ITV SD regional shutdown on satellite for some regions

[London Lite]

As previously discussed on TVF, April 13th sees some ITV regions close their SD services completely on Sky and Freesat.

Anglia (East), Yorkshire, West Country, Tyne Tees, Meridian (south) and Central (East) will become HD only regions.

It was mentioned on ITV News West Country tonight, the clip is recorded from the West Country (West) sub-opt.

https://youtu.be/oPfCrcJ7hmY

[Brekkie]

Long overdue. Hopefully the BBC regions finally going HD over the next year or so will see some significant movement in switching to HD as the norm for the major channels over the next few years.

[paul_hadley]

How on earth we still don’t have HD channels for BBC1 regions is baffling. How many years has it been now?

[Meridian MR]

It was mentioned on Meridian tonight. (And has been mentioned a couple of times before too.)

[Meridian MR]

How on earth we still don’t have HD channels for BBC1 regions is baffling. How many years has it been now?

Yes it's pathetic.
Maybe they'll be in 4k by the year 2122... :roll:

[London Lite]

I've just checked my recording of ITV News Anglia and it's announced on the West edition.

[bkman1990]

Do ITV have plans in place to do more SD closures of their English regions in the near future with this news. I assuming that this arrangement on the closures will be taking place on transponders rented by ITV to SES. I heard from a news article recently that ITV & the BBC had retained a deal to keep their transponders in place for Astra satellite users in the UK & Ireland. ITV could close more SD in future & then have CITV & ITVBe converted to HD only within the next year or so because those channels are currently in SD only.

Also; ITV do currently have plans to start up an ITV UHD channel as well. But I am not sure if we will see that come to fruition in the UK maybe until within the next 2 years as the 2023 Rugby World Cup will be played in France.

[Neil Jones]

Also; ITV do currently have plans to start up an ITV UHD channel as well. But I am not sure if we will see that come to fruition in the UK maybe until within the next 2 years as the 2023 Rugby World Cup will be played in France.

There are apparently UHD channels already on Astra 19.2, and one on 28.2 as well:
http://www.astra2sat.com/ultra-hd/uhd-channels/

I don't know if the parameters are outside of the range of Other Channels that you can add on Sky boxes though, not that that really mattes for 19.2 as for Sky purposes you shouldn't be looking over there anyway.

[London Lite]

How on earth we still don’t have HD channels for BBC1 regions is baffling. How many years has it been now?

Not too long now, BBC One HD is to be regionalised in England by the end of 2022. With this, we should see finally changes to ITV as well on Freeview which currently uses macro regions on ITV HD.

[what]

That was a bit of a poor explanation from Westcountry. Especially given that it's likely the majority of viewers with set top boxes older than 10 years would be the elderly who might not have internet access, why not just taks the time to explain what's actually happening?

[James Martin]

The amount of people who have satellite television but don't have internet access must be miniscule. I would wager that most elderly people have Freeview.

[London Lite]

That was a bit of a poor explanation from Westcountry. Especially given that it's likely the majority of viewers with set top boxes older than 10 years would be the elderly who might not have internet access, why not just taks the time to explain what's actually happening?

It appeared to be the same or near enough the same script given to Anglia as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laZHrulJlXQ

[Inspector Sands]

How on earth we still don’t have HD channels for BBC1 regions is baffling. How many years has it been now?

The technical requirements in terms of multiplexing and distribution have been described many times over at the old place. But it's worth remembering that ITV isn't fully regional in HD and Channel 4 isn't at all - it's the London version (with adverts for TfL etc) for everyone.

ITV have the incentive that they need their viewers to watch the correct adverts, theyre not doing it because of regional news.

The BBC don't have that incentive and the ratings for the regional news don't seem to have been affected so I imagine it's been a case of can they justify the expense.

Also because the terrestrial HD versions of BBC and ITV are all on the same (BBC owned) multiplex there's an issue of them working together. The MUX currently has 5 or 6 (?) versions in England for the ITV regions. That removes a lot of the hurdles for the BBC to match that with a bit of investment,but they probably don't want to have some but not all regions being in HD. The BBC need 15 versions of that MUX produced for England... so I wonder if there's been a bit of a stand off between the two - the BBC would really like ITV to take the lead and increase the number of regions and the BBC would like ITV to go first so they could piggy back on them!
I've no idea if that's the case but one taking the plunge first would have helped the other.

In the end the thing that's going to enable HD regions is a much more modern and flexible encoding amd multiplexing system that's being brought in

[Keith]

Long overdue. Hopefully the BBC regions finally going HD over the next year or so will see some significant movement in switching to HD as the norm for the major channels over the next few years.

I wonder if in time we may see the reverse of the current setup on freeview when it comes to DVB-T and DVB-T2. At present PSB3 contains the HD channels for BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Five (etc), and currently once COM7 is cleared it'll be the only multiplex to use DVB-T2. Maybe in time PSB1 (or PSB2) will be the only PSB multiplex to use DVB-T, and will hold the SD channels for BBC, ITV etc to provide a legacy service for older Freeview boxes.

It would certainly be nice if COM5 and/or COM6 could change to DVB-T2 given that COM7 is eventually scheduled for closure, particularly as at present some BBC HD channels use COM7.

[Inspector Sands]

That's one way to do it and it seems like quote a nice solution. Don't think they'll suddenly be lots more HD channels though. Obviously there'll be less capacity for them and they'll be more expensive. There wasnt exactly a massive demand for HD on COM7 and 8