yeah I was working for one of the broadcast industries largest suppliers (a susprising lot of studio infrastructure work is outsourced) I remember a phone conversation with a certain Senior Engineer of what was then LWT (now Granada)

this was around 2001 – he basically said that a lot of companies weren’t bothering any more with production quality (other than when Ofcom make them comply with various rules) as neither the morale nor the money was about any more due to various pressures…

and he said “don’t buy that ITV Digital, it will look like crap, all the bandwidth is being compressed as much as it can to save on the money paid to BT” (they link all the TV companies) plus the cost had been achieved by closing down the content divisions

(I was made redundant a few months afterwards as fewer TV studios were purchasing kit as so many were closing the second hand market cannibalised the new equipment market)

I think freeview is merely an attempt to salvage the investment put into ITV digital..

ISTR the people in Border region being interviewed and they said “well if its too difficult we will just give up watching telly and find other ways to occupy ourselves” :laugh_at: