Freeview HD launched
The trials have concluded and Freeview HD as a service has been launched in London, Newcastle, Leeds, Birmingham, Newcastle, Glasgow and central Scotland.Woo hoo everyone there's happy.
Well no not really because I guess less than 1% of those in that area can actually decode these new broadcasts.
As I said back in 2007 HD broadcasts use not only a different method of encoding but an entirely different method of broadcast to the current batch of Freeview tuners on the market. So how many DVB-T2 marketed tuners does Google Shopping show - 3. How many DVB-T2 marketed televisions does it show- 1. Or at least one manufacturer Panasonic. Oh there's more on the way, but as yet there's a big hole.
So congratulations to all those in these areas who have already made the leap (stumble) to Freeview you now need to buy something else. Sure that's the price to pay for being early adopters of technology, kinks get worked out and features added; except Freeview was launched in 2002 with a big fanfare of 'get this now before we switch off the old broadcasts'. There are people out there who have just turned to Freeview on account of having the analogue system turned off who had no opportunity to even buy DVB-T2 equipment who are now discovering that the money they've spent was pretty much wasted.
It gets better. In order to broadcast the HD channels they'll be using spare space on Mux B (it goes 1,2,A,B,C,D) until everyone gets settled and then they'll dedicate the entirety of Mux B to HD only. This will require a re-tune as all the existing SD channels are parcelled out to the other Muxes. So another re-tune so what? Well it means all those channels need to be squeezed in with the others and that means compressing them further, which in turn means a downgrade in quality spread over all channels on that Mux.
So a choice of putting up with poorer quality or shelling out for yet more equipment. Remind me wasn't Digital Broadcasting supposed to be better than Analogue Broadcasting?
4 comments:
Sometimes “fail” doesn't seem like a big enough word. Seriously, who the hell planned this? (Did somebody plan this??)
In all fairness HD wasn't the big thing it is now when Freeview was initially launched so not building the system to cope can be accepted.
However what is painful is that areas have been switched completely over at a time when they knew a new broadcast standard was in the works and that it was not possible for people to buy the equipment ready for it.
Someone somewhere, should have called for a halt until the standard had settled before switching the analogue broadcasts off. If people themselves chose to buy Freeview equipment than fine, but they have, in effect, been forced to buy equipment that is about to become pretty much obsolete.
That needs answering.
I'm guessing that everybody will claim that there's no overall entity in charge, and that's why this has happened.
Except the government and Ofcom who were the ones who set the terms of the switchover.
Post a Comment