September 27, 2018

HD only channels arrive

VMHD regular Jez24 writes:
Some news might have slipped under the radar, so i thought i would mention it.
UK Gold has just started on Virgin, however that's not the big news. The big news is for the first time the HD version has replaced the SD version. They have also done this with the Free Sports channel. Virgin are the first broadcaster who can do this now they have replaced all the old non HD boxes. There is nothing to stop them ditching all the SD channels that have an HD version now, apart from BBC1 of course. We need our local news!

5 comments:

Notlenks64 said...

Sky have had Gold in HD for months now

Sibby said...

Its great to have Gold in HD now but aren't the majority of the programmes so old that they were only filmed in SD?

Jez24 said...

Two Peter S's ! First Peter, the point I was making is not who has what in regard to channels, but that this finally signals the end of SD channels clogging up the bandwidth and the confusion of two versions of each channel. Of course it will only be a brief resbite, before we have to deal with the HD and UHD versions of channels!

Peter two! It's true that the programs were made in SD, however the SD channel has such low bandwidth, the programs looked worse than they did in 1985! Also the HD channels tend to show programms in the original 4:3 ratio, although unfortantly this dosn't seem to be the case on UK Gold, judging by the Last of the Summer Wine, currently on! Top of The Pops on BBC 4 HD, shows that the old shows can somtimes have a very acceptable picture.

Unknown said...

Few more hd channels

Richardr said...

Pedantic point - Asfar as I am aware, not all ITV sub-regions are available in HD, and nor are the C4 regions (used by them for advertising) - so ITV and C4 join the BBC in insisting that SD remain.

Apart from that, a sensible move. In time the same could happen for UHD - the V6 downscales to HD via HDMI - but earlier boxes will have to go first.