Digital television in Australia
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Digital television in Australia commenced on January 1, 2001 and uses the DVB-T standard. High definition, however, wasn't required until August 2003, after which time commercial stations had to broadcast at least 1000 hours of high definition content per year. Uptake has been severely hampered by legislation prohibiting multi-channelling of anything considered "entertainment".
Most purchasers of large screen LCD and Plasma HD sets usually purchase a HD set top 'box' which currently costs around AUD$250 (around USD$200/GBP£100).
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[edit] Availability
In December 2003, the country's first digital-only broadcaster began—Tasmanian Digital Television started as a Network Ten affiliate in Tasmania (Hobart initially, Launceston followed in July 2004—the rest of the state was to follow). The introduction of this channel has caused digital television to have a much larger uptake in Hobart, as opposed to the minimal attention the format has received in the rest of the country.
In January 2005, there were a number of datacasting services available only in Sydney, including a program guide (Channel 4), ABC news, sport, and weather items (Channel 41), ChannelNSW Government and Public Information (Channel 45), Australian Christian Channel (Channel 46), MacquarieBank TV (Channel 47), SportsTAB (Channel 48), Expo Home Shopping (Channel 49), and Federal parliamentary broadcasts (Audio only).
As of April 2006 Australian Capital Cities are well and truly past the experimental stage. Most cities in Australia that have a population of 40,000 or greater have at least one terrestrial DTV channel available (for example, Albany, Western Australia, has had DTV available since May 2005).
[edit] Content
Because each broadcaster operates a complete slice of frequency and can therefore provide HDTV at all times of the day if desired, each commercial broadcaster has at some stage provided a high definition demonstration service. This has typically comprised in-house 15-45 minute loops of purely HD content, sometimes including small clips of shows seen on that network. Network Ten provided a loop January 2001 to December 2002, followed by Channel Nine to June 2004, followed by Seven Network to time of writing (2007) in major capital cities. However in the regional areas demo loops are still used.
While Australian broadcasters are required by law to transmit a quota of their programming in High Definition, some comply by offering a 576p service comprising almost entirely upconverted material, which by international standards is not High Definition. Nine, Ten and their affiliated stations currently offer a 1080i service. Seven and SBS broadcast using the 576p format, while ABC use the 720p format.
All cities have HD and standard definition (SD) Digital channels on commercial channels Channel Seven, Channel Nine and Channel Ten. The ABC (Government Broadcaster) has two Digital channels, plus an upconverted HD version of its first SD service. The specialty 'multicultural' broadcaster SBS has the same arrangement, two digital SD channels and one HD channel which upconverts the primary SD content. Considerable HD content is now broadcast in certain genres, including most morning news and variety shows, some movies and some imports including most US sitcoms and cop shows. The UK drama Hotel Babylon, is also broadcast in HD exclusively in Australia, as of April 2006. It is believed that around 25% of houses are connected to digital.
Each High Definition channel must be broadcast with a Dolby Digital soundtrack. However content with a Dolby Digital soundtrack is still scarce. Feature films are typically only broadcast with Dolby Digital 5.1 several times a year at present.
Commercial stations are only permitted to multichannel in High Definition. This arrangement has been in place since January 1, 2007, but no station has started to multichannel. SBS has a second channel (a world news channel), and ABC launched ABC2 in March 2005, showing mostly arts, cultural and local/regional news and information. Legislation explicitly prohibits multichannels showing anything considered as "entertainment".
Broadcasters need a special license for datacasting.
[edit] Analogue Shut off date
The Australian government is requiring that all stations will switch to solely digital broadcasting by 2012, so the current analogue television frequencies can be freed for other uses. The original cut off date for free to air TV was 2008, but was extended due to low uptake of the new digital format. The low uptake is thought to be the lack of incentives to adopt digital TV, other than better picture and sound quality.
[edit] External links
[edit] Regulators and organisations
- Digital Broadcasting Australia
- Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA)
- Australian Subscription Television and Radio Association (ASTRA)
- Commercial Television Australia (CTVA)
- Community Broadcasting Association of Australia
