Memories of the launch of BBC Digital 1998 onwards

[JAS84]

Mind you, personal TVF favourite Mike G, a month later, thought that "it's plain stupid to call it Cbeebies when there won't be the BBC logo on it. This is the first BBC TV Channel that won't have their logo on!".

Of course, not only did it have the BBC logo on it (the logo reads as Cbeebies BBC) but also, it wouldn't have been the first channel to not have their logo on. BBC 2 didn't in the 70s and 80s.

[James2001]

Neither did BBC1 (though they did have BBC in the name, but not the BBC logo).

[thegeek]

I can't find it now but someone should post the picture of the fan with a sign next to it saying "If this fan is turned off, the UKTV channels will go off the air"!

As it happens, I dug this out to show someone the other day...
https://thedailywtf.com/articles/Sophist...-Apparatus

[Robert Williams]

In the same thread, RW said that "BBC So' is one name I've seen mentioned for the older children's channel (as www.bbc.co.uk/so), but I don't think that's terribly likely. I also saw that they may not call the younger channel BBC Playbox after all.".

That was me - and I have no absolutely no recollection of this! I have no idea where I had seen the names 'BBC So' or 'BBC Playbox' suggested; looking in the Internet Archive, http://www.bbc.co.uk/so/ appears to have been more of teen/youth website, aiming at the same sort of age group as BBC Switch would a few years later, but certainly older than the CBBC channel.

In retrospect it seems strange to think that they would use anything but the 'CBBC' brand!

[Rdd]

I’ve often wondered whether there was always the plan to morph BBC Choice and Knowledge to Three and Four? Or were the services not deemed successful/distinctive and needed relaunching?

The fact that BBC Choice’s idents for most of its existence depicted things in threes may have fuelled that particular theory. One favourite theory that went around , but I have never heard officially corroborated, is that the last BBC Three idents (after the nations closed) should have been the launch idents for BBC Three but went on air as BBC Choice because approval for the name change was so delayed.

[johnnyboy]

I remember when they announced BBC3 and BBC4 having discussions on the internet that there was no way they were going to call them that, because it sounded so strange (of course, there's a seventies Doctor Who story that refers to it as a bit of a fantasy) partly because at that point digital channels didn't seem like "proper" channels so it seemed strange to pretend they were the same.

I have some sympathy with that.

When I was growing up in an analogue terrestrial world with 4 channels, a channel was something which had its own frequency on which it could broadcast 24 hours a day if it wanted to.

When GSB launched their "7" channels in late 1996, four of those channels were three-hour programming blocks on one frequency crammed into 12 hours a day.

To me, that's not a channel but that's what they called them in the promo trails. I would have sent an angry email off to them but a) I wasn't that het up about it and b) I didn't get the internet at home for another 4-5 years.

Using GSB's rationale, BBC Learning Zone and BBC Select would have been channels.

To quote Maggie Thatcher, "No! No! No!".

It's the same with CBeebies, CBBC, and BBC Four. While they do have their own EPG numbers, my 1970s/1980s/1990s upbringing can't consider them a channel in the way that BBC1 or BBC2 is.

What the correct term for them would be, I don't know.

[commseng]

The logic for keeping BBC Three and Four seperate from CBeebies and CBBC was to give them very different identities that the viewer could understand quickly. There was also the issue that you didn't want the youngsters suddenly moving from a bedtime story to more adult content at 7pm.

If they hadn't timeshared some bandwidth, and instead were completely seperate, but only broadcast 12 hours a day each, would that have made them channels? Not much point putting kids programmes out when they are in bed, nor adult programmes while they were at work.

There was nothing new in that - there was the BBC Third Programme / Network Three / Music Programme back in 1946.
If you remember the 1970s, then you'll also recall that the broadcasting hours on TV were anything but 24 hour back then!

[johnnyboy]

The logic for keeping BBC Three and Four seperate from CBeebies and CBBC was to give them very different identities that the viewer could understand quickly. There was also the issue that you didn't want the youngsters suddenly moving from a bedtime story to more adult content at 7pm.

If they hadn't timeshared some bandwidth, and instead were completely seperate, but only broadcast 12 hours a day each, would that have made them channels? Not much point putting kids programmes out when they are in bed, nor adult programmes while they were at work.

There was nothing new in that - there was the BBC Third Programme / Network Three / Music Programme back in 1946.
If you remember the 1970s, then you'll also recall that the broadcasting hours on TV were anything but 24 hour back then!

I 100% accept your points, commseng but imagine the old BBC4 24 hrs a day? That would've been amazing.

I do remember the 1970s and ISTR asking my Mam why people paid a licence fee because BBC1 and BBC2 didn't transmit that much on weekday daytimes but ITV did.

But I don't remember 1946 - not quite that old

[commseng]

I don't remember the Home, Light or Third either, despite being born just before Radios 1-4 started!
But it is the principle of time sharing being something that was done before.
My favourite one was here in London, when the IBA got two community stations London Greek Radio and Wicked Neutral and Kicking timesharing 103.3MHz. The trade tests for that in the formal IBA voice were quite something to behold.
I think they did 4 hours at a time - Greek programming and then reggae music, and back to Greek again.
It wasn't a success and WNK were kicked out and it's all Greek now.

[commseng]

There was a also a useful side to not having any programmes at times during the day.
As recently as the end of the 1980s, we were using the BBC 1 or 2 distribution networks to send programmes to the regions or nations during trade test times.
It obviously required all the places on route to subsitute test signals from TVC with their own local ones, and then bingo - a free line to any of the BBC premises you needed.
Bear in mind that vision circuits were increadibly expensive, and you rented them by the minute and were charged for the distance - so sending something to Glasgow from London at no cost saved a fortune on money out to BT.

[JAS84]

The fact that BBC Choice’s idents for most of its existence depicted things in threes may have fuelled that particular theory. One favourite theory that went around , but I have never heard officially corroborated, is that the last BBC Three idents (after the nations closed) should have been the launch idents for BBC Three but went on air as BBC Choice because approval for the name change was so delayed.

The bolded Three should be Choice.

[WillPS]

There was also the short-lived BT Movio service which streamed a handful of TV services to mobile phones via a data feed broadcast via DAB. For some reason.

https://www.radioandtelly.co.uk/lobster700tv.html

Yes I was going to mention that but couldn't rember the details. Wonder what the battery life was like on that?

There are several broadcast standards for mobile, or handheld TV - DMB and DVB-H for example but none have taken off apart from in South Korea where T-DMB is used on a lot of phones and to provide TV on buses

I had a Lobster 700TV - a few months after they'd launched you were able to get them at the Virgin Mobile concessions in Virgin Megastores for £50, or £30 for a "refurbished" model. Presumably the returns rate was high as people were sold on the 'TV on the go angle' but then actually tried to use it... the choice of channels was pretty small, and in common with early IPTV services there were sometimes whole schedules of programmes which couldn't be aired - ITV1 suffered in particular from this when they would show a European F1 race followed by a film.

The biggest problem was that the quality was absolute potato. Think the very worst of dial-up era Real-powered video streaming, then a bit worse. The application would only allow videos to play in a fixed frame the size of a small postage stamp and to top it all off the services were only really usable if you were stationary or walking slowly - as soon as your bus pulled off your stream would be intermittent at best.

The phone itself was great though, battery would go for days (as was still the norm back then!) and the DAB radio on board worked beautifully. Windows Smartphone was a bit of an acquired taste but other similar phones from HTC were priced at £200+ so it was an absolute steal at the price.

[Rdd]

The fact that BBC Choice’s idents for most of its existence depicted things in threes may have fuelled that particular theory. One favourite theory that went around , but I have never heard officially corroborated, is that the last BBC Three idents (after the nations closed) should have been the launch idents for BBC Three but went on air as BBC Choice because approval for the name change was so delayed.

The bolded Three should be Choice.

It should, of course.