Assuming by free to view he really means free to air - Quest HD ticks that box. Freeview / Freesat consists of more than five channels.
Not sure what is going on but E4HD (at least on Sky anyway) seems to not be in HD at the moment. It looks to be the same quality as the SD version on 830 and it has also dropped the HD from the DOG so it sounds like the HD slot on 135 is just simulcasting the SD feed.
BBC One HD, BBC One Northern Ireland, BBC Two HD, BBC Two Wales HD and CBBC HD are having problems at the moment on satellite.
The standard definition versions are unaffected at the moment.
Edit: Just before 6pm the problems were sorted out and are now back on air
This was the occasion when BT Tower failed spectacularly taking out the main and reserve routes for X Factor. I believe the sequence of events was that ITV rolled the standby VT and the fault had cleared just before the ad break so they were able to start the live show off the back of the break.
Thread from the blue place as it happened
https://tvforum.uk/tvhome/x-factor-32113/page-45
(02-05-2022, 09:10 PM)Steve in Pudsey Wrote: [ -> ]This was the occasion when BT Tower failed spectacularly taking out the main and reserve routes for X Factor. I believe the sequence of events was that ITV rolled the standby VT and the fault had cleared just before the ad break so they were able to start the live show off the back of the break.
Thread from the blue place as it happened https://tvforum.uk/tvhome/x-factor-32113/page-45
If I remember correctly, this was the one where the two paths from Wembley to ITV went down. However there was a satellite uplink that was being used to get the programme to Ireland for transmission there. I seem to recall that ITV playout ended up using that, possibly with a downlink provided at short notice by the BBC
Looking a few pages on in that thread, it seems that there was a microwave link from Fountain to TVC, but it then also went via Tower to get to playout in Chiswick. Satops in TVC did attempt to uplink it somewhere on satellite, but before they managed it, Chiswick managed to get a downlink of the feed that was being uplinked from the OB for TV3 in Ireland.
(And apparently I missed all the fun by being in the pub.)
https://youtu.be/hn_ACYCls6U
Here we have a silent Channel 4 Closedown ident after the clock, did this happen often? I think i do remember seeing a silent C4 clock into a closedown with no announcer once.
1987 and TSW lose the sound on their late film, and take an age to notice (from 11m10)
(20-05-2022, 05:17 PM)Bennyboy84 Wrote: [ -> ][
The test card doesnt look like a tower one but was this another BT Tower failure?
The router at BT Tower is controlled by their bookings system. You want a circuit? You have to tell them what times you want. Get your times wrong, or your event overruns and you don't extend it? Colour bars for you.
They change their test pattern generator from time to time, but the concept has been the same for a couple of decades, and has been responsible for quite a few of the breakdowns featured on this thread.
("Facility Line", as mentioned on the bars here, is a BT product name - it's a vision circuit between two sites. It can be direct between two broadcast sites but is usually from a broadcaster into the router at BT Tower)
For those who weren't quite patient enough to sit through the silence in that clip - skip ahead a minute for a bit of Bruce Hammal and some Sky Bassophere, natch.
