Entertainment On The River |
Radio Stations |
| AM radio stations can generally be received
anywhere along the river, however, AM radio
stations are susceptible to interference for
electrical equipment, especially from inverters.
Although FM radio stations are more immune to
interference from electrical equipment, their
coverage along the river is not as great as it
is with AM radio stations. The reception of
digital radio stations will also be limited to
the vicinity of townships. |
Terrestrial Television |
| Terrestrial (normal) television reception is
usually restricted to the vicinity of the larger
townships. Areas of along the river were among
some of the first areas to turn off analogue TV,
so a set top box or a digital TV may be
required. When receiving terrestrial television,
it should be noted that some stations use
horizontal polarisation and some use vertical
polarisation. This means that the elements of
the antenna will either be horizontal or
vertical. |
Finding Local Radio and Television Stations |
| Sometimes it can be difficult to determine
what stations are in an area and in the case of
television in which direction the antenna should
be pointed and whether the antenna should be set
horizontally or vertically. Fortunately, the Australian Communication Authority (ACMA) provides lists of radio and television stations throughout Australia. These lists provide information such as the latitude and longitude of the station, its channel/frequency and the polarisation of the antenna system. |
Satellite Radio & Television |
| Satellite receivers provide the option of
receiving a wide range of digital radio and
television stations including pay TV channels.
The primary Australian free-to-air channels are
on the Optus satellites. If you are an
infrequent user of the satellite receiver, most
of the channels will become scrambled until the
satellite receiver receives an identification
message to unscramble the channel. This can take
up to 48 hours, so if you are only an occasional
weekend user, this is something to bear in mind. |
Podcasts & Radio Plays |
| If you are looking for an alternative to
television when you are on the river and you
want something other than music from the radio
of your collection, consider downloading and
listening to podcasts and/or radio plays. A
couple of good sources for podcasts are the
BBC and the
ABC. There are hundreds of old high quality radio plays that are out of copyright and available for downloading. Some like RadioArchive.cc use torrents or provide the material, while others like the Internet Archive allow you to download them directly from their site. You can find huge amounts of copyright-free material by doing a Google search using "radio plays". |
