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Repairs to computers seem to be getting more and more difficult. Is it just that the easy ones are being sorted out by their owners and their neighbours and I get all the impossible ones?
People seem to be dreadfully poorly informed about digital TV. At least those who do not receive Satellite TV who presumably are badgered by Sky to swap over from analogue. I see now that On-Digital are going to spend some money on informing the public. Hopefully the information will be assimilated and acted upon before the analogue transmitters are turned off! Now that On-Digital will be called ITV-Digital how is BBC going to fare and how will this affect the appearance or otherwise of ITV on satellite? It's starting to look more and more like the battle between the two satellite providers Sky and BSB and then the battle for viewers time on Astra. Does anyone remember the time when we had three satellite sports channels? Screensport was taken over by Sky and closed down. "There isn't room for that many channels dedicated to sport". Having got rid of the competition they expanded the number of Sky Sports channels. Eurosport and Bloomberg are still free on analogue but you have to pay for them on digital. S4C is free on terrestrial analogue but you have to pay for it on digital satellite. Discovery used to be free, Children's Channel used to be free....
Now I hear that ITV is losing revenue. Not surprising as the lion's share of digital viewers are told to revert to steam TV to receive ITV. As most viewers don't understand how to use their TV sets they will now skip trying to watch ITV and instead, look at an alternative. Although ITV are leasing satellite space for ITV1 & 2 these won't materialise until Christmas, I hear. They are caught between a rock and a hard place... if they broadcast on "Sky", as it would appear to most people, there's no chance of existing viewers subscribing to On-Digital or now "ITV Digital". All they can do now is wait until the terrestrial digital bandwagon inexorably rolls towards analogue switch off and capture the few remaining viewers who would NEVER switch to satellite. Loads of people can't receive terrestrial digital yet and anyway the satellite option is adding more and more channels, not only through Sky, but also through new Eutelsat satellites that were originally guaranteed that orbital slot at 28-odd degrees East. It seems to me there are currently only a smallish group of viewers who might take up the terrestrial option... viz. those that haven't heard about the "free"satellite option; those who have a tree in the way of 28 East; those who haven't got a telephone point available; and those who will respond to On-Digital's advertising without checking on their options.
What's going to happen to terrestrial digital? One option is to give the whole show to BBC. If they were then to then pull out of satellite TV taking with them their TV and radio channels together with any other channels they could persuade to leave, and maybe also ITV even, then terrestrial digital would be in with a good chance of survival. The real pull towards BBC is the absence of advertising and the real pain with Sky is their boring, distracting advertising together with their unwanted loss of program coverage when relaying say golf from a US broadcaster (when they add their own huge amount of advertising).
All-in-all the organisation of digital TV broadcasting, I believe, is abysmal. It's even worse than the start of satellite broadcasting when government assurances weren't worth the paper they were printed on. Remember the "squarial". Faced with absolutely overwhelming opposition, the government "sponsored" D2MAC "official" satellite broadcasters ended up pushing the shape of their dish because that was all they had left. "I've got a SQUARE dish and 6 channels"... "I don't really know what shape my dish is but we've got 36 channels". BSB had no competitive channels, too few channels, too specialised an equipment, and a rotten orbital slot (over South America would you believe!). They went bust, were swallowed up by Sky, closed down, and their satellite was sold off to a Spanish concern at a knockdown price.
HRO
Heathkit SB220 Linear Amplifier
AR88
RA17
Bush DAC2
HMV Model 1375
Pye Model MP/C
Bush DAC90A
HMV Model 1643
Pye Model P93U
Bush DAC90A
KB LR10
RAP
GEC BC5441
McMichael 851U
Pilot Little Maestro
HMV Model 1121
Murphy A682SR
Grundig TK5 Tape Recorder
Alba R16 Tape Recorder
Hitachi VT130 VCR
Zapping faults
Goodmans 28" TV go back to top
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