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BBC, ITV and Channel 4 to go HD
Territories covered
Western Europe
UK,
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Published:
20-Sep-07
Britain's three major broadcasters, the BBC, ITV and Channel 4, are planning to launch free-to-air high definition (HD) channels early next year. The plans were revealed in the same week regulator Ofcom and the BBC trust made favourable assessments of the BBC's HD roadmap. So far, pay TV platform BSkyB has made the running in launching HD in the UK, reporting 292,0000 HD subscribers as of June. BBC HD will be a nine-hour 'best-of' schedule, made up of native HD programmes, an extension of the current trial feed. Channel 4 HD, which will launch as part of the BSkyB platform in December, will be a full-time simulcast of the core Channel 4 schedule with some programmes produced and transmitted in the HD format and the rest of schedule 'up-converted'. Channel Four says the channel will be made available on other platforms in the future. Last week, ITV announced the launch of ITV1 HD on the Freesat platform in spring 2008.
Ofcom's Market Impact Assessment (MIA) on the BBC Executive's HD project concludes that BBC HD will deliver significant consumer benefit at reasonable cost and is unlikely to create any major competitive disruption on the market. The biggest potential problem lies in the fact that IPTV operators will not be able to transmit BBC HD any time soon, not because of the BBC but simply because of their lack of bandwidth. Ofcom therefore recommends BBC to engage further talking to IPTV players so that a version of BBC HD can be launched on IPTV network as soon as it is technically feasible.
Our take...
For BBC HD, the next step is a BBC Trust provisional conclusions to published on 25 September, followed by a public consultation and a final green light by 21 November. Considering the positive MIA and Public Value Assessment delivered this week , BBC HD plans should receive a formal Public Value Test agreement by the Trust without any significant amendments.
Free to air HD services will encourage HD uptake and contribute to reducing the 'HD content gap': of more than six million HD-display-ready homes in the UK, less than half a million are currently able to actually watch HD programmes.
From a Freesat perspective, the presence of the three most popular British channels in HD quality at launch is bound to be a major marketing asset encouraging British viewers to buy MPEG-4-capable boxes off the shelf. Pay satellite and cable will transmit the three free channels too but IPTV and DTT will not have the capacity to do so for some time, giving Freesat a window of opportunity to establish itself as the key HD platform.
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