The reception is cutting out again. Freezing. Like the weather. The ‘no video’ message comes on and sometimes it goes to black when it gets really bad. The other townsfolk report the same sort of thing.
The occasional pixilation makes for some lizard-people moments, but usually the single frame left hanging is of an all too human contorted facial expression. How can it be that a perfectly normal person talking and engaging in conversation can at any one point look like a maniac, about to sneeze, suffering a severe stroke, sedated or any other Jim Carey moment you can imagine? Having Simon Dallow frozen in a stoner pose with eyelids half open, or Wendy Petrie inadvertantly captured with waspish eyes about to deliver another patronising sermon down her nose may be a moment of truth, but it is not amusing enough on a sustained basis to wear the annoyance. These interruptions really are the limit.
The government forced broadcasters off the analogue TV transmission and onto the digital platform of Freeview for money reasons more than technological advancements from what it seems. Like a heroin junky getting forced to go onto the second-class methodone there are problems with equivalence in effect. The Freeview is simply not the full, rich creaminess we have come to expect from analogue despite all the marketing.
The involuntary random live pause function is the worst aspect. Unlike a newspaper that is selling misaligned and blank pages, the TV viewer cannot just refuse to buy the paper and buy another. The “other papers” in this case are Sky TV and the Sky TV – TVNZ Frankenstein’s bastard orphan child, “Igloo”. The transmission issues are systemic and erode the credibility of the network. Some call it “rain fade” and it occurs, or seems to be occuring recently, whenever a whisp of cloud or smoke from a chimney or a bird or a leaf gets in the way of anywhere between where the signal is first transmitted and the dish on your roof. The new digital guff is on a hair-trigger of hyper-sensitivity.
Going to the Freeview coverage page on their website is not much help and not that reassuring either. The whole town looks like it is outside of the 86% national coverage area on the UHF aerial. The problem is the satellite we must be on is acting like it is over the North pole not the North Island. So we better hope for sunny days or no TV for us. Who would have thought when the vaunted features – like the electronic programme guide – were rolled out that we wouldn’t even have the strength of signal to get a picture let alone operate the features.
It is the same as the spinning wheel of eternal waitingness that would try the patience of the Bhudda. It rather ruins the experience. It is interesting to note the focus that the Coliseum group have on dealing with issues of latency when they broadcast on the internet (as their preferred platform) and the importance and priority they place on delivering a constant uninterrupted stream.
Look at the cynical plan in the run-up to the Freeview change-over to see how it has been over-sold and ultimately under-delivered. The funding intransigence of NZ On Air and the Broadcasting Ministry (if there even is one) that led to Triangle/Stratos (now Face TV) having to abandon the Freeview platform and the calculated dissolution of the TVNZ 6 and 7 ad-free “charter” channels just as the viewer was left with no choice but to adopt Freeview was a shitty marketing strategy. Pio Tere’s cherry, breezy, promises on the TV commercials are falling as flat as most of his jokes. Where are all the extra channels they were hyping? The amount of channels – on Satellite at least – has actually fallen since Freeview. A sports channel is in the offing but they seem wobbly and missed their soft launch target. With Sky there to poach and manipulate along with their state TV collaborator Freeview is in freefall.
The frustration with Freeview should be seen however in its wider context of the unrelenting withdrawal of government provided or guaranteed universal services – especially in communications. These services are being shaved off or gutted to increase profits and in particular secure advantages to the main corporate players already dominating the market.
The planned large-scale retrenchment of the NZ Post delivery system combined with the steeply ratcheting price of postage is a clear example of the erosion of the base lines of service and of equal access. The radio spectrum system provides for many choices… if you live in the metropolitan areas, but provincial listeners will tell you that it is the government’s Pakeha stations, Concert and National, that have all the coverage and the Christian network is usually the clearest on AM. Parliament is second. The little Iwi stations that have popped up are all run on shoe-string budgets. Not a great variety and not a lot of government money being expended here obviously.
What of the decommissioning of the analogue TV network? It goes to data for 4G or 5G or xG etc. Does the license money from those frequencies go toward subsidising television? Almost certainly not. The Crown picks up the cheque. Or they are supposed to, but as we have found out from the National government’s sweetheart deal with Mediaworks over extending them credit for their fees it’s all about flexibility when you have corporate chums to shmooze with – no such corporate welfarism for the little guys like Face TV for example that actually need it.
The news that the copper wire could be ripped out when fibre goes in under the UFB project roll-out is a shuddering thought that carries the abandonment of universal provision in communications to its sad conclusion. Dismantling assets that were long since paid for under guarantees that are now being stripped out by lawyers from the corporates is a national shame.
Yes . It’s all crap . TV is now crappy . The first time I slouched into the lounge to relieve myself of my 4.00 am anxiety attacks by seeing dismembered thus less fortunate souls to say ‘ At least I’m not that poor bastard ‘ to find BBC had been axed I cried . I cried FUCK ! The bastards !
The God botherers are clear as a bell tho .
I now have a shed full of vacuum cleaners and my pimples have never looked better .
Have you noticed that, that horrible , face hoisted Creature of the Beige Lagoon has had a face lift ? Joanna Paul ? She’s done an advanced course in toe pointing too and with a nasal ‘ amazing ‘ follow through post graduate course in ‘ Gimme your money , now fuck off ? She looks like an Asian cadaver on a health freak binge .
We’re all becoming victims of the Global Gimme .
I can’t remember the last time I was so tempted to pick up , walk with , and then throw my TV …out . Any window would do . Open / Closed . Who cares right ?
I watched ‘Fahrenheit 451’ (1966) again recently; the first time was around 1971. I appreciated it so much more second time around.
The film (adapted from the Ray Bradbury novel) is set in a society of dumbed-down consumers, who get their fix of propaganda and fantasy from their televisions. The more they watch television, the more pathetic the people become.
Those without television aerials, those who read and think for themselves, are systematically hunted down and eliminated, or they flee.
Almost 50 years later fact emulates fiction, and we live in a dumbed-down society of consumers who get their fix of propaganda and delusion from their televisions.
Oh ! Oh ! Watch ‘ God Bless America ‘ Directed by Bobcat Goldthwait .
My advice is to purge ones self of debt . Ok , you make think you’re taking a status dive but you aint . No .
Dump that big shitty house , dump that crappy car , lose the useless fucking [i] this or that .
Seriously ! How can I say ‘ seriously ‘ more seriously ?
Just get up in the morning , snog the missus ( or Mr or , you know . Love the one your with . ) and don’t go to work and instead grow a thing or two .
To me , the television has become a giant sphincter up which we all gaze for direction and input . Mindlessly waiting for the next dump of shit .
‘To me , the television has become a giant sphincter up which we all gaze for direction and input’
I have seen a total of about two hours of television over the past 12 months, all of it at other people’s homes.
It was so inspiring I can hardly remember any of it, but I do remember one lot featured cars going round a track, again and again and again and again. I guess it must have had some kind of meaning to someone.
NZ TV needs a good shakeup, we’re all getting ripped off.
Start funding TVNZ so it can actually do its job as a public broadcaster, instead of letting the Tories run it in to the ground so they can flog it to their pals. Hell, bring back TV licence fees if they’re too useless to come up with the taxes. But at the very least do something – anti-siphoning laws, pay TV regulation, community TV subsidies… anything!
At least abroad Freeview has led to an array of new “dumping ground” channels for great television made twenty or more years ago. Here we can’t even manage intelligent content on a few big network channels.
Sounds like you might have problems with your set-up, though I have to admit with me in the sticks of the lower North Island reception is great but it does experience problems occasionally as you describe, I find it’s due to the LNB of the dish; sometimes it requires some adjustment – slightly rotating it – sometimes it can be very frustrating to get the signal going again, I think the wind may be responsible for the movement, I don’t know if that’s the problem with the set-up of others but the dish I have isn’t great it’s warped slightly out of shape – but perhaps others may have an issue/s with dish/LNB alignment, dish size/LNB type or cable length from dish to receiver too long/cable signal loss? We mostly watch Freeview via UHF which is very reliable.
If there are many experiencing problems with Freeview satellite reception it either points towards faults in our set-ups or possibly signal quality issues? I would like to think the former is the case.
Have to agree with you that Freeview is over-rated. The DSO seems a good occasion to cut decent programming services (particularly public broadcasting), which suggest those in power finds such programming disconcerting and a focus on corporate profiteering desirable. I hardly watch TV- it only goes because of others in the household. Watching that thing provokes me to seek a friendship with the bottle, good thing that’s a habit I can’t afford – there goes the tradition of unwinding in the evening with the company of the TV – I find the best thing is to abstain from watching TV as it has nothing to really offer of any importance.
Also find some of the satellite receivers purchasable are dodgy. I had one which conked-out after one-and-a-half years of use. Only used for a few hours in the evening every day. Aggravating as it had many good features. That’s $250 down the toilet.
“Where are all the extra channels they were hyping? The amount of channels – on Satellite at least – has actually fallen since Freeview.”
Here in Auckland I get (via digitalised aerial reception) TV ONE, TV2, TV3, FOUR, Maori TV, U (formerly TVNZ 6), One Plus, TV3 Plus, C4 (music channel), Prime TV, Trackside, Choice TV, Parliament TV, a ‘shopping channel’, Firstlight (a Christian, religious channel) and otherwise 3 Chinese channels.
One Plus and TV3 Plus are just 1-hour delayed broadcasts of TV ONE and TV3, the U channel is just showing “shallow” and low quality stuff for younger viewers, who wants to bother watching a shopping channel (?), I am not interested in horse racing, and religion is something that I would not bother with all that much, certainly not via television. That leaves only a few “ordinary” channels. And the 3 Chinese ones more or less are linked to Mainland Chinese CTV, partly broadcasting propaganda kind of programs, mostly only in Chinese.
Indeed, it is dismal what we get offered. So while you may get such weather or other atmospherically, or technically caused hiccups that are a nuisance, the lack of quality and choice are an even bigger one.
All can be blamed on the fact that we had a change of government in 2008. Voters made a choice for Key and NatACT, and they never thought much of public broadcasting, hence the demise of public broadcasting and also Freeview.
The only truly left public broadcasting channel is Maori TV. FACE TV has become part of SKY’s offerings, otherwise will go off the analogue channel in December.
It is clear, it is intentional, to force broadcasters and viewers to go “private”, that is what the government wants, nothing else!
The only solution is to vote them out as soon as possible!
If only TV programme quality was the only issue!
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