Lee Jordan – Midlands Web Developer Web Development, Photography, Media Production, Social Media Collaboration and Marketing
Freeview HD in The West Midlands
Last week Freeview HD roll out plans were officially announced for spring 2010! Taking a keen interest in this I’ve been looking at some of the details of when it’s likely to happen for the West Midlands and what technology is involved.
Lichfield in HD!
Firstly where and when is Freeview HD coming to us? Well it looks like, from the documentation on the freeview site, that the signals will be coming from the Lichfield transmitter and that it’s likely to happen before the World Cup. So we should be in the early rollout category. I’m puzzled as to why the HD signals aren’t coming from Sutton Coldfield, no doubt some people in the West Midlands won’t get the signal untill 2011, but it could be that Sutton wasn’t in for switch over until then.
Digital switch over for TV in the UK means much more than a new broadcast system, it means we can make more of the bandwidth, or “the airwaves” that will have by 2012 been freed up by turning the old system off. Freeview HD seems to be what’s now going to fill the space left by digital switch over and so finally High-Def pictures are coming to those of us who don’t want or in fact can’t get subscription HDTV, with a catch, we’ll need to buy new equipment, for understandable reasons.
Standard freeview boxes that we’ve mostly all got won’t pick up the new High-Def signal, which is fine if you don’t want Freeview HD. At the moment freeview uses MPEG-2 technology which basically can’t cope with the high bitrates needed for HD. Bit rate is all important in the digital media world, it’s the difference between a video phone quality picture and a Blu-Ray picture.
Limited Airwaves
Interestingly Ofcom have regulated MPEG-4 as the technology for the HD signal but it won’t be “full HD” much like other HD broadcast services in the UK such as SkyHD and FreesatHD. My concern from reading all the technical jargon is that Freeview HD could find itself in a similar boat to DAB, in that there’s not really enough space on the airwaves to squeeze in the number of channels at a decent enough bitrate or quality. There wouldn’t be much room to expand to add new HD channels beyond the 5 or 6 planned, which should be ok, it is after all a free service.
Conclusion
I actually think we’ll be ok with a limited HD service on Freeview, I don’t think there will be a rush on to get the new boxes and it’ll be for the most part a good way to get used to HDTV broadcasts if you have a High-Def TV without paying out a subscription. The HD enthusiasts will be all on Sky by now. It is interesting that Lichfield will be giving out the HD signal rather than Sutton but again that could be because Sutton isn’t yet ready to take on that task.
I’m glad that I didn’t shell out for a full 1080p freeview built in TV and stuck with a 720p basic setup, I don’t watch enough films regularly to get Blu Ray at the moment. I’m really looking forward to watching the BBC’s excellent range of current affairs and documentary programming in HD and may just hold out longer to get a HD capable freeview recorder. My current freeview recorder is ace but I’m just holding off before replacing it. All this is of course made meaningless by the unstoppable march of on demand TV via the Interweb.
Update: It seems from reading digital spy there was some concern that the signal if it came from Sutton could clash with Nottingham’s traditional TV broadcasting, so there we have it.
There is no real feasible plan for Digital Radio Switchover before 2020, with DAB in the UK still stuck in 1995! When compared with radio, I think TV is doing ok towards a digital future.
Posted on Monday, December 7th, 2009
Interesting that bit about Sutton not carrying the signal. I can’t afford one of them flat telly’s yet, so am not too worried. I’d like a flat telly one day though.
Go with the flow, like when your TV needs replacing. I got my LCD a couple of years ago when I moved into a new place. I hear soon they’ll be coming out with stuff called OLED which offers even better pictures than LCD, so it might pay to wait, if only because it’ll further reduce the cost of LCD.