1996 the great retuning (Channel 5)

[BigEd]

I was surprised as to which year this happened - at the end of 96 and into 97, thousands of technicians visited millions of homes in the UK to adjust modulators - mostly on VCRs I imagine - to avoid difficulties when Channel 5 started up on UHF channels 35 and 37.

The initial study was apparently in 1987:

Studies established that coverage of 65-70% of the population could be provided on Ultra High Frequency (UHF) in the band using channels 35 and 37. Both channels were in use at the time for non-broadcasting purposes, but these users would be moved to other frequencies. It was also pointed out that in some areas it may be necessary to retune video recorders and other domestic equipment to avoid interference from the Channel 5 signal.

but only one bid was received in 1992, and was rejected. Then in 1993

one of the two original frequencies, Channel 35, would not be available for the purpose of broadcasting a 5th terrestrial channel

and in 1994 a new auction was announced, with 4 bids received in 1995. Two were deemed invalid, including the highest bid at £36,261,158 and one of the two which were suspiciously equal at £22,002,000. Then

On 26th September 1996, Channel 5 admitted it was not going to meet the deadline to launch on 1st January 1997, and that it may not be till March before the Channel launches. The delay was due to a need to retune an extra 1.8 million video recorders after the DTI made channel 35 available for use by Channel 5.

From a recent technical retrospective:

From the summer of 1996, teams of temporary recruits were trained by Granada on behalf of Channel 5, in order to achieve the retuning task. Channel 5 also secured the help of Granada and Thorn-EMI, owners of the two leading rental chains in the country at the time, to undertake their own rental retunes.

Armed with a signal generator and suitable trimming tools, the task meant re-tuning the RF modulators of every video recorder and satellite receiver, in order to prevent a signal clash within service areas where interference was predicted. A target of 90% of homes needed to be re-tuned before Channel 5 could air.

Therefore, millions of households needed to be visited.

New Scientist in 1991:

The trouble is that domestic video equipment such as recorders, satellite receivers, video games and some home computers use these frequencies, at low power, to connect with TV sets. If, as often happens, one TV set is connected to several devices, each must be tuned differently.
...
NTL noted that the nominal frequency on which most video recorders are set at the factory is channel 36. A few are set to channel 37. NTL then looked at the actual frequencies used in three areas of Britain.
...
NTL has not yet tested video games and satellite receivers, many of which will be tuned to frequencies other than channel 36 to allow the connection of other devices to the same television set. There are already well over a million satellite receivers in Britain and there are likely to be several million more by the time Channel 5 goes on air.

Other stories
1990 Technology: Cost of retuning could kill Channel 5
1996 Diary of a Channel 5 retuner (content warning for sexual assault)

[Diminished]

I'm far from convinced it was worth all the effort

[jgharston]

I'm far from convinced it was worth all the effort

Well, it was my full-time job with bonuses for seven months.

[sweh]

Oh this pissed me off, big time.

I was still living with my parents and I told them clearly on the day the retuner came around to "DO NOT TOUCH MY STUFF. I WILL DO IT MYSELF".

I got home from work (well, from the pub, after work) and went to check the recording my VCR had made of the final episode of a show I'd been watching (I forget what it is now). To find static.

The ****ing retuner had messed around with my Sky Box and TV (but not the VCR) so broke my setup. He'd told my parents that he _HAD_ to do every TV in the house and wouldn't take "no" for an answer.

I had to do the retuning, anyway, 'cos the moron set the sky box to a frequency that overlapped my Beeb's setting ('cos I'd custom tuned that).

I never got to see that final episode for years later.

[1024MAK]

I never had that problem, as I had already retuned everything before the retuning guy arrived. I think I used an old satellite receiver as a pretend Channel 5 source.

I also made sure I was in when he visited. I told him I had already retuned. He just checked, then being happy, he asked if I had considered working for them.

I said no (I did not fancy that job), as I already had a full time job.

Mark

[BeebMaster]

I remember the whole Channel 5 re-tuning thing, but I don't remember anyone coming round to do it. I don't think I even knew that had happened. Must have cost the Nation a fortune. I would have been at university at the time so I wouldn't have been there when it happened at our house.

Interrogation of the BeebMother on the subject has revealed no data.

I didn't have any Beebs during this wilderness period so nothing for them to break as such.

We couldn't get Channel 5 anyway as the reception was so poor. So much so that we signed up for Sky so that my dad could watch the American Football they were showing on Channel 5. Still have the same Sky box to this day, still in regular use for watching free channels. However I was very upset in November when I tried to watch the Royal British Legion Festival of Remembrance through BBC-1 on the Sky box to find an overlay taking up the bottom third of the screen, which must have been added to the broadcast signal rather than being a Sky message as it couldn't be turned off, saying BBC were stopping showing normal-definition channels through Sky in January.

[SKS1]

I remember us declining retuning as we'd have had to have an aerial upgrade in any case due to poor signal, and who wanted to watch more adverts? Just checked - VCR is still set to 36!

I too had a 1990s era Sky box (purchased 2000) for watching free sat as analogue signal here was so bad - it was useful for piping around the house on the coax and so was sad to see the SD switch-off message from the Beeb.

[james]

[deleted]

[guesser]

It was on C56 from Belmont here, presumably because of the overlap with Waltham, so the VCR was fine as it was. We had antennas pointing at both transmitters at the time, almost 180° apart so most likely picking up the out-of-group CH5 from each of them on the back of the other's aerial

[lovebug]

it beats me why the channel chose a frequency that would conflict with existing equipment

luckily it didn't cause an issue with me as 99% of the stuff I had was rgb and the 1% was composite video

[BigEd]

It was all that was left - the original UHF channel assignments were carefully worked out to provide 4 national stations and the three channels left over were for local use. It does feel a bit unnecessary to me, to add a 5th channel, especially as late as it happened, but I imagine someone expected to make some money from the endeavour.

[*TAPE]

5th channel = money to the treasury
....because you're selling a bit more spectrum off.

Which is why HMG were so desperate to sell of 5G mobile frequencies. (because money)
And then under the guise of "progress", the next rush is to get all the 3G cells turned off, so that 3G mobile would no longer be a thing*, and those frequencies can be sold off.... again, because money.

*And in the process rendering some smart meters (connected via 3G mobile) dead, and (as you would now expect) without warning the energy providers.
.....Because just why would anyone apply any amount of forethought?


Unfortunately, as is the way, HMG sold off UK RF spectrum management to Arqiva.

[1024MAK]

In our lifetime, the radio spectrum management has gone from bad to atrocious...

Not only the UHF, but also the VHF frequencies, including the FM radio stations. Remember they wanted to switch off analogue AM and FM.

Not only just about money (although that's a big part), but also (the) power (of big companies) and a lack of understanding by politicians who likely don't care anyway.

Anyway, thats veering off-topic, so I'll shut up on that aspect.

Mark

[1024MAK]

It was all that was left - the original UHF channel assignments were carefully worked out to provide 4 national stations and the three channels left over were for local use.

The TV part of the VHF frequency range (Band III) could have been used if it had been properly planned for...

Mark

[jgharston]

When I started revising for my radio exam, I read through the radio spectrum allocation and it is... atrocious! It's as though whenever a service was needed a dart was thrown at a board.

[guesser]

I think it's miraculous they can manage to get nearly 200 countries to agree on anything at all. I think expecting it to be logical too is asking a bit much

[marrold]

I don't recall anyone visiting or any significant disruption when Channel 5 went live in Derby. We did receive a box from them that was meant to get inserted into the feed from the aerial to improve reception or reduce interference (I can't remember which?) but we didn't end up using it. Several years later some careful disassembly with a hammer revealed it was a filter of some sort - unfortunately this was before cheap VNAs or Spectrum Analysers were a thing, so I didn't sweep it.

[gfoot]

It sounds chaotic. I was too young at the time to be aware of what was being done, I just knew another channel was coming, and then I found it very amateurish when it came. Was there any provision later on for people moving between regions needing their equipment retuned?

[jgharston]

Was there any provision later on for people moving between regions needing their equipment retuned?

Exactly the same as before Channel 5 came along. It's one of the tasks you have to sort out yourself as part of moving house, along with the gas, the electric, the council tax, the crockery, the clean socks, etc. etc. etc. etc.

Ah, kids today with their fixed-channel Freeview and cable TV and wotnot. Never to know the pleasures going through the tuners one by one, tweeking them nanodegree by nanodegree trying to home in on the strongest signal, all while holding them pushed in to engage the adjusters, just to lose them all when you close the flap and the infinitessimal impact throws all the tuners out. And then months later you realise you've tuned to the wrong transmitter, and if that pigeon hadn't been sitting on the aerial you'd have found a stronger one 20 channels away.

[gfoot]

Haha yes, I do remember needing to tune a TV where each channel button had a little knob under it, i was curious how the jobs worked but not curious enough to actually find out. The other TV that just had a nice big tuning dial and no channel buttons at all seemed easier!

But from the above posts I thought that for the Channel 5 retune we were taking about more serious work, like changing the channel VCRs were "broadcasting" on, which is a bit more involved.

[BigEd]

That was certainly one possibility - I'm sure I remember guidance. Those kinds of modulators often have a little trimmer which is (was) often accessible with a tiny screwdriver.

The other half of the "solution" were those notch filters - I think the idea was to suppress the local strong signal from interfering with the weak broadcast signal. More at the "technical" link in the head post (and at the "part two" - I've found no further parts of the series)

In cases where shifting the RF modulator frequency was a problem (for example, ‘daisy-chained’ video recorders), a ‘blocker’ or notch filter was fitted at the end of the antenna lead. This prevented the Channel 5 signal from reaching the equipment. Naturally, there was a slight insertion loss, leading to disgruntled viewers, in those cases where the effects were noticeable in marginal reception areas.

[flaxcottage]

Bit of an anticlimax here at Flax Cottage. We are in a valley and the hills on either side blocked the C5 signal so we couldn't get it until very much later when things went digital.

Never watch C5 even now, except, strangely, for last night - a documentary about the great freeze of 1947. Too young to have lived through it but the clothes, cars, shops, food, rationing all brought back memories of the early 1950s and the 1962-63 freeze was pretty similar.

This C5 kerfuffle reminds me of the introduction of ITV in 1955. That was the year we got our first TV. It was an obsolete Ecko model being BBC only (Band I). To get ITV one had to fit a turret tuner for Band III. The aerials were different too, the ITV aerial was a vertical X. My dad, a great bodger, fitted the turret tuner and made and fitted the ITV aerial. Fitting the tuner involved cutting a hole in the back panel of the TV, fixing the turret tuner there and then removing two valves from the main chassis and plugging two connectors from the tuner into the empty valve sockets. To switch channels one had to move a rotary switch and then use a tuning ring round the switch to fine tune the signal. Makes the C5 conversion trivial by comparison.

[BeebMaster]

I remember reading that the BBC deliberately had a death in the Archers on the same night as the ITV launch. Interesting to think that back then radio was thought of as a competitor to television!

[flaxcottage]

I remember reading that the BBC deliberately had a death in the Archers on the same night as the ITV launch. Interesting to think that back then radio was thought of as a competitor to television!

Yes, the wireless was part of the national psyche in the 1950s. We listened every day to the news, listen with mother, women's hour, Mrs Dale's Diary and the Archers. Every week there was the Goon Show and some excellent plays on the Home Service.

The beauty of the wireless was that one did not need to sit and watch. One could be doing other things and the experience was the same.