Plans for BBC One HD

[Mort]

While it's finally overdue, most viewers in England will still have to watch regional news in SD, alas upscaled.

Despite the various up and downconverts initially in place, at least for SD regions, if they're all TXed as 1080i MPEG-4 at a a decent bit rate they'll hopefully still look better than the super soft SD MPEG-2 versions.

My logic is that an SD-SDI > HD-SDI upscale at source, feeding that uncompressed/lightly compressed upscale to be centrally encoded and stat muxed to HD MPEG-4, will likely still look better than a STB scaler attempting to work miracles with 720x576i MPEG-2 at 3-4 Mbit/s. We will see.

It'll be good to hopefully see Plymouth and Salford go out natively in HD. I think a handful of stations have HD capable switchers but their camera chains, lenses and graphics will still be HD (never mind the video routers). I wonder how long it'll take for every region to get a standardized HD upgrade. Broadcast HD still don't come cheap...

[Steve in Pudsey]

Wasn't there some plan (or at least exploratory work) for a vilor style solution for regional TV which put off upgrading certain elderly regional centres?

[Mort]

Wasn't there some plan (or at least exploratory work) for a vilor style solution for regional TV which put off upgrading certain elderly regional centres?

As far as I'm aware (no news is good news, right?) the regional gallery project is still on but with regards to a date for a wider rollout...

[Mike]

It'll be good to hopefully see Plymouth and Salford go out natively in HD. I think a handful of stations have HD capable switchers but their camera chains, lenses and graphics will still be HD (never mind the video routers). I wonder how long it'll take for every region to get a standardized HD upgrade. Broadcast HD still don't come cheap...

Nottingham can also go out natively in HD following a complete technical refit about 18 months ago as well, given they were the oldest fit-out.

I wonder if the upgrades (obviously ahead of the 2022 projected launch) are being done in age order, oldest regional gallery to newest?

[Stanley Matravers]

Most/all of the "network programmes" stuff at BBC Bristol (e.g. the Natural History Unit, Countryfile, Antiques Roadshow etc) is reportedly due to vacate the ageing Whiteladies Road site in Clifton relatively soon, in favour of a more modern location (one of the various "glass box" office buildings in the districts near to Temple Meads train station, apparently).

But most/all of the regional/local stuff (e.g. Points West, Radio Bristol etc) is staying at Whiteladies Road "for now". I can't imagine that it will be too long before those things follow the NHU etc to their new home (either that, or go to another similar modern building somewhere in Bristol).

In which case, it would be a waste of time/money/effort upgrading Points West to full native HD for whatever remaining time it has at the Clifton site. So, the timescale for Points West going true HD will presumably be entirely anchored to whenever a building move occurs.

[Blubatt]

I have always considered the Red Screen Of Death to be an utterly poor "solution" for BBC One HD.

I'd have preferred either a revival of UK Today, or for whatever's going out on the NC at the time (e.g. Sportsday etc) to be simulcast on BBC One HD and be structured to begin/end cleanly as per the regional news slots' timings.

It doesn't help that the lack of regions on BBC One HD has dragged-on for about 94 years.

At least the period in the late-1990s/early-2000s when DSat BBC One was initially unable to have regional splits was fairly short, so the UK Today solution was only needed for a couple of years or so.

I've always thought that the 6 O'Clock news could have been made an hour long programme, with the regions doing their own shows at 6:30, but the second half hour on BBC News Channel be a Channel 4 news type affair, with more in depth coverages of more niche stories.

[Markymark]

It'll be good to hopefully see Plymouth and Salford go out natively in HD. I think a handful of stations have HD capable switchers but their camera chains, lenses and graphics will still be HD (never mind the video routers). I wonder how long it'll take for every region to get a standardized HD upgrade. Broadcast HD still don't come cheap...

Nottingham can also go out natively in HD following a complete technical refit about 18 months ago as well, given they were the oldest fit-out.

18 months ago? April 2020, while in deep lockdown?

I can remember reading the tender document for Nottingham, it was 2015, with quite a quick turn around, I don't recall it including upgrade of all the infrastructure to HD, it was a trial system. It got installed, but I think running in SD?

[James2001]

Nottingham can also go out natively in HD following a complete technical refit about 18 months ago as well, given they were the oldest fit-out.

I think they may have been the first outside of London and the South East to go 16:9 as well? They did that back in 2002.

[i.h]

Long term the SD versions will go, at least from Sky who are wanting to remove SD channels from their platform totally

Interesting that nowhere in this thread mentions that we basically got rid of SD on Virgin in the nations during the launch of BBC Scotland.

Although from what I heard it wasn't so much intentional, but Virgin cocked up so many times when they landed on the current layout of HD by default the nations were like "ok whatever" and we've been fully HD ever since.

One odd issue tho: BBC Two Scotland SD no longer exists as a channel in the EPG. Therefore my recordings of W1A from said channel refuse to play because the V6/TiVo doesn't recognise this as the same channel as BBC Two HD.

I suppose it also helped that Virgin owns all of the equipment on their network (and IIRC didn't they already go through the motions of swapping out any STBs that couldn't do HD & MPEG4?) & they handle the entire transmission / (re)encoding process, no uplinking or muxing by the broadcaster or their chosen third party. Not a luxury that the other platforms have

With that done it could be argued there's no need for any SD channels where HD versions are already provided (and equivalent, so not possible for BBC/ITV in England). RF capacity can then be freed up and handed over to faster/less contended broadband

[Brekkie]

I have always considered the Red Screen Of Death to be an utterly poor "solution" for BBC One HD.

I'd have preferred either a revival of UK Today, or for whatever's going out on the NC at the time (e.g. Sportsday etc) to be simulcast on BBC One HD and be structured to begin/end cleanly as per the regional news slots' timings.

It doesn't help that the lack of regions on BBC One HD has dragged-on for about 94 years.

At least the period in the late-1990s/early-2000s when DSat BBC One was initially unable to have regional splits was fairly short, so the UK Today solution was only needed for a couple of years or so.

I've always thought that the 6 O'Clock news could have been made an hour long programme, with the regions doing their own shows at 6:30, but the second half hour on BBC News Channel be a Channel 4 news type affair, with more in depth coverages of more niche stories.

Didn't they have a Six o'clock News Hour on the news channel at some point in the mid-noughties? I don't think it lasted long.

[London Lite]

The last time I saw anything come out of Nottingham on a HD channel, the upscaling was the best I've seen of the English regions.

[Stanley Matravers]

The last time I saw anything come out of Nottingham on a HD channel, the upscaling was the best I've seen of the English regions.

I didn't think that anything out of Nottingham had ever been shown on an HD channel!

Doesn't/didn't the weekly rotation of regions shown nationally in e.g. the Inside Out and Sunday morning politics slots on BBC One HD (England) only include a handful of the biggest/most populous regions? (Which I didn't think included East Midlands)?

[James2001]

I didn't think that anything out of Nottingham had ever been shown on an HD channel!

I think some of their editions of Inside Out had.

[Mike]

18 months ago? April 2020, while in deep lockdown?

I can remember reading the tender document for Nottingham, it was 2015, with quite a quick turn around, I don't recall it including upgrade of all the infrastructure to HD, it was a trial system. It got installed, but I think running in SD?

I think I've got my facts wrong there then, certainly within the building things are HD - once they leave it's SD.

Nottingham can also go out natively in HD following a complete technical refit about 18 months ago as well, given they were the oldest fit-out.

I think they may have been the first outside of London and the South East to go 16:9 as well? They did that back in 2002.

Nottingham was built ready for 16:9, when they went widescreen I think it was a case of just flicking a switch.

As for Inside Out, all regional variations shown on the HD channel should've been HD as they're recorded and edited in HD.

[Markymark]

Yes, many (all?) the BBC regions have HD acquisition and editing facilities, so news packages from them can be, and are seen on network in HD, and that also appiled to pre recorded 'location' programmes such as Inside Out

The BBC built a trial system (off site from any region) early 2019. It's that that is now being rolled out. The parts of that roll out that someone else leaked into the public domain on DS recently, is that Southampton is being done now, next up is Newcastle