Robin Hood returns to BBC HD

Saturday evenings on BBC HD take on a familiar look from March 28th with the return of Robin Hood at 6.50pm. Not a personal favourite, but it has plenty of fans young and old. According to the promotional material, this series opens with Robin's sad demise...
Saturday also has Planet Earth and Tiger - Spy in the Jungle repeats starting for those that have miraculously avoided those series in HD over the last few years...

BT take on Virgin Media - why??

Can anyone explain how BT's initial roll out plans for its fibre-based cable are to enable a "Digital Britain"? No fewer than 25 of the announced BT 29 exchanges to get the upgrade are already covered by Virgin Media's 50Mbps fibre-optic broadband. BT is investing £1.5bn in its fibre rollout, so why prioritise customers who can already get faster broadband, albeit from a competitor?
Meanwhile, Berkett announces his expectation that Virgin will offer 150Mb broadband by next year (see this BBC story). It seems there are two definitions of "coming soon" in the Berkett Lexicon: one for the 'mine's bigger than yours' broadband boasting, a completely different one for the promised HD service expansion...

Six Nations rugby on BBC HD

Two games today on BBC HD:
15.15 England v Scotland
17.20 Wales v Ireland
Which is followed by a half hour studio discussion on this year's tournament at 19.30

Later on Saturday evening at 22.45 is a BBC drama Trauma starring Colin Firth - click the link for more details.

The hottest HD...

Is there no end to the stunning documentaries in high def the BBC is showing this week? After Yellowstone and the awesome Nature's Great Events (both shown last night) we have on Thursday Hottest Place on Earth, a two-part series about the Ethiopian desert. (9pm BBC HD)

BBC HD now nine hours a day

Quietly, when no-one was really paying attention, BBC HD slipped an extra hour into its daily broadcasting schedule and it now gives us nine hours a day, the full amount agreed with the BBC Trust when the channel was formally launched back in 2007. Okay, so it seems to have filled the earlier hours with family fayre, but it's still good to see the channel broadcasting as promised.
This and a few other interesting tidbits are in Danielle's latest post over on the BBC HD blog - a recommended read as always

The Wire coming to BBC2

All five season's of HBO's finest will soon be shown on BBC2 for wider appreciation after the critical acclaim has reached fever pitch. Unfortunately it won't be on BBC HD - it was shot in Digibeta rather than on film and it's a 4:3 presentation rather than widescreen despite being only a few years' old.
But that shouldn't stop anyone from dipping in to the finest US TV drama ever. Bar none.
And for those who wonder what all the fuss is about, this classic clip (contains quite a few bad words - do not play aloud in the office!) is a brief demonstration of its appeal. CSI was never like this...

More on next gen TV from Virgin Media

Couple of interested comments posted to the story below about Cable Congress this week that I'm promoting to their own post so that they don't get lost:

The next-generation service delivery gateway architecture being discussed by Motorola and Virgin Media is proposed to deliver advanced multimedia services, such as:
* Multi-room TV – the ability to watch recorded content from any TV or PC in the house
* Converged entertainment services across three screens – PC, TV and mobile
* Media Mobility – moving your content from device to device and taking it on-the-go
* Customizable user interfaces.

Visitors to Motorola’s stand (#25) will experience the company’s next-generation technology showcase, developed in conjunction with Virgin Media, which demonstrates the drive towards a less complex delivery of the personalized viewing experience.

Full story here

And Jasmeet 181 has also sent this link Virgin Media, Where Are We Now? to three tantalising slides of Virgin's IP vision

Yellowstone on BBC HD

The new BBC natural history series Yellowstone kicks off at 8pm on Sunday night, but hang on for its appearance on BBC HD on Wednesday evening at 8pm. First of three.

ITV HD - will it be worth the wait?

Althought it has crept onto some Sky customer's Sky+HD boxes this week, the non-channel ITV HD is still officially only available via the red button on FreeSat. It is strongly rumoured to be one of the HD channels to arrive on Virgin Media this year, but will it be worth the wait?
Here are all the programmes on ITV HD in the next seven days:
Saturday, 3.35pm Film: Thunderbirds (the 2004 live action yawn)
Saturday, 9pm Film: About A Boy
Sunday, 9pm Wild at Heart
Monday, 9pm Law & Order: UK
Friday, 9pm Moving Wallpaper
And that's it. For the entire week. Hardly worth the wait, I think you'll agree; three hours of TV and two mediocre films. They don't even show the two quality ITV1 US imports, Dexter and Pushing Daisies, in HD. Apart from the Champions League and FA Cup games, this hardly deserves a fanfare if it does finally arrive.

Virgin Remote codes

Often get asked about these, so here's some helpful advice from Ben at VM:
Virgin has now updated the Help and Support pages to include the Volume Control codes and instructions for all remotes. To access the information go to Home/Guide > Help & Info > Help with your Remote, then follow the on screen instructions