[ppppenguin]

In the UK there is a strong feeling against the US PBS model or any other scheme that would turn the BBC from a universal broadcaster into a "high brow" ghetto. Equally funding the BBC directly from government is disliked and we like our programmes without commercial breaks. That's why the licence fee lives on.

As for transmission methods, I'll be a bit controversial here and say that digital terrestrial is a complete waste of time and money. With a slightly longer changeover period we could have gone to satellite and cable as the only means of distribution with the internet coming up fast behind. No expensive transmitter re-engineering, no electricity bill for running them. The old folks with analogue TVs could be left happy as they are and will diminish in numbers anyway with time.

Our COFDM terrestrial TX system is a better engineering solution than the US one. It's inherently resistant to multipath though it does need more complex TX and RX. When the TX power is boosted after analogue switch off it should give pretty reliable reception. The source coding systems are another matter, as is how much you compress the signals to fit more in.