future of ABC digital?

[digitaldreamer]

anyone know what is likely to happen to quality of ABC1, 2 and HD when they start ABC3? will squeezing in the extra channel significantly reduce the quality of the existing services?. and would scrapping the digital radio streams free up a significant amount of bandwith to help out? I assume hardly anybody actually uses their tv decoder to listen to the two digital radio services.

[mtv]

There should be no changes to encoding bit rates as ABC3 has been operating for some time, but just simulcasting ABC1 programs.

It's just a matter of commencing the separate program feed for ABC3.

As for the so-called 'radio' channels on ABC and SBS, I agree, a waste of bandwidth.

Although it's not much, every little bit extra would help the TV signals.

[gordon_s1942]

SBS has very little radio coverage outside the metrop areas so for them I guess piggy backing via the TV transmitter saves installing a stand alone transmitter for ethnic groups but I would rather they learn and listen to English in the long term.
As for the ABC, they have always had good coverage thru the AM and now FM which would give them better reach than digital TV does.
I would be surprised if there is anywhere that has a Digital TV service that does NOT have ABC radio coverage making the 'Radio' channels a bit of an overkill.