iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Personally, and in light of Recent Events I think it's more likely we'll get a pair of DVB-T muxes with everything shoe-horned in. But not SFNs, that'd be hideously complicated for a nationwide system + local repeaters surely...!?

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Nathan Dane @nmsni.co.uk · 7h

Applies to any situation where a company says "well we could have another multiplex and get double the bandwidth to offer better quality to our users - or we could cram everything into one and be done with it"

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Nathan Dane @nmsni.co.uk · 7h

I'm going to coin this effect "DAB Syndrome" - or in other words "why many multiplexes when less will do".

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Michael Spicer @michaelspicer.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Most TV is just this now.

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Kate @katerubu.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

My daughter getting her weather forecast from your feed, on her Dad’s b&w childhood telly ☺️ thank you so much for your work!

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Nathan Dane @nmsni.co.uk · 27/09/2026

Writing directly out to the video encoder live as Rec656!

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Nathan Dane @nmsni.co.uk · 26/09/2026

Ahhh, buttons and blinky lights. No LCDs. Perfection.

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Nathan Dane @nmsni.co.uk · 26/09/2026

This is a different FPGA Experimenter card from the one you saw before. This one doesn't have an SDI Deserialiser and as such commits fewer crimes against high speed digits. Instead it has an SPI, which copes up to about 80mbps before it gets (very) upset...

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Nathan Dane @nmsni.co.uk · 26/09/2026

I put together a demo with an ESP32 writing text (milliseconds since startup) to my FPGA. So I've sort of made a graphics card...? The counting up reminds me the BIOS RAM test you used to see on PCs.

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Nathan Dane @nmsni.co.uk · 24/09/2026

There is a growing discontent that this has been seen coming for Years and every so often there are rumours of a 'big announcement' that turns out to be nothing. It occurs to me that management have no better idea what they're doing than anyone else.

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Nathan Dane @nmsni.co.uk · 24/09/2026

Quad height teletext isn't real, it can't hurt you Quad height teletext:

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Nathan Dane @nmsni.co.uk · 24/09/2026

Ah, did that involve the SPNs? I've seen reports from an STL that came straight out of one of these.

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Nathan Dane @nmsni.co.uk · 24/09/2026

Transmitter group or descended from? Very nice. Didn't know these were in vehicles. You can just about spot one in the background of a few DSO videos though.

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Nathan Dane @nmsni.co.uk · 23/09/2026

another Nathan who has Ceefax things? it must be catching.

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Nathan Dane @nmsni.co.uk · 23/09/2026

DRM is extremely interesting and I still find it somewhat surprising how reluctant everyone seems to be to get it moving. With bandwidth squeezes on UHF & VHF, plus vast swathes of LW and MW lying empty, surely it would be an awesome way to provide a national emergency ready service.

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Nathan Dane @nmsni.co.uk · 23/09/2026

Of course the main problem with LoRa is that you have to factor in the duty cycle within legal limits for the ISM band. With your own frequency one can do whatever one likes with it I suppose.

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Nathan Dane @nmsni.co.uk · 23/09/2026

That would be extremely awesome although it's bound to come at a steep premium...?

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Nathan Dane @nmsni.co.uk · 23/09/2026

I suppose the bandwidth depends on 'how often you need to change the pages' or 'how long from cold it will take to load the full service'. I have pondered this before re: teletext via LoRa. Unfortunately I usually conclude that it will end up too slow...

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Nathan Dane @nmsni.co.uk · 23/09/2026

/me applies for license to blast out kilowatts of analogue tv

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Simon Marks @simonmarksfsn.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

BREAKING: The White House TV Press pool is downing tools following Trump's ouster of Politico, MSNOW and CNN. This letter sent to pool members by Fox News' Washington Bureau Chief Bryan Boughton, current pool chair, via Scott Nover of the Washington Post.

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Nathan Dane @nmsni.co.uk · 20/09/2026

The channel move is all well & good, but they've dropped the quality of most channels on that multiplex to make them fit. Is this the beginning of a DAB style "race to the bottom" with the bitrate? And anyway, why are +1 channels still a thing, shouldn't they be the first to sod off...

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Nathan Dane @nmsni.co.uk · 17/09/2026

"it's never left wing bots" This person has never been on Reddit 😆

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Nathan Dane @nmsni.co.uk · 15/09/2026

There are very good reasons why I don't think companies should be allowed to penalise one for sick leave (a la America) but man does the wanton abuse of it here piss me off.

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Nathan Dane @nmsni.co.uk · 14/09/2026

Latest creation burns in audio meters, derived from SDI embedded channels.

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Nathan Dane @nmsni.co.uk · 14/09/2026

Meanwhile at NMS HQ, heinous crimes against high speed digital electronics are being committed.

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Nathan Dane @nmsni.co.uk · 07/09/2026

You can now watch/listen to Pages From Ceefax directly from the main website. But you can't have the interactive version mixed-mode on top of the in-vision service. Yet. nmsceefax.co.uk/live/

nmsceefax.co.uk

Pages From Ceefax

An up-to-date version of the BBC's teletext service, Ceefax.

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Nathan Dane @nmsni.co.uk · 07/09/2026

Also for Pages from Ceefax - which incidentally is steadily having new playlists added at the moment. youtube.com/@AvroVulcanXH607/live

youtube.com

YouTube

Share your videos with friends, family, and the world

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Nathan Dane @nmsni.co.uk · 05/09/2026

FPGA based text overlay. Bonus points to those who guess who's post I copied the test text from, for no particular reason.

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Nathan Dane @nmsni.co.uk · 03/09/2026

I pondered this before, could you essentially transmit a teletext stream "standalone"... It would require approx 275kbps (surprisingly quite a lot given the time) which rules out a lot of the fancy LoRa protocols and puts a lot of difficulties on the frequencies one can use etc. Maybe some day.

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Nathan Dane @nmsni.co.uk · 03/09/2026

important to keep an eye on all the important things...

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Nathan Dane @nmsni.co.uk · 02/09/2026

Messy rack pics again but this is the FPGA taking SDI, creating a 'scope view & outputting as PAL for the left monitor, with the right showing a preview. You can see the FPGA card in the frame, towards the middle with the front entry BNC. Ignore the dangly networks they are necessary & unmovable..

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Nathan Dane @nmsni.co.uk · 26/08/2026

do it right and it could be a terrific advert for the BBC

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Nathan Dane @nmsni.co.uk · 26/08/2026

Well, "Day In The Life of Broadcasting" in general, perhaps... I mean we have such a varied cast of people doing completely different but entirely necessary jobs to make the sound and pics happen, from presenters to engineers to cleaners...

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Nathan Dane @nmsni.co.uk · 26/08/2026

like I said a few days ago, I would love a modern recreation of "A Day In The Life of TV". And I would absolutely watch a series on the topic...

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Ronnie @ronnietucker.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Perfect use for an old tablet. A modern day #bbc #ceefax screen.

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Nathan Dane @nmsni.co.uk · 24/08/2026

The web viewer is now switched back to the "Worldwide" feed, which allows one to access all the regional news pages. nmsceefax.co.uk

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Nathan Dane @nmsni.co.uk · 23/08/2026

They multipliest. Crazy how cheap these can be acquired without PSUs. Is the overlap of "people who need a vision mixer" and "people who can solder a plug onto a PSU" really so small?

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Nathan Dane @nmsni.co.uk · 23/08/2026

I suppose that sort of thing would be much too "delightful slow 70s show&tell TV" for people these days.

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Nathan Dane @nmsni.co.uk · 23/08/2026

Someone should do a modern take on that 70s "day in the life of TV" programme. A clip from all the different job roles in a regional studio should make a pretty interesting programme - and even fits with the latest fad of remaking stuff...

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Nathan Dane @nmsni.co.uk · 21/08/2026

I also realise that mis-spelling "licence" on a post that includes it twice in screenshots is not a good look for me.

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Nathan Dane @nmsni.co.uk · 21/08/2026

iPlayer asking me, twice, if I've got a TV license - when I'm signing in from *inside the BBC* - will never not be funny

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Nathan Dane @nmsni.co.uk · 21/08/2026

I dunno about you but I feel like these headlines are wildly out of order. And it isn't a problem with my code.

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Nathan Dane @nmsni.co.uk · 20/08/2026

I had a box of those. Unfortunately I used them to record my own experiments in TV, not anything interesting. Although it could be pretty funny for someone in future recovering a tape with an odd-looking test card and anachronistic Ceefax with 2017 news stories.

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Nathan Dane @nmsni.co.uk · 18/08/2026

Comparing my rasteriser to a real scope. Mine isn't doing the clever maths required to low-pass the samples to Nyquist and keep them sine-looking. Still cool though...

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Nathan Dane @nmsni.co.uk · 16/08/2026

Can't reply so doing the vain-glorious quote repost... We can at least go halfway, with Ceefax via the Internet! Surely that makes things a little better? nmsceefax.co.uk

nmsceefax.co.uk

NMS Ceefax

An up-to-date version of the BBC's teletext service, Ceefax.

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Nathan Dane @nmsni.co.uk · 16/08/2026

OK fine, fine, I couldn't let it rest - here are the dots joined up in the appropriate fashion.

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