> Quicktime MPEG4
(4.8mb)
> iPod Compatible
(2.8mb)
> RealPlayer Media
(1.6mb)
Maybe its just my uninformed 21-year-uni-graduate perspective on it, but the whole digital television thing in Australia doesn’t seem to be taking off.
The UK seems to know what its doing, and I know there’s legislation in Australia that prevents certain programming and multichanneling, but I think the only way people are going to migrate to digital TV is if there is more content on more channels, I have a HD television, and as nice as the picture is on the news, I’d rather have an ABC3 or a TenTwo.
Three of my closest loved ones have had set top boxes forced on them as “presents”, and after the initial “gee… thanks John”, I like to think they’re actually using them, for example my chicken pox laden four year old niece, whose father won’t get Foxtel got to watch ABC Kids on two channels today, with children’s programming stretching from 4.30am to 3pm across ABC and ABC2.
This video is an ad for the UK’s digital television push, the character ‘Digit Al’ is voiced by Matt Lucas and the ads have been “interrupting” normal television across the UK since the 5th of May.
7 replies on “Digit Al vs. Helen Coonan (both voiced by Matt Lucas)”
Not sure about the fact that multichannel promotion is prohibited. I have seen multipule accounts of that happening here.
But yes, there is a lack of content on Freeview here in the UK. The only channels worth watching these days are the BBC channels and the Channel 4 channels (But it seems as expected, channel 4 has no long term plan)
I like the campaign – especially the fact that it appears to interrupt real adverts (and not some fake adverts designed to be interrupted).
And along with these adverts there’s a ~12 page leaflet that was sent to each household in the UK (customized to the local ITV region)
What? There’s a leaflet as well!? I havn’t seen it. Why is it that the Midlands always recive their state leaflets late or not at all!?
I live in the Westcountry, maybe it’s because we’ll be second to switch off.
Here it is as a PDF if you’re interested: http://www.digitaluk.co.uk/en/where/west-country/resources/0/file/west_country.pdf
ONe of the problems here in OZ is that the ABC has been allocated a limite amount of bandwidth (now there’s a shock – the Government doing something to hinder the ABC!!!)
and as such – the ABC can’t actually start any more channels until they receive more bandwidth.
In fact the ABC has the lowest quality HD channel of any of the networks because they use some of the bandwidth to broadcast ABC2!
Coonan needs to scrap the content restrictions AND allocate the ABC more bandwidth.
Then we will see DigitalTV take off!
The commercal networks forced the Federal Government to legislate so they cannot multi-channel outside of TV guides and test signals, you might first think that they are shooting tyhemselves in the foot but actually it was a cost cutting measure, they didn’t want to get itno an arms race of sorts to see who could win the most viewers on multi channels. Only the ABC and SBS can multi channel, and they both have, but both are severly limited by budget and other restrictions. I don’t think we’ll see that dreadfull Coonan woman relaxing anything until 7, 9 and 10 decide they want to get on the trolley. (What would be nice is if 7 and 10 would sign up to be rebroadcast thru FOXTEL Digital like ABC, SBS and 9 have. Apparently 9 was given a good deal on the satellite retransmission costs because they are a part of the same parent comapny, so 7 and 10 want the same deal)
Just read the westcounty leaflet on their site and a bit of the website as well. It is flawed, i mean it doesn’t cover all the Freeview channels on offer, its seems to be baised towards ITV and not use a general region guide (Check TV Ark for the BBC and ITV region maps). It also fails to mention the overlapped broadcasting that occurs in Ireland due to some of S4C’s transmitters.
One thing it did get right, that there is a date for when S4C may become enitrely welsh only.