According to the Australian equivalent of our funny cookie corporation, http://www.acma.gov.au/WEB/STANDARD/pc=PC_91834
their over the air analog TV is going away. In 2008, "Prescribed end of Analog Simulcast Period in Metropolitan Areas".

Anyone there in AudioKarma heard how well their transition is going? Do they have converter boxes like the ones here in the USA? Digital reception issues? I know that their analog TV system is PAL, 625i/50, so I suppose that their digital TV will support that rate along with higher definition rates. According to http://www.abc.net.au/reception/digital/definition.htm
their "ABC" (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) is using 720p for hi def.

Sorry, I'm just here for the analog TV sunsets.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3202/2460469236_b56b32fce7_o.jpg

WOW! look at all the chemtrails in that photo, it's a shame people are not informed about such activities as they are very bad for us all. They started the program about 11 years ago. They did not do it when I was a kid. I've been studying since the start. Ask the Australians what they think about what's going on. They are not happy to say the least. Sorry to be OT.

All I know about the ABC is that they are packing a helluva good analog(ue) signal
on 9.58 MHz shortwave in the morning! Interesting to listen to news from across
the world. For how long?

The shutdown WAS supposed to occur during 2008 but due to the poor take up of digital television in Australia that date has been pushed forward.
The latest I have heard is that analog services will begin to be shutdown during 2009 and the final analog services are to be shutdown by 2012. This slow shutdown will start in the major metropolitan areas first. This timetable may yet vary depending on public reaction once the phase out begins.

The introduction of digital broadcasting in Australia has been a bit of a joke as the government chose a quite advanced standard at the time and consumers were unable to afford or buy receivers initially to receive the broadcasts. Even now, HD digital broadcasts are poorly supported and content is limited compared to SD digital.

Until 2 to 3 years ago flat panel TV's did not even have inbuilt tuners and relied on set top boxes to be usable as TV's.

The general public are mostly ignorant of the coming shutdown of analog services. To date there has been very little information available and no advertising by the government.

zenithfan, dunno about you but I see a LOT of chemtrails around here. Sometimes they frighten me, quite honestly. Never knew what it was about, I've heard a lot of different theories.

I've done A LOT research in the subject, there is much disinformation out there so be careful. I know they spray heavily over NY, it was crazy when I was there. They do it here too, at least every other day. When those hurricanes were going on, they were not seen here for almost 2 weeks, we actually had blue skies normal looking clouds and stars at night. They frighten me too, contrails did not always look that way. Contrails do not spread out and turn the sky white, I don't care what anyone says. Look up Welshbach patent and the H.A.A.R.P patent, that is a good place to start. PM me if you have questions as this is not quite a tv discussion. LOL
Just a note: I went outside just now to take a call, the sky is filled with them here today too, of course it is almost completely white. here is a good time lapse video to watch. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2goxGkFQug We should now take this to the "anything goes" forum

The shutdown WAS supposed to occur during 2008 but due to the poor take up of digital television in Australia that date has been pushed forward.


The general public are mostly ignorant of the coming shutdown of analog services. To date there has been very little information available and no advertising by the government.

I understand that Australia uses COFDM (a system using thousands of narrow carriers with slow bit modulation on each) and not the 8VSB (a high speed 8 level modulation scheme) we have here in the USA. I wonder how well COFDM does in most reception conditions where you'd have a watchable analog signal. Our 8VSB can be temperamental, sometimes works well, or not at all, with a narrow region of "pixelation" image breakup. Also how does it perform with adjacent channel and co-channel interference? .

You are right in that we use COFDM on the DVB-T transmission standard. Overall I guess it works fairly well but it is not as effective as analog in difficult reception conditions.

A few years ago I lived in an area close to the transmitters that had problems with multiple path reception (ghosting). With analog it was difficult to get the antenna in just the right alignment to have a perfect picture but it was always watchable. The same set up with digital worked well most of the time but was prone to annoying bouts of pixellation as signal integrity was lost. This was especially bad when a bus stopped alongside the flat! At the time I was using an indoor antenna with a digital signal strength of 85 to 90%.

I now live in the country in a medium to fringe reception area. Digital reception is generally good as there is little interference and signal strength is sufficient for reliable signal reception.

Overall my experience has been that it is all or nothing with digital - if the signal is strong enough for the decoder to give a picture it will, otherwise no picture all. In difficult conditions though it will frequently pixellate in a small segment of the picture or worse even in what would seem like a good signal strength area.

9.58mhz, thanks for the heads up. I'll dial it in for the morning listen on my SW. What time? Sorry for being off topic.