Master Antennae TV – a communal aerial system that uses a master aerial to receive the signal before it is distributed.
Many venue operators are looking for an edge – if you have invested heavily in offering a Sports bar or any sort of large screen viewing facility you will want to create a “just like being there environment” so your patrons keep coming back. Destination venues create customer loyalty and to achieve this the technology must deliver the experience.
The biggest misconception about digital TV is that all programs are transmitted in high definition (HD) when in fact TV programs are mainly still standard definition (SD) but are viewed through the digital tuner that “makes” the picture look better. The jargonistic terms also don’t help with demystifying the technology, descriptions like “1080P” and “true high definition” don’t mean that much to the average person. In reality there are several high definition resolutions (picture quality) including true HD at 1080P, 720P and barely HD but more SD 576P. Obviously the best resolution is 1080P, but 720P & 576P can look ok.
For venue operators the problem has been how to get PAY TV (PTV) channels to appear through the digital tuner on the TV. Most venues have used analogue modulation where the AV signal from the PTV box is turned into an analogue RF channel and subsequently appears via the analogue tuner on your expensive flat panel screen. So Digital TV (DTV) came along and you could get all the free to air (FTA) channels on the digital tuner and all the PTV channels on the analogue tuner. Not very practical for venue management, usually they opted to just show all the channels through the analogue tuner… bye bye HD TV… until now.
Like most technology it gets cheaper the more they make, what was $3000 per SD PTV channel is now currently at around $800.00 per PTV channel. Added to this Sky Channel now provides a digital signal at the set top box so Sky 1 & Sky 2 are available as a 576P SD signal viewable through the digital tuner on your TV. Foxtel is the only provider that has kept to the AV format but offers true 1080P HD programs through the IQ2 box. Venues could then have either a 4 channel SD modulation for all the Fox sports channels OR maybe an additional one HD modulator for programs transmitted in true HD.
Implementing these facilities at a venue is reasonably straight forward so long as the basic infrastructure (antenna & cabling) are not too old. Assuming that the venue has a good base the job of upgrading to digital requires the removal of equipment at the RF hub and installation of the digital modulators. A retune of all the televisions to pick up the new digital signals completes the upgrade.
Contact Noisebox via the website or call on 02 9638 3300 for a quote on how you can leverage your current TV investment to achieve a better, high performance, high definition outcome.