April 02, 2010

ITV1 HD - first week highlights

For those in England and Wales there are a few HD morsels in the first week of ITV1 HD on Virgin:
Saturday, 4.20pm Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Wednesday, 7.30pm Manchester United v Bayern Munich
Friday, 8pm Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (and Order of the Phoenix debuts on the Saturday afternoon)
Not a dazzling line up to be truthful, but better than nothing. Saturday also has both FA Cup semi finals in HD. Good news for footie and Harry fans, not so good for soap followers; no HD Corro or Emmerdale yet.
A reminder that Good Friday sees the HD debut of Ashes to Ashes on BBC HD at 9pm and the new Doctor Who lands on Saturday evening in high def. The 4HD films this weekend are The Italian Job (remake), Pan's Labyrinth, One Hour Photo and Eragon. (Four Weddings and a Funeral is also showing on C4, but is not listed as being in HD.) The following weekend's 4HD film line up is pretty poor: Soderberg's Solaris and the animation Valiant.

7 comments:

Andy McGrath said...

Nice to actually have some choice in watching a variety of HD content. Thought the picture on King Kong was good. Space left on V+ box will be a real problem with HD content!

OLU said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
OLU said...

unbelievable ITV HD dont look nothing like HD

seems waiting 4 all this HD now becoming point less cause when they do start showing it, they all looks SHIT
none are 720p

sure by the time its goes 1080p that should be like 20year from now if we LUCKY

Erich said...

Movies are actually essentially broadcast in 1080p, it's just things like sports that isn't. Having said that, much of ITV's HD looks terrible. I watched a bit of King Kong and Harry Potter, and they were both very soft. I suspect ITV cropped and resized the 2.25:1 originals to fullscreen 16:9. If something on BBC HD looked as poor as this, people would be screaming bloody murder on the BBC blogs. And why hasn't ITV HD got 5.1 audio? Is that the same on sat?

Nialli said...

I haven't watched any ITV1 HD yet, but Doctor Who on BBC HD on Saturday looked great.
Anyone else noticed that the BBC's usual Bank Holiday problems with iPlayer have struck again? Just a fraction of the content you'd expect - Doctor Who's missing for one. Happens every time - makes we wonder if there's just one person who knows how it works and when they are on holiday the whole thing grounds to a halt.

Erich said...

I watched a little bit of Dr. Who, and parts of it looked outstanding. Far better than any of the movies I've seen on ITV HD so far.

Can't say I'm surprised about the iPlayer problems, but I just checked mine, and Dr Who is on there in the HD catch up section.

Square eyes said...

Watched King Kong on ITV HD followed by Flash Gordon in HD with Sam Neil in the lead role, Was impressed with the quality on both

OLU not all the programmes are shown in HD it is only a selection. To find out which you will have to go through the EPG info button.

And Dr Who was brilliant.