No More HD - Confirmed By VM

[ShadowTD]

Again, I say what about the people who've had the TV Drive for the last two years and have been promised more HD channels 'soon'. How does Neil feel about letting those people down? His staff have utterly failed to manage their expectations.

[SMHarman]

Originally Posted by nialli

More concerning is the lack of UK programming being shot in HD - next to nothing yet homegrown on C4 and still way too much BBC stuff shot in HD.

The BBC has some very strict HD shooting guidelines from what I have read in other places. Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes were both shot on 16mm but the BBC does not consider that adequate to make an HD broadcast. I don't get that. 35mm has at least 20 times the data in it that an HD signal needs 16mm therefore has at least 5 times the data, instead you get a really high quality SD broadcast. The divX encodings of A2A I watched looked great on my HD telly with progressive scan DVD but looked like they it could easily have been recorded in HD.

---------- Post added at 11:15 ---------- Previous post was at 11:08 ----------

Originally Posted by moroboshi

We're not getting any more HD channels this year. What happens next year is still to be decided.

Things to consider though :

1 - Sky have (according to Virgin themselves) exclusivity deals with all HD channels except for BBC HD, and ITV HD.

2- Virgin Media's moronic CEO recently said they only need one HD channel, - BBC HD, and that their lack of HD was not causing them to loose many customers.

3 - Virgin are stuck with a network clogged with legacy analogue cable TV signals, and V+ boxes that can only decode the bloated and out of date MPEG 2 codec. HD video consumes a lot of bandwidth and should be encoded in MPEG 4 format. (as it is on Sky HD, and on Blu-Ray discs)

1. VM have talked of 4HD so that leaves the very quiet 5HD.
2. For the CEO to state that publicly I am confident he has it backed up with stats and is probably right, right now, looking forward the statement may not be so great and the group of early adopters on this site also may disagree but the average customer spending the average fortyfive quid a month on VM products this is probably right.
3. MP2 Codecs are not a hinderance to HD roll out. My SA box is MP2 as is the network it is on and this is my HD lineup.
http://www.optimum.com/io/hdtv/hdtv_channels.jsp
9 Network channels
9 Sports channels
12 Movie channels
2 Music / Animation
3 Science and Nature
7 Lifestyle
2 News
44, yes read that again 44 HD channels on an MPEG2 distribution system. While it would be optimal for VM to move to H.264/MPEG4 it is not necessary.

[Sirius]

Originally Posted by Arthurgray50@blu

he consumer pays an amount of money per month, for a product which they are not getting,

I don't pay extra for HD. I pay extra for the pvr ??? So how can you say we are paying for HD.

[SMHarman]

Stuff from earlier but I have been seeing 500 Server errors all day

Originally Posted by nialli

Virgin has NOT said they will have one channel for HD; if you're referring to this story from Digital Spy ignore the headline as it's not actually said by anyone from Virgin Media. Nowhere (to my knowledge) has Virgin stated that they will have only one HD channel. They may only have one today, but they've not said that's it.

Originally Posted by Neil Berkett

"We don’t have the ‘Never The Same Colour’ challenge that has driven HD offering in the US," said Watson, according to Broadband TV News. "We have 7m HD ready sets in the UK and I still think HD works really well for certain bits of content but is disappointing for others.

There must have been another thread refering to that article. The original colour problems of NTSC were eradicated with the invention of the integrated circuit and voltage stabilisaton

Originally Posted by Neil Berkett

Yesterday Berkett said the strategy was going well - subscribers now spend more hours watching VoD than linear channel Five - but admitted the "need to educate consumers and drive experimentation" in order to push the service.

and 5 carries Neighbours (or is it home and away) I forget, don't live there anymore, but that is / was a pretty big draw and headlineworthy when they paid enough to take it away from the BBC.
Neil is backing his assertions up with hard facts here.

Now personally, if I had an HD set and a V+ box, would I be a little annoyed about the lack of HD content broadcast in the UK, yes, but I can also see why the situation is as it is and that this is the statement for now, not the future.

EDIT - I also get plenty of HD OnDemand, 20Mb BB which is the lowest level of service and 2Mb upstream. This can be upgraded to 30/3/ FiOS have taken to advertising how good their upload speed is and look you can upload photos to say shutterfly quicker on FiOS than on Cable. It is the only thing you can do faster on FiOS than on cable.
I also get great customer service. My HD DVR died on late Saturday / Sunday and they offered me a tech visit by lunchtime Monday.

[bayards]

VOD may be OK but if ITV HD has coverage of Euro 2008 and the Olympics i for one, don't want to watch them the month after!!

[ahardie]

Originally Posted by bayards

VOD may be OK but if ITV HD has coverage of Euro 2008 and the Olympics i for one, don't want to watch them the month after!!

ITV HD isn't going to be on anything but freesat anyway. It wont be on Sky either.

[Mick Fisher]

Many many years ago on my first time around with Sky, I remember that ITV1 was not available on the service. This would probably be somewhat over 10years ago. I had to move my TV to Cable before this was resolved so don't know when the channel finally became available on the sky service.

Has ITV historically had a downer on Sky?

Or is this exclusivity just a ploy to get this Freesat HD service off the ground?

[sherer]

Originally Posted by bayards

VOD may be OK but if ITV HD has coverage of Euro 2008 and the Olympics i for one, don't want to watch them the month after!!

I think ITV HD isn't a linear channel per say anyway. Selected programmes that are in HD will be available in the HD format via the red button

[harmitage]

Originally Posted by sherer

I think ITV HD isn't a linear channel per say anyway. Selected programmes that are in HD will be available in the HD format via the red button

That's my reading of it too. It seem a reasonable way to provide HD content, given that there's so little of it. I just hope that the technology used can be utilised by VM. My understanding is that Sky don't have the capability for technological reasons.