September 11, 2006

Horse 627 - Left in the Digital Dust

The time is now tommorrow and I'm watching the Italian GP where the tifosi is going to go utterly mental when Schumacher again steers his scarletti stallion across the line in first place.
Being in the English speaking world we of course happen to get our feed from ITV. Or do we?

When I was a wee lad there was in fact only 3 channels in the UK - BBC 1, BBC 2 and ITV which most people had on 3. Channel 4 was started in 1980 and Channel 5 started up in 1997 amidst fanfare and the Spice Girls who officially launched it.
Likewise in Australia there used to be only three stations being the ABC, Channel 7 and Channel 9. Channel 0-10 started up and SBS started in 1980.

Martin Brundle happened to mention that extra features were coming up after the GP on ITV4... what? What? WHAT?!

This shows you just how far we are behind in this jerk water burg we call Australia. Only now we have ABC, ABC2, SBS, SBS2, 7, 9 and 10. Since opening up the digital domain in the UK they now have on freeview:
BBC One, BBC Two, BBC Three, BBC Four, ITV1, ITV2, ITV3, ITV4, Channel 4, E4, Film Four, Channel 5.

The big players now have four channels at their disposal and space for datacasting and have done so since 2001. In Oz they're still arguing about Digital radio.

A report suggested that the switchoff for analogue in Australia for TV was supposed to be 2007 and for radio in 2008. I'm afraid that the roll-out has been so utterly woeful that we don't even have two digital radio networks left alone 4 spaces by the TV stations.

Now excuse me a while while I sit on the front porch with my rifle and stare at the McCoy's on the other side of the street. Hey ma, get off the dang roof! Can I eat pot roast 'till I can't eat pot roast no more?
Not if it's digital.

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