The TV Question Amnesty Thread

Yes, ITV wasn't really thought of as 'the 3rd channel' until the beginning of the 70s and large scale adoption of UHF receivers and push button tuning. It was typical to have the four buttons labelled BBC1, BBC 2, ITV 1, ITV 2. It was generally assumed by TV manufacturers that ITV would get the fourth national UHF slot, (which they more or less did in the event)

During the VHF era BBC TV and ITV were often refered to as their local VHF channel alloctions. For instance in London Ch 1 and Ch 9. In Birmingham Ch 4 and Ch 8, and so on. Some VHF rotary 'turret' tuners had the most popular regions next to each other as you turned them, For instance, 1,9,4,8,2,10,.....

Just like BBC Four launching before BBC Three, then!

Okay it makes some sense. So ITV wasn’t really meant as channel 3 when it launched. So it sounds like it was relegated to the position when BBC 2 launched.

BBC 2 wasn't rolled out terribly fast, it didn't appear in some parts of the UK until well into the 70s, and in the North and West of Scotland BBC 2 and ITV arrived together in 1976

There wasn't really the notion of 1st 2nd and 3rd channels back in the day (or even today) BBC 1 and ITV were neck and neck during that era, and it was more or less a 50:50 split to which channel was the 'default' in households

I think the Channel Islands were the last to receive BBC Two in July 1976 along with colour television. BBC Two along with colour television only arrived in my home city of Londonderry in Northern Ireland in December 1975. Belfast and the east of Northern Ireland could get BBC Two from June 1966, however the rest had to wait a decade to get it.

Last UHF main station was Brougher Mountain (Enniskillen area) in July 1978, although relay stations were still being built for smaller areas until much later.
So BBC2 took a long time to have the same coverage as the VHF services.

Yes, and also remember VHF roll out for BBC 1 and ITV ceased early in 1970, so it wasn't just a case of BBC 2 and UHF reaching parity, it was a case of all three channels reaching unserved areas, albeit low and sparsely populated ones. Don't forget also there hadn't been much point serving some parts of the Scottish highlands and isles, becuse they didn't even have electricity until the late 60s!

It seems like a different world. The original ITA area for Grampian was North East Scotland when it was on VHF only as it didn't reach the Western Isles or that coast or Shetland.
UHF did eventually go further.

The entire history of TV in this country is like looking at a different world. 24hr broadcasts only started in 1988 (and even then only on ITV, that didn't expand to the BBC or Channel 4 until well into the 1990s), (national) Breakfast TV only started in 1983 and the concept of broadcasting during the day (and the evening!) only became an option in 1972 when the law was changed and its effect was gradual.

But of course change is inevitable, otherwise we'd still be looking at the Bat Wings on a 405 line black and white TV set...

Yes, Grampian's area was only the east side of N Scotland on VHF

http://tx.mb21.co.uk/info/405/itv/ne_scotland.shtml

To be fair, the BBC had a 7 year head start on roll out in that region, it made no sense come 1970 to put any more effort into VHF/405, so attention was switched to UHF/625

Since most if not all material is played off server now, what sort of file sizes are we talking about for the physical files? I presume something like The Sound of Music (which is near enough three hours on its own) is just one big file and not a collection of smaller files?

Have a look here for the BBC file delivery standards:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/1ixubjxijadb5vd/TechnicalDeliveryStandardsBBCFile.pdf

The important bit is an HD programme should be approx 113Mb/s and an SD one 50Mb/s. So that should give you an approximate idea of file size