ABC Tuggeranong Digital dead in the water?

This ABC TV transmitter is STILL very, very unreliable. Every program lately freezes and stutters (with or without the ubiquitous NO SIGNAL banner). The last month has been very annoying and ABC TV staff are rude, indifferent and patronising when you ring the TV Reception 1300 number.

Last Sunday Night took the cake. After weeks of trumpeting the fact they would TV premiere “the multi-award winning Samson and Delilah” and it also scooping the AFI awards that very weekend, we were primed for see an Aussie movie with no commercials. All set and ‘in the zone’.

About an hour and five minutes into the movie (9:35 pm approx.)Delilah goes into a phone box to ring for help after being raped bashed in Alice Springs. Hmmm she seems to be silent and still a long time. Then it dawned…signal frozen …. again!!

This time it never returned. In fact, NO SIGNAL for any ABC station (ABC 1, 2,3 or HD) from Tuggeranong Hill Channel 59). I gave up checking after midnight.

I tried all the Canberra phone numbers and got recorded messages. When I rang Sydney ABC (aka HQ)they weren’t interested and they had no idea who to inform Tuggeranong Hill Channel 59 wasn’t transmitting. When I spoke to someone at ABC TV Canberra on the Tuesday got transferred to the “Fault Reporting Line” . It turned out to be merely the TV Reception Advice Line (how to turn you TV). The young man on the line said they weren’t interested in people informing them of outages in services as their modern equipment told them immediately when things went down. According to this person a technician restore transmission in less than a hour. I beg to differ. As I said, I gave up checking after midnight.

I’d to know two things from the ABC:

1. Why can’t they provide a reliable service to Tuggeranong and environs?
2. Why don’t apologise (and inform) of breaks in transmission these days?

Not good enough.

Thanks to all for the info!

Hmm…digital speculum.

I thought they were largely analogue devices?

Digital spectrum, rather.

Anyone know if Canberra is ever going to get its own NFP station, a la Channel 31?
And does Ch31 get its own bit of digital speculum, or it going to die?

OneHD is apparently coming to Canberra around April or so. Apparently the problem with the extra channels appearing here has been the switching and management infrastructure to handle inserting the appropriate advertising into the new streams.

anyone heard about the new digital channel – from ten called “one”? not coming to canberra. we miss out on a free to air sports channel. good to be the nation’s capital, isn’t it?

and why don’t they show Canberra on weather forecasts during morning TV like sunrise, or Today?

Stainless: This PDF at ACMA has the info. Search for “Canberra” (Black Mountain), “Woden” (Mt Taylor) and “Tuggeranong” (Tuggeranong Hill). The ones in grey are digital, the others are analog. CTC is channel Ten, CBN is Prime.

Stainless Steel Rat said :

Does anyone know where you can find out (regarding digital transmission) who is broadcasting what out of where? Mainly in relation to this ABC problem (yes, I get the same issue, some days it’s worse than others) I would like to know which set of stuff is coming out of Tuggeranong Hill. I have tried my friend Google (and others) but can’t find a list of what comes from Tuggeranong, Black Mtn etc. Does anyone know where I can find this info?

http://www.acma.gov.au/WEB/STANDARD/pc=PC_90214

Does anyone know where you can find out (regarding digital transmission) who is broadcasting what out of where? Mainly in relation to this ABC problem (yes, I get the same issue, some days it’s worse than others) I would like to know which set of stuff is coming out of Tuggeranong Hill. I have tried my friend Google (and others) but can’t find a list of what comes from Tuggeranong, Black Mtn etc. Does anyone know where I can find this info?