moor transmitter, which transmits Yorkshire TV, however, I can also get the five North East channels there as well, and the signal is quite goog. I'm not sure which transmitter it is though.

The signal isn't as good as the yorkshire one, but it is good enough to watch. This was good when there was a programme that was only on Tyne Tees TV. I remember that when I got my new portable TV in 1997, that automatically put TTTV on channel 3 and I was watching that most of the time instead of Yorkshire, which was on channel 6.

This also caused a little bit of confusion when my Amiga's new teletext adaptor was auto tuning, especially since it didn't know what Channel 5 was and wanted to put it on Channel 1.

Unfortunately the TV signal here in Flanderwell isn't as good and I can only get the Yorkshire channels, and that signal could be better.

Is there really much point to having all these extra channels avaliable? I find that the only channels I still watch are 1 and 3, and occaisionally 2, 4 and 5. I rarely watch any of the other digital channels. I probably would watch some of the Sky channels if I had Sky, but on Freeview, there isn't really anything that is very good. Maybe except for News 24 and the extra BBC/ITV channels which might have something good.

This lack of good stuff makes me wonder something else. Apparently, all the TV companies are loosing money. The BBC is supposed to be loosing money somehow, and the commercial channels (according to something that was on the radio news yesterday), are going to be loosing lots of advertising money. There was a quote in the newspaper a few months ago from someone saying that they should stop focussing on digital and internet based interactive stuff and concentrate on making good programmes. I'm sure we would all rather have a few channels with excellent programmes, than 100 channels with rubbish programmes.

[Submeg]

This lack of good stuff makes me wonder something else. Apparently, all the TV companies are loosing money. The BBC is supposed to be loosing money somehow, and the commercial channels (according to something that was on the radio news yesterday), are going to be loosing lots of advertising money. There was a quote in the newspaper a few months ago from someone saying that they should stop focussing on digital and internet based interactive stuff and concentrate on making good programmes. I'm sure we would all rather have a few channels with excellent programmes, than 100 channels with rubbish programmes.

That is the smartest thing I have heard all day. Good work Steve.

[Buleste]

TV companies are trying to be everything to all people and failing miserably. BBC has 4 TV channels and about 2,000,000 radio stations (OK exagerating on Radio a little but not by much) and god knows how many chanels ITV have got with all these +1's turning up. The ITV channels are poor at best and BBC does produce some good stuff but most of it's repeats. Channel 4 and all it's varients is OK when they don't have Big Brother on but it is swamped by too much "reality" programming. Channel 5 can only be recieved if you live under a transmitter and haven't died of cancer. As for digital channels, well i scan the listings and the fact you have several channels dedicated to repeats says it all. But still soon we'll be able to have our repeats in HD. Won't that be fun.

[Harrison]

The freeview digital channels are on the whole pointless. They are the channels on sky that people flick through when bored, not channels people would have one every day. The exceptions are Sky News, BBC New 24, E4 and BBC3. Not sure any others are though.

The idea behind sky and cable has however always been a good one, to split the channels into types of viewing, with movie and sports channels being good because you don't have to then worry about normal scheduled programs on the main channels being cancelled for a football match, and you always know where to go when you want to watch a film. Plus there are a lot of other good channels in the lineup, such as Sky 1,2,3 which do have a lot of good programs, Sci-Fi and FX if you like Sci-Fi series and films, the Music channels, although many of those are now filled with musicless music (hiphop, r&b, rap etc... where's the White music?)

One think I am glad about is that they finally split the channel categories down more and have the religious channels their own section. That way I never have to scan through them!

One thing that is amusing though is that Sky promote the Sky+ feature as being great to have stuff recorded for when "nothing is on". Surely that should never happen?

[AlexJ]

The freeview digital channels are on the whole pointless. They are the channels on sky that people flick through when bored, not channels people would have one every day. The exceptions are Sky News, BBC New 24, E4 and BBC3. Not sure any others are though.

Dave can usually be relied on to have something watchable on if there's nothing else on and Film4 occasionally has something worth watching especially less mainstream and older films but suffers (like all film channels) from the fact if you haven't already seen it at the cinema or on DVD by the time it's on a film channel, it's probably not worth watching.