Analogue television will be switched off in Melbourne on the 10th of December.

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/tv-or-not-tv-its-all-there-in-black-and-white-for-you-20131206-2ywt8.html.

It was switched off here on Dec 3rd. On that day I relented and invested in a $39 set top box. It works okay except that there's still nothing much worth watching on TV these days so I'm glad I didn't blow hundreds of bucks on a digital TV.

I remember back about 25 years when the ABC wasn't such a treacherous left-wing outfit. Their documentaries and news/current affairs programmes were the best in the industry. About the best they can produce now is Play School because their other programming is just biased rubbish.

I never really got into SBS (or Channel 0 as it was called when it debuted in the early 80s) and even though they have produced some good programming I tended to regard it as the 5th channel.

Channels 7 and 9 are a little more watchable with their emphasis on sport (motor racing on 7 and footy and cricket on 9) and Channel 10 is hampered by its image as a teenieboppers channel.

The secondary channels (1,11,72,73,74,75,90,94,95 and 99) have some new programming but specialise in repeats of old stuff that never got a good audience when it was first shown on the major networks. Reruns of the Simpsons and Brady Bunch aren't my thing.

When I first lived in the bush there were only two channels. One local commercial channel (NEN9) and the ABC. Things were somewhat better with that arrangement because only the picks of the crop made it on to the commercial channel and there was a larger amount of local programming rather than just simulcasting transmissions from Sydney. When network aggregation took hold and later in life, the extra channels that digital transmissions had brought us it just created bandwidth for junk that should never have been committed to film in the first place.

I read an article through last week relating to why the Pay TV networks don't allow people to choose their own channels rather than subscribing to bundles chosen by the providers. The answer lies in the business model for companies like Foxtel who seem to believe that creating a silk purse from a sow's ear means allowing the channels they host to generate as much content as possible and just force-feed it to us. What they should be doing is ditching all the junk and let people subscribe to what they want to watch. For me it'd be the three or four sports channels and the documentary channels. I've no need for movies, cartoons, music videos, etc. And until they do provide a custom-build service I will never subscribe to Pay TV. If Foxtel is broadcasting a game of footy I want to see I just walk down to the pub and watch it there.

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...

Aah

The old chan 9&8. A mate & I have been searching for a few years to find the old logo. (emailed to Brad)

Analogue was switched off here earlier in the year.

Two of the large broadcast sites at Coonabarabran and Narrabri have actually turned VHF analogue back on, as the digital wasn't working as well as anticipated in fringe areas.


Ben

There's a few of the We're Entertaining You! station idents on Youtube.

Here's another one, and another.

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...

Good find!

I wonder what Charles is doing with himself these days...

Update: Looks like he hit the stage.

Station ident from the late 1980s.



Station clock from the 1960s.

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...

This morning at 9 am, after 57 years, analogue TV transmissions finally ceased in Melbourne.

Here are the final moments of what is now history:

I managed to arrange to have a non-working day today so I was able to witness the shutdown. Despite being in a marginal reception area I was able to set up a row of portable TV's on Ch2,7,9 & 10.

I must say it was a bit of an anti-climax. Aside from Channel 7 the stations made no effort to have any special content before the turn off. It was situation normal until all of a sudden - snow!
Channel 7 devoted around 2 minutes to a retrospective of past content that they aired over the years.

I'll miss the analogue service, the range and signal condition tolerance cannot be matched by digital.

Watch out audio broadcasting, your next in line to be modernized in the supposed interests of improved sound quality!

I'll miss the analogue service, the range and signal condition tolerance cannot be matched by digital.

From what I have seen, digital transmitters are nowhere near as powerful as the analogue ones they replace. Many major UHF analogue transmitters, particularly in rural areas had a power output of 1.2MW.

But it is the same old story with everything that changes from analogue to digital. Remember the analogue mobile phone network? It had some technical limitations but the reception range still isn't bettered by even the latest 4G digital base station.

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...

Here is the last 11 minutes of HSV 7 in analogue.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BU1yZ5mNhiI

EDIT: deleted.

It kinda sucks! I never got to witness the analogue shutdown here as I forgot but my TVs are still going with a VCR! lol I hope there will be analogue transmitter kits out there soon

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"I'd rather have a CRT than nothing" - me
"people just throw working CRTs out, it is NOT FUNNY!" -me

I frequent the Surfcoast area. Often, TV reception from the major stations 2, 7, 9, 10 is poor to non- existent ..... yet other minor stations eg C31 Ch 44 etc are strong and consistent.

Some-one told me that the problem is caused by the majors broadcasting both analogue and digital signals simultaneously.

Can anyone comment on thus issue???

Post Ananlogue turnoff, we are hoping for a better digital signal.

Cheers,
Ian

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Cheers, Ian

While both digital and analogue services were running some compromises had to be made with respect to transmitter power. The digital signals caused havoc with some analogue services and so power had to be carefully chosen as well as transmission frequency.

With the analogue shutdown the interference issues are no longer a problem so there may be an increase in power output at the transmitters but I wouldn't count on it!
Another consequence of the shutdown is all this free frequency spectrum on VHF bands I and III so they are reallocating the digital TV frequencies early next year to make use of the vacated spectrum.

As for the local surf coast channels being stronger than the major channels, I'm not surprised. Geelong is part of the Melbourne metro area coverage transmitted from Mt Dandenong. The local channels are probably transmitting much closer to the surf coast region so despite their lower power output the signal will be stronger.