Analog TV Swich Off Tomorrow (5th May) in Vic

[Gama]

Hi all,
You may not be aware that most Analog TV services in Victoria will be permanetly switched off Thursday morning at 9:00am.
I personally will be switching off services around the Ballarat/Arrat areas, and will include SBS, ABC, and WIN, so it should be fun..

So i hope you all have digital TV enabled, and dont panic when its off.

Theo.

[erick]

Must flick around the channels tomorrow night then. Should be nice static on the analog channels - maybe will hear Cosmic Background? Jupiter?? Meteors??? :D

[Gama]

Melbourne and a couple of other towns will still be running for a couple of years still.

Theo

[Chillie]

I'm set up to watch both digital and analogue at the same time. I want to see the switch off.

14" analogue TV bought in 1983 been to repair shop once and works like new v's 33" LCD digital TV.

[Waxing_Gibbous]

Now we can enjoy jerky, pixellated viewing interrupted by the slightest atmospheric disturbance wether we want to or not.

Oh well.
At least the phone companies will have all those extra frequencies and bandwidth so they can continue to provide the quality services we've all come to expect.

[Ric]

:lol: :lol: :lol:

[pgc hunter]

Ahh so it is this new digital revolution explains the mega-crap reception I've been mysteriously getting from my TV in recent months. :screwy:

[Barrykgerdes]

It will be just like the troubles when analogue mobile phones were turned off. The service area will be drastically reduced.

This will call for more towers with repeaters and more for the anti phone tower lobby to complain about

Barry

[Gama]

There will be NO more towers. Digital TV doesnt work the same way.
You would need to increase RF Power to fix issues.
And Yes, digitals always give more troubles.

Well, its all OFF now, and geez, the power consumption droped by 100,000 Watts, and you can actually hear yourself talk in the Transmitter Hall.

Theo

[Barrykgerdes]

Hi Theo

It sounds like you work at the transmitter. I haven't been to a transmitter for 35 years so they are probably quite different now. In Melbourne that was before color and I went up to the station with my little VSB colour transmitter to show some of the tech's one night

Having built TV transmitters I can agree with the drop in power consumption that Digital TV brings to the transmitters, No more inefficient linear amps! If this saving in power is used to up the transmitted power by 10 db the service I get would be more reliable.

However the only way I will get a more reliable service is a closer line of sight path which means more towers. At present I lose signal with rain or other atmospheric disturbance. Even with a mast and masthead Amp. I don't even get the analogue on rabbits ears

Don't get me wrong I love DTV's advantages but I hate it when the program cuts out just when you are about to find out "who dun it". At the moment with the parallel analogue service a noisy picture can get you the answer.

Barry

[Omaroo]

Theo - did anyone think to take photos of this event? It's a reasonably historic happenstance in our modern history, and I'd love to see what the machinery that consumed 100,000 watts of juice looked like. :)

[Barrykgerdes]

Probably not all that Big. I worked on (re-built) 5 HF transmitters that consumed about 100 KW each to deliver 30 KW of RF and each was 7' by 3' by 8'. The noise comes from the gigantic blower motor that is used to cool the PA (3 x 4CX5000s in parallel) . It also had a 3 phase variac to keep the mains at 415 volts and the main HT transformer was about 4' x 4' x 5' to deliver 7KV at many amps to a solid state rectifier that I built out of salvaged parts. Incidently the transmitters were second hand when we got them and were to be a stop gap for 12 months. They were still in use 10 years later!

The only tv Transmitters I saw were many years ago. The combined Sydney 7 and 10. There were 4 transmiters running into the aerial system with a diplexer arrangement to couple all transmitters to the aerial and remove the lower side band (VSB). This meant that if one transmitter failed its partner delivered 1/2 its power to the aerial and the other 1/2 to a dummy load. They occupied a room about 30' long.

The biggest transmitter I saw was the old 20Khz 100KW at Belconnen. It occupied a room about 50' x 50'. Its electronics were awfully primative however.

I never got to see our biggest transmitters (USN) at Northwest Cape because I always sent my 2ic there while I went to Sunny Cairns to build patrol boats.

Barry

[Gama]

Hi Chris,
Up at Traralgon, the minister was there for the big event.
But at "Lookout Hill" or Mt Cole in Beaufort (Bewteen Ballarat and Arrat) there was no one.. Maybe cause of its remoteness..

Any hoot, I have attached a couple of images from a SBS transmitter (30Kw) and a Prime and Win Tx on the other image.

If you want large Transmitters Barry, go see th SW transmitters up at Shepparton. Their pretty long, and using old Technology.


Theo

[Barrykgerdes]

Ah yes

They look much like the ones I saw 35 years ago. I love the "plumbing" at either end of the second shot and the RF changover "switch" in the middle.

When I did the E & C I took the TV option in the final year and qualified for my TV ops certificate. That was not part of the course but the two instructors were the examiners for the department and made it obligatory for us to do it.

Those were the days before colour and we used to set up IO camera chains. I got two Marconis from channel 9 when they went to colour and set them up in my garage. They were all valves in those days and needed 2 hrs of TLC for every hour of operation. I had 800 meters of camera cable almost enough to take the cameras down to the park.

I gave them to channel 10 for their museum in 1980.

Barry