To my mind's way of thinking, digital TV is just another attempt to extract more money from Australia's over enthusiastic "gadget" crowd. I'm sure someone sits around all day long with nothing else to do except think up more ways to lead us down the path of unsustainable consumerism and digital TV is one of the latest ideas... "Hey! Lets force digital television on those Aussie consumer robots. They'll fall for it hook, line and sinker!" Well, not this little bird. I've been looking for a gentle way out of my habit of watching too many CSI's, Law & Order, Bones and Crossing Jordan. Now I have the answer. When they turn off anologue TV in 2010, that's the end of my addiction because I utterly refuse to buy a digital TV set on principle. Unfortunately, I'll also have to go without the quality programs offered on the ABC, still, I won't have to watch nightly news reports of nuclear bomb threats (or worse), wars, climate change and petrol prices at $3.00 a litre and above as major oil companies go bust.

We have been playing around with digital TV since it's inception.

All those extra channels just lying idle. Worse - all that bandwidth (real estate) tied up with the incumbent's ploy of high definition broadcasts. What a sham, really. Thankyou for nothing, Senator Awful. Coonan - wake up! - ah forget it.

On a practical note, our local digital repeater broadcasts all of this extra information at a fraction of the power needed for the transmission of the broadband analogue channels. We get near perfect reception with a tiny, simple antenna.

Like digital cellphones, it either works very well, or not at all. There is no equivalent of a distant snowy picture in digital-land. But if all that transmission power were devoted to digital, it would be as ubiquitous as the familiar analogue service - maybe more so.

Digital TV could be the antidote to the filtration exercised by our partisan news services.

There lies the political sticking point.

Footnote: Find a mate with digital TV and big, big speakers. Watch Dr Who, turn up the knob, and break out the popcorn. Wheeeeeee!

Why do we need a Department of Communications? The radio spectrum should ba available at no cost to ALL not just for a favoured few.In the course of doing away with a useless department we eliminate a "sheltered workshop".

This is the sort of "sheltered workshop I am thinking of.

"Jock Given teaches Media Law in the Department of Media and Communications and was the 2004 CH Currey Memorial Fellow at the State Library of NSW. From 1995-2000 he was Director of the Communications Law Centre (UNSW and Victoria University of Technology) and from 1989-94, Policy Advisor at the Australian Film Commission. Before that, he worked in the Australian government departments of finance and communications."

Current policy on digital TV is pretty woeful. In part the existing TV players have been very sucessful in lobbying for the status quo where Australian consumers have extremely limited choice. Note for example that later this month Channel 9 are bringing in their heavyweight lawyers to crush the fledgling electronic program guide ICETV.

I agree that it seems bizzare that in this case the Government seems so committed to micro managing the technology rather than letting the free market in. Surely the current analogue channels would be affected by an opening up but I can't see there is much worth protecting at the present time.

The other key element in maintaining the status quo seems to be the lack of consumer awareness and demand. As taxpayers we have a very strong interest in seeing a changeover to digital since millions of dollars could be realised by the selling off of the analogue spectrum.

I don't get it either. Firstly digital TV IS Free-to-air TV. Yes you need a digital tuner, just like you need an analog tuner to watch "normal" TV or a radio to listen to the radio.

Cable TV imho is double dipping not only do you pay for the cable access every month you also are subjected to mindless advertising.

We have a strong anti-siphoning laws that ensures that major sporting events have a good chance of making it to free to air. However the broadcasting laws prohibit events that fall under anti siphoning to be broadcast on the secondary channels. A digital tuner can be had for around $120, cheaper models are less than $100. If the football or ashes were on Ch9B or an other secondary channel we would have a digital tuner in 50% of the households within a month.

Ironically the demise of Fox footy next year might lead to a change in antisiphoning rules. 7 and 10 are committed by contract to broadcast every AFL match next year. In previous years all matches were shown on the footy channel and the free to airs would only show a couple of games in each city. As any football tragic or widow will tell you, matches take a long time. As any program manager will tell you they create havoc with normal scheduling. However showing the football commitments on a secondary channel would not interupt normal programming. Ch7 is for opening up the side channels the other majors are against it. Perhaps we'll have some changes next year but I wouldn't hold my breath.

From the networks perspective multichanneling chips into their revenue base. Ads are sold on the basis of 1000's of viewers. Multichanneling will bring in more channels not more viewers, so they don't stand to get more money on the contrary they'd have to buy more content to put on the extra channels.

Unless television content makes a vast change to the programming,I am sure there will a large mass desertion of television watching.
Most of it is mindless mass for the mindless mass. It could have been a wonderful thing . Instead it has been hijacked by awful crime shows,medical soaps, teenage angst soaps, inane quizzes and not much of uplifting experiences.
Who would pay more for such idiocy? Unless you like ads, there isn't a lot to recommend it.

Firstly - digital TV has huge potential - I'm not talking about multiple angles of the footy or that kind of stuff, what interests me is the potential for genuinely local news.

Not just a regional broadcaster that can cover a few towns, I'm talking about a local television station for a small town - school recitals can be played, news that excites small towns but not anyone else, like business relocations, or arguments in shire councils, or how the local sporting team's doing on the ladder (actually, that is the one local thing that does make the regional news).

It has the potential to be as local as small town papers - needing only a few employees to keep a town informed. The technology is incredibly cheap and easily installed - provided there aren't excessive regulations for small players.
This is crucial for a television industry that only makes respectable content because the content quotas are in place - At present, without them, Australians aspiring to work in television will have to go overseas.

So in my view as someone who's worked as a journo on small papers, it's much more than merely a gadget as some see it, it can represent profitable TV for a small audience. Ads that granted, aren't seen by many, but are incredibly cheap.

That being said, regulations on ownership are crucial. New players need to be encouraged, but the one thing we do not need is more concentration. The proposed media laws do very little good and a great deal of harm. Our media situation may be bad, but this will only make it worse. Throw them out I say, and start from scratch.

TRTL,

How is digital TV the enabler for a local content business model? Surely the same could work with an analog transmitter.

I think it'll be hard to pull off as current laws are geared toward large stations with big budget ads. Small production value ads can have a huge cringe factor. A more effective way would be to display continuous banners or logos. Much cheaper to produce but it would fall foul of Australian rules for the number of minutes you are allowed to advertise. Shame because I am all for local content and issues on TV you can relate to.

The other issue that is being ignored in the digital TV debate is the internet. A multimedia blog with local content could fill a similar role as a local TV station. I guess the drawback is that you need to be IT savvy to access it.

What TRTL is saying is that each broadcaster can transmit multiple, separate channels as well as their main service. That puts them in a position of being more like a service carrier, like Telstra.

It costs no more than a simple hookup to insert one's local amateur TV production into the stream, to be broadcast at no extra cost in transmission power - with no extra demand on spectrum space - all receivable as separate channels on a digital box. Local radio stations can join in too. The puniest effort is broadcast with as much fidelity and power as the most costly TV production.

Naturally the incumbents don't want to be carriers of info or entertainment that will detract from their viewer base.

If my "leftie" understanding is correct, the incumbents dreamed up the idea of High Definition TV in order to mop up as much of this spare capacity as possible, so that it wouldn't be available for anything that didn't deliver them $$$.

It would be so much easier if "we the people" owned and operated the transmitters and repeaters. We are literally like our forebears who had to purchase and join the first separate little local electricity suppliers into the national electric grid we have today.

Nice summation Chris - the last bit I'd add would be the versatility and accessability of the technology (provided the full potential is realised), as well as its price.

The ability is there already, to broadcast this technology cheaply. With mass communication, sending the content back and forth is not the least bit difficult.

Then there are the basics.

Where once you had to drag a hefty videocamera, a tiny digital one will now do the job, and better. What's more, editing is now an easy practice with the proper software. No messing about with old style tapes, just cut and paste bits, add or remove audio here and there.

Don't forget that you only get 6 digital channels on a digital stream and the amount of info is limited. eg an image of one explosion can take a lot of bandwidth, ok if the other channels are lawnbowls and snooker.

I fully agree that production costs have plummetted with the price of current gear. However I don't see why we should send our own clips to a local broadcaster when we can post them on youtube.

If we want to get a STB in every household we have to deliver content that is worthwhile. Foreign language news and the odd FD program are just not cutting it.

The killer content for TV is sport. By allowing events that fall in the anti siphoning category on the B channels, there would be an STB in every second house within a year (imho).

Coming in late ... I submitted to the current Senate inquiry that the underlying basis for sound media policy, whether broadcast or delivered by other modes, should include the following principles:

1. Media policy should be directed to the benefit of end-users and the community at large, rather to any particular vested interests.

2. Policy should not discriminate between modes of delivery in terms of content, geographical reach or other factors. All modes of delivery should be able to provide whatever content is technically feasible for that mode – no content should be reserved to a particular mode of delivery.

While these principles would appear self-evident, they are far from the basis of existing and proposed policy. There is no prima facie case for restricting particular forms of content, e.g. full-motion video, drama, sport etc to a particular mode of delivery, e.g. free-to-air tv. While some content is inherently constrained in its potential delivery mode by technological constraints - for example, a print newspaper can not include full-motion video, except on accompanying discs – there is no sound public policy reason for present and proposed discrimination by mode of delivery.

The broader context is that change is the essence of existence, of economic growth, of human communication. As regards economics, policies which embrace openness, competition, change and innovation will promote growth. Policies which have the effect of restricting or slowing change by protecting or favouring particular industries or firms are likely over time to slow innovation and growth to the disadvantage of the community. Similarly, policies which deny change and restrict the output options for particular media and related industries will limit consumer choice and weaken competitive pressures for innovation which better serves consumers and the community.

Subject to laws governing, e.g., slander and pornography, there are no defensible grounds for the artificial distinctions maintained by the government’s proposals. Media reform has been discussed for decades. It is time for real reform to be delivered.