I've been fully HD for a couple of years now: 1080p TV, Sky HD, and PS/3 for HD games and Blu-Ray.
Now my father-in-law has finally decided to replace his ancient TV, and has sought my advice - and frankly I don't know what to tell him.
He doesn't play games and rarely watches DVDs (he is approaching 70) so is really only interested in broadcast TV.
He doesn't want to subscribe to Sky (or Virgin), let alone pay the extra £10 / month for HD. But having bought an HDTV he wants to watch some HD content. So what are his options? Very limited seems to be the answer.
He does have a Sky dish left by the previous owner, so FreeSat is an option, provided he buys a FreeSat box (or a TV with FreeSat built in) - but the only HD content is the very limited BBC HD channel, or the extremely limited ITV HD channel, which shows about one program per day at the moment.
FreeView is promising HD content, but has absolutely nothing right now.
Channel 4 HD is only on Sky, not FreeSat (whereas ITV HD is not officially on Sky, but you can get it with a manual hack.)
Oh, and all broadcast content is 1080i, not 1080p.
The undustry has been selling HD kit for at least 3 years (having conned us with the 'HD Ready' sets that pre-dated the full-HD versions) but apart from Sky Sports there is still virtually nothing to watch. Even obvious plays have been missed - having regained Formula 1 coverage, why does the BBC only show it in SD? Same with Match of the Day.
What a waste of pixels - or am I missing something?
Now my father-in-law has finally decided to replace his ancient TV, and has sought my advice - and frankly I don't know what to tell him.
He doesn't play games and rarely watches DVDs (he is approaching 70) so is really only interested in broadcast TV.
He doesn't want to subscribe to Sky (or Virgin), let alone pay the extra £10 / month for HD. But having bought an HDTV he wants to watch some HD content. So what are his options? Very limited seems to be the answer.
He does have a Sky dish left by the previous owner, so FreeSat is an option, provided he buys a FreeSat box (or a TV with FreeSat built in) - but the only HD content is the very limited BBC HD channel, or the extremely limited ITV HD channel, which shows about one program per day at the moment.
FreeView is promising HD content, but has absolutely nothing right now.
Channel 4 HD is only on Sky, not FreeSat (whereas ITV HD is not officially on Sky, but you can get it with a manual hack.)
Oh, and all broadcast content is 1080i, not 1080p.
The undustry has been selling HD kit for at least 3 years (having conned us with the 'HD Ready' sets that pre-dated the full-HD versions) but apart from Sky Sports there is still virtually nothing to watch. Even obvious plays have been missed - having regained Formula 1 coverage, why does the BBC only show it in SD? Same with Match of the Day.
What a waste of pixels - or am I missing something?