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mrwish

A member since 30 July 2014


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mrwish

French TV

If this will happen then I presume that the RTL channels in Belgium will no longer use the RTL moniker


That’d be a big change in Belgium if that happened. RTL in some form has always been in the name of the commercial channels in Wallonia/Brussels since RTL TVI launched as a channel dedicated to Belgium in 1987 (with RTL TV being available before that as a channel shared with Luxembourg and Lorraine in France which later became RTL9).

The advertising market in French-speaking Belgium has become more squeezed in recent years, with TF1 and now C8 being allowed to launch Belgian advertising opt-outs.


Plus M6 can be received in the country, although there isn't a Belgian opt. What I'll presume will happen is once RTL is sold, M6 will launch a Belgian opt.

Although the share is low in Belgium for the French based channels, there is a sizable minority who prefer to watch those channels instead of the RTBF and RTL offerings in Wallonia, this despite the Belgian channels getting first run of French commissioned shows to ensure viewers watch locally instead of via TF1, France 2 etc.


That would make sense re renaming to M6. But M6 is actually not widely available in Belgium as it stands currently.

As RTL is (currently) part of the same group and has the rights for most of its programming, they block M6 and its sister channels from being carried on Belgian cable/IPTV, even though it’s an overspill FTA signal that would otherwise have historically been received at the border terrestrially, then shared between the télédistribution networks via microwave and carried (as happened with France 2, France 3 and also TF1 in the days before their Belgian advertising opt-out replaced the off-air feed). Ironically, this method of receiving at the border then sharing with the other cable networks is exactly how RTL-TVI and later on Club RTL started out, being broadcast from Luxembourg with the UHF feed picked up by a cable network in Southern Wallonia for distribution. I’m not sure of the Belgian legal technicalities but I think RTL’s blocking/lobbying of the cable networks, so they can’t/don’t do the same with M6, has been a little controversial.

M6 can be received terrestrially of course in areas bordering France, or via satellite, but the vast majority of Belgium gets TV via cable (Voo/Orange), or the newer IPTV services of (Proximus etc.). A lot of municipalities apparently have pretty restrictive planning rules on satellite dishes!
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mrwish

ITV Channel Islands HD


Do you mean what does ITV Channel Islands broadcast overnight, or ITV London?


Yes.

Also. There’s a satellite backup feed of the few Freeview muxes available. Does the satellite feed carry the feed bit for bit as it would on Freeview as such no encoding would be required on the transmitter end?


Yes, though each particular flavour of mux and the SI still has to be assembled at each transmitter. That satellite (27.5 W) only carries three 'ITV' HD regions as back ups. Cen West, STV, and UTV

https://en.kingofsat.net/pos-27.5W.php


It only actually carries ITV London HD (It's listed as Central on KingofSat but last time I checked it was definitely the London version). STV HD and UTV HD have no video or audio data, but I'm fairly sure I remember there being an MHEG stream for each, which I would guess might be a "sorry this service is off air" kind of caption for any transmitter that ends up taking the feed.

The BBC One SD (England) version on there is a special "region-less" one that carries the BBC News Sportsday bulletin at 6:30pm where the regional news would go. BBC One HD is the normal English version with the red "switch to 1/101" caption.

As you say, the SI for all regions is carried on there, which must get filtered and assembled at any transmitter using the feed. There's EIT ( EPG) data on there too, on a non-standard PID (58 ). I've only seen present and following information on there (now and next) rather than the full 8 day extended EPG, but it might be being transmitted!