A joint statement just released by the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, and Five, has stated that the first trial of high definition TV over digital terrestrial in the London area has been very successful.
Not only was it a technical success, but the 450 or so households involved in the trial said they now would expect some HD content to be broadcast via Freeview or equivalent free-to-air digital service.
98% of those who took part said that it was important to have HD services on Freeview in the future, with 86% saying they expected to see it within 3 years.
90% said that the existing public broadcasters should be responsible for HD development.
When asked about which programme genres would benefit most from being broadcast in HD, wildlife and sport lead the way with scores of 9.4 and 8.9 out of 10 respectively.
Those who took part said they'd like to see at least 6 or 7 channels, and ideally 10, airing over Freeview.
95% said that the HD picture looked as good as or better than they had expected it to.
It's an encouraging report, though previously mentioned technical issues would suggest that we're not going to see any HD rollout over terrestrial until the digital switchover is completed in 2012.
Meh, why wait for 2012, just do it now! :p
I believe because of the bandwidth they need to use from the analog channels.
However, from the 30ish channels available on Freeview, only 10 or 12 are viewable, the others are pure crap, they could easily remove 15 channels from Freeview and use the bandwidth for HD.
Absolutely spot on Alex.
Get rid of the rubbish and introduce 4 or 5 hd channels sooner and sky may be forced to reduce its ridiculous HD package costs.
On a technical note, will there have to be a special dvb receiver to get the HD channels? I am wondering about the fact that people now are splashing out on Digital lcd's and plasmas but will they have to get a new "box" for hd or could the problem be solved with a firmware update to their existing tuner?
New tuner completely since its a different codec H.264 instead of MPEG2 for standard def.
The Ofcom trial simply took Humax HDCI 2000 DVB satellite tuner and modified it to have a DVB terrestrial tuner.
Has anyone else noticed the HD ITV channel has ceased broadcasting on Telewest? Are ITV pulling out of the HD arena for a while or what?