[Bennyboy84]

I’ve just seen some 90s Channel 5 continuity on YouTube and it reminded me of when Channel 5 used to freeze during programmes, I vaguely remember one occasion where a film got stuck but the sound continued and pretty much half of the film was the frozen image. Can anyone tell me the reason this used to happen?

[i.h]

IIRC they were one of the earlier users of digital satellite distribution (separate to going up on Astra 1 / Sky Analogue for those outside of the terrestrial footprint), and after some high profile failures they moved to fibre for some of the more important transmitters

[Neil Jones]

Yes they went on satellite to boost the coverage due to the patchy nature of their terrestrial network (being effectively shoehorned in at channel 37 which had a lot of VCRs using that channel as an output)

In some areas they didn't come from the same transmitter as the four main channels did - as an example Channel 5 never came from Sutton Coldfield in the analogue days, it ended up coming from Lichfield instead (there were a couple of reason for this, one being cost/ownership and the other technical). It wasn't until digital switchover that Channel 5 eventually started coming from Sutton Coldfield, and that had the effect of Lichfield no longer being a TV transmitter, although I believe it has a much taller mast than Sutton Coldfield does.

[Stooky Bill]

Yes, they gave the contract for their distribution to NTL* (now Arqiva) and the easiest/quickest/cheapest way to distribute it to the transmitter network was by satellite.

From launch there were 4 regional versions of Channel 5**. They were uplinked onto 4 digital satellite channels, two on each of two satellites - IIRC two Sirius satellites. This setup provided redundancy - if the uplink for one, or even the whole satellite failed then they had the other

Which of those 4 regions each transmitter was taking could be remotely changed which added quite a lot of flexibility - they could theoretically broadcast a different ad break or even a different programme to just one part of the country (potentially useful for PPBs or football or very specific marketing)

Then a few months after launch there was a massive thunderstorm over Croydon one evening and took Channel 5 off air in London. Problem was that their resilience relied on having at least one of the two satellites available.... and both were taken out by heavy rain. So after that they ran a fibre to the Croydon transmitter. I'm not sure they did to any others, Croydon not only had the biggest number of potential viewers it was also the easiest to run fibre to, in fact being one of their main control rooms they probably already had the connectivity and fibre routes



*this is also why they used different transmitters to the others in some places - they only used NTL sites

**IIRC when the Astra 1 service launched that was region 5

[tellyblues]

I’ve just seen some 90s Channel 5 continuity on YouTube and it reminded me of when Channel 5 used to freeze during programmes, I vaguely remember one occasion where a film got stuck but the sound continued and pretty much half of the film was the frozen image. Can anyone tell me the reason this used to happen?

And the film was... Doc Hollywood.

[Blackers]

I do remember on the Test Transmissions a loss of picture on the Winter Hill Transmitter (which in Liverpool used to get a tiny bit of interference from HTV Wales on UHF 49!)

Channel 5 was on UHF 48 from Winter Hill.. and I remember a caption saying 'BLT Technology' which I think was used for playout in the early days? It was a case of them rebooting the system by the looks of it!

[VMPhil]

The vintage MHP page is still online with lots of pre-launch goodies like that:

www.meldrum.co.uk 

Untitled

  Source: www.meldrum.co.uk

I like to imagine “BLT Technology” actually meaning that the engineers were fuelled by bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches.

[Stooky Bill]

I do remember on the Test Transmissions a loss of picture on the Winter Hill Transmitter (which in Liverpool used to get a tiny bit of interference from HTV Wales on UHF 49!)

Channel 5 was on UHF 48 from Winter Hill.. and I remember a caption saying 'BLT Technology' which I think was used for playout in the early days? It was a case of them rebooting the system by the looks of it!

I wouldn't have thought that was anything to do with playout, probably just the manufacturer of the caption generator or whatever else was producing that caption

FWIW Channel 5 came from Pearson TV in Stephen Street, pretty sure the playout was all Probel

[i.h]

I'm guessing the BLT Technology is in fact this lot - www.blt.cloud 

Who we are | BLT ITALIA
What we do Who we are Work with us Contact us Select Page Who we are BLT is an I…
  Source: www.blt.cloud

they mention that they make video servers but have also made video compression equipment - so who knows what it actually was - but it lines up with the Meldrum page that said it was reported to have been the latter.