Why?

[encaser]

As Yummy Fur said it would be great if set-top boxes appeared before 'everyone' upgraded for digital which could handle both standard and HD, and I would add at a sensible price point. If both points were to happen then any primary HD broadcaster could gain a foothold via box sales AND subscriptions - or licence fees; perhaps someone should suggest it to the beeb to make/partner box production. Oh, I was dreaming for a bit.
It'll be interesting, at least, to see the beeb prog to see standard at it's best from source - possibly.
As is it'll be more likely that EU peeps wedge out on a HD bluray dvd as a method.

[cybersoga]

There isn't enough bandwidth available to broadcast HDTV via terrestrial, unless they kill anologue TV and the current DVB-T digital terrestrial, even then there would only be room for a few HD channels, but in the world of ever increasing data throughput i'm sure they'll find a way.

[Elgaran]

There is no point to HDTV unless it is done correctly. That means it needs more bandwidth than standard PAL. I can see us getting to a situation where it is marketed as better than DVD quality (which it should be) but in practice channels will be over compressed and you may end up with garbage. Bandwidth is expensive and so TV companies will have to make the decision - a few high quality channels vs. a load of crap channels. What do you think will win - my bet is loads of crap channels. Just imagine how wonderful it will be watching shopping channels in HDTV


Anyone else more optimistic?

[MartinImber]

There isn't enough bandwidth available to broadcast HDTV via terrestrial, unless they kill anologue TV and the current DVB-T digital terrestrial

Only have to kill analogue (PLEASE), for 5 HDTV muxes

1 Mux could carry 1 HDTV channel

BBC1, BBC2, C4, C5, and one other

[Chris Muriel]

And then the government lose out on what they has hoped would be a lucrative sale of BandIV and bandV spectrum space freed up by the forced disappearance of analogue TV.
If they could sell the freed up space for TV use with a licence stipulation that HDTV would have to be carried, they wouldn't find many interested bidders in the current climate - nobody in the industry is making sufficient profit and most of their shares are at record lows.

Chris Muriel, Manchester.

But won´t we all need new TV´s? Bit bloody pointless if thats the case.

[Mr.D]

I would not hold my breath for available HD broadcasting in this country from whatever source. Sorry to put a dampner on things but any organisation that creates a website touting 1080i delivery when said website is the sole extent of their operations is not worth taking seriously.

The most realistic way of getting a hold of HD in this country as things stand is either bootleg HD material from the states or elsewhere on DVHS or officially released HD material either on DVHS again or some other delivery format.

As for having to change your TVs... we're home cinema nuts we like that sort of thing!

[Garincha]

Spectre wrote:

DTS IS better than Dolby Digital. It's specification is better. It's encoded at a higher bitrate and doesn't use perceptual encoding.

Yes, and tone engineers doing mixing and dts managers are doing their best to spoil these wonderful advantages!

[MartinImber]

And then the government lose out on what they has hoped would be a lucrative sale of BandIV and bandV spectrum space freed up by the forced disappearance of analogue TV.

Good HDTV is more important than government funds

If they could sell the freed up space for TV use with a licence stipulation that HDTV would have to be carried, they wouldn't find many interested bidders in the current climate

BBC could do two - they master a lot in HDTV now!

But won´t we all need new TV´s? Bit bloody pointless if thats the case.

Excellent excuse for a bigger screen

[dean randle]

Could the BBC be relied upon to broadcast it at the correct bandwidth if they did do HDTV? They've even started lowering the bandwidth on Digital Radio broadcasts to accomodate quantity rather than quality of material.

Dean.

[Brianws]

Nice to see a UK site covering HDTV.

I watch HDTV (1080i) on my CRT projector using D-Theatre tapes, sadly this is the only way to view quality TV in Europe. The pictures are superb and are of true cinema quality. HDTV is ideal for cinema block busters, and would also be great for most outdoor events as well. The picture quality is far superior to even the best DVD’s. So why shouldn’t we have HDTV in Europe? The present digital TV services (and I include DVD here), are the digital equivalent of analogue 625 PAL, and PAL is a 35 year old standard, positively ancient in electronic terms.

HDTV by comparison offers, over five times the image area (pixels) of any of the UK TV channels including DVD. Only by using this standard can films be shown “As the director intended” .. a much misused phrase so often bandied around by store sales staff and others. Large screen displays are needed to do full justice to the HDTV standard. Nevertheless I’m sure that if such a service was adopted, most viewers would be able to reap benefits from the improved resolution capabilities.

Without the resolution capacity of HDTV, widescreen is a bit of a joke on the consumer. The use of the widescreen format on standard digital TV services, is of dubious value because of the low horizontal resolution, and the correct description really should be Letterbox TV (even the anamorphic/squeeze scan versions).

Sadly the technical quality of British television is lower now than it was 10 years ago when PAL was the only coding option for transmissions. During the last few years the engineering standards have slipped badly for a variety of silly reasons and especially the lack of quality control while providing the simulcast services. With the modern technologies around, viewers certainly deserve something better, especially from the BBC!

Isn’t it a shame that despite all the spectrum space available for the UK digital services on Freeview that not even one of the multiplexes was even considered for HDTV. Someone presumably decided six low resolution channels would be more worthwhile than one high definition channel. Anyone who has seen correctly displayed HDTV knows that this was a poor decision and that HDTV is the future of Television.


Brian Smith

[Gordon @ Convergent AV]

Brian. Welcome to the forums and nice first post

Gordon

There's quite an influential paper (which in my usual style I have managed to forget the author's name) dealing with 'suspension of disbelief' - which concluded that gender has a huge part to play in the disbelief threshold. Unfortunately for those of us in the UK, most of our TV is aimed at women (and if you don't believe me, have a read of the mass market TV guides side by side with women's magazines, the correllation is frightening), who supposedly have a lower threshold.
PS Guys, feel free to use this to argue with girls about the necessity of upgrades.

[Chris Muriel]

True - the TV marketeers certainly aim a lot of their marketing hype and features at the "fairer sex".
Hence the 'orrible acronym "WAF" - Wife Acceptance Factor.
This is why we have "virtual surround sound" and RF speaker links ; the latter seem to be self defeating because (at least for the Philips ones) they require a power supply lead fed from a box
(wall-wart) that has to be plugged into the mains.
I don't expect to see PAL progressive or higher line-rate interlaced modes in UK (or Europe) broadcast any time soon.

Chris Muriel, Manchester.

[Orbitalzone]

I tend to agree... don't hold your breath for HDTV in the UK....

how many widescreen TV owners actually have it set up for optimal performance (ie best signal selected and aspect ratio correct) probably less than 50% are set optimally and yet viewers are happy with their 'widescreen' pictures. Would the general public actually see much improvement in HDTV? and let's not forget Dixons and Comet would display such models using a RF connection showing MTV2 in stretchy-vision anyhow!


Other factors must come into the equation... to produce HDTV quality programmes then UK programme makers would have to use far higher quality film sets, makeup and other such stuff... I imaging existing standards would look pretty poor on HDTV...

One thing I did notice while spending 6 months in the USA is that there are a fair range of large lowish cost HDTV set's on offer... not sure if many people are actually buying them mind you.