A couple of months ago we reported that Voom HD was coming to Virgin Media via its trial 50Mbps broadband service. Now, it may be that Voom HD will become available to a larger audience, as Rapid TV News reports that Voom (part of Rainbow Media) is in final contract discussions with BSkyB.
This could see two high definition channels launched in both the UK and Ireland.
Glenn Oakley, SVP of Business Development at Rainbow Media, had some interesting things to say about the state of high definition broadcasting worldwide, and in the UK.
The Voom HD signal is provided in a number of formats, to suit local broadcasters, including MPEG2 at 50Hz, MPEG2 at 60Hz, and MPEG4:
"The interesting thing is that so many of the actual broadcast elements needed to get a signal to the viewer at home, that are commonplace in SD or even MPEG2, are not yet available in MPEG4. Think about elements like subtitling. It is all catching up, and very quickly, but it doesn’t seem to be there just yet. We would have preferred MPEG4 for the obvious bandwidth savings, but our local affiliates, for the moment, seem happy with the MPEG2 signal. So the workflow seems to be to have the MPEG2 signal, add in elements like subtitles where necessary and then convert to MPEG4.”
Oakley also talks about broadcasters' hunger for new high definition material:
“Our clients tell us they want more. There’s a real lack of HD content worldwide, and we have more than anyone else and it’s all rights cleared and we’re ready to go. We had a call on Friday from BSkyB, asking whether we were ready to go, and this will accelerate the process with two channels. We might have liked [the launch] to be later next year when the subs numbers were even better, but we’re on plan with a launch of multiple channels."
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