Date   : Fri, 17 Jul 2009 21:48:35 +0100
From   : philb@... (Phil Blundell)
Subject: Fw: Fwd: ITV Teletext to shut down in January

On Fri, 2009-07-17 at 15:22 +0100, Mick Champion wrote:
> Anders Carlsson wrote:
> What else will ITV do to save money I wonder? How much extra does it 
> cost to transmit in NICAM? That's another technology that will be lost 
> following the 2012 analogue shutdown? Do any other countries use NICAM?

I don't imagine NICAM costs much on a day-to-day basis.  The capital
cost of the equipment would presumably have been sunk long ago, and
unlike teletext there's no requirement for dedicated content authoring:
the NICAM signal is generated by a purely mechanical process from a
stereo audio input.

There are a few other countries using NICAM although I think some of
them have already switched it off in favour of some kind of DVB.  As you
say, NICAM is/will be redundant once analogue transmissions cease.

p.