Australasian television frequencies
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Contents |
[edit] Differences in Terrestrial TV frequencies
Australia and New Zealand evolved different TV frequency allocations for historical reasons. There are some interesting historical reasons for this.
- New Zealand considered using 405 lines for television, but adopted 7 MHz PAL on VHF instead.
- New Zealand's initial choice of frequencies was aimed at New Zealand adopting a 405 line service, thus substantial discrepancies with Australia's VHF TV service allocation.
- Both Australia and New Zealand use 7 MHz PAL on VHF, but the frequencies and channel numbers differ even more substantially now because of Australia revising its VHF TV band usage.
- Australia adopted Zweiton stereo, and NZ adopted NICAM stereo.
- Australia , Fiji, Papua New Guinea and New Zealand all adopted 8 MHz PAL on UHF
- New Zealand uses the same UHF band allocation as Australia. For analog PAL service the only difference is the placement of the NICAM carrier vs the Zweiton carrier, for broadcasters using NICAM.
- With the introduction of digital television into Australia in 2001, VHF channels 10 and 11 were moved up by 1 MHz. This allowed a full 7 MHz for a new channel (9A). Channel 12 was added following the new channel 11.
[edit] VHF band obsolescence issues
In some parts of the world, like Western and Central Europe -- the VHF TV band is used by other services because UHF has propagation qualitites that are better suited for densely populated urban centres.
The US has decided to phase out its System-M VHF TV Low Band frequecies, although this is expected to take 10 years.
Why VHF will remain in use in Austrtalasia for TV broadcasting
- NZ will keep using the VHF band, as VHF has propagation characteristics that allow it to serve large regions with modest power requirements.
- Due to similar economics of broadcasting in rural Australia, it is expected that the VHF band will remain in use with no appreciable changes.
- It is possible that Australia's VHF channel 0 may be phased out, as it is not appreciably used.
[edit] Channel numbering issues
So far neither Australia, NZ, Fiji or PNG intend on normalizing the numbers in the channel frequency table.
[edit] TV Frequency Allocation Table
|
|
|
