On 2/7/12 11:38 PM, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , David Looser
writes:
[]
Well it might, but in practice there don't seem to have been many
problems
caused by not harmonising spectrum use with the the continent. To be
honest
I think the government made the right decision, the limited VHF spectrum
available in Bands 1 & 3 would only just have been enough for one extra
625-line TV channel.
[]
? - one on band I and at least one on band III, surely? I lived in
(West) Germany in the 1960s and '70s, and I'm sure we could get at least
two channels on band III (yes, I know B and G channels are narrower, but
not that much).

There were some areas with two band III channels, Brussels for instance
on E.8 and E.10. With a bit of luck you could get a Dutch channel too or
a Frech one in the South. We got three Band III signals in Brussels
around 1966 (Belgium French and Flemish as well as France).
This of course would not have meant that full area coverage like the
whole of the UK would have been possible.

Holland had only one channel on VHF, partly because Belgium needed two
in Brussels. I think most of Germany had only one too, except if you
were close to the border between West and East (or Berlin).

For the UK two channels was possible using 405 lines because they used
narrower channels, leaving room for more channels to allocate to
transmitters. Even then, different polarization was often necessary to
separate the signals.

gr, hwh