Diesel

Read this in one of the trade sites today:

Sky on track with HDTV
BSkyB has said it is on track to launch High-Definition Television (HDTV) in the UK and Ireland next year, following a series of deals with technology and equipment suppliers.

Sports and film channels are thought to be the first to be broadcast in HD.

Sony will be responsible for constructing a new HDTV studio at the satellite giant's Isleworth headquarters and provide training to BSkyB staff during its transition to HDTV.

Tandberg Television will provide the video encoding and distribution system while the delivery of programming in both high- and standard-definition formats will be provided by a tapeless ingest and playout system developed by The Harris Corporation.

Last month Thomson was named as the initial manufacturer of its HDTV digiboxes.

"The launch of HDTV is the most significant development for BSkyB's broadcast infrastructure since the launch of Sky digital in 1998," said Alun Webber, BSkyB's group director of engineering and platform technology. "These supplier contracts keep us on track to launch HDTV in 2006."

HDTV offers a step change in picture quality, delivering a home viewing experience similar to that offered in cinemas. Pictures are delivered in widescreen format.

ChristianR

iTrader: (1)

excellent news.. will work like a treat with my plasma

Iain Young

Heard a rumour with the sky stuff that there was going to be a new version of the macrovision type protection built into it which would stop you being able to record stuff off the telly (unless you were using a HDTV sky+ box). Don't know how true a rumour it is, but it could spark some interesting debates

Can't say I'm too excited about it. There's hardly ever anything worth watching on telly now, and introducing hdtv isn't going to fix that...

davegtt

LMFAO... quality gaurenteed there then eh

seriously though HDTV is going to be released on 1 or 2 channels for the first year before its fully released and then its gonna cost a fortune... plus half the equipement every bugger owns isnt compatible for the best quality...

turk182

You'll not have to wait until next year for HDTV; it'll be here in < 6 mths. You will need a new Sky box though. Price to be confirmed, but don't expect it to be cheap.

A lot of the US shows that Sky have rights to show are already available in HD, so I'm told there will be plenty to view.

messiah

Been holding out getting sky+ until I get my extension sorted, hd sky+ is rather tempting - will have to tell the wife we'll need a new telly too.

wonder if I can persuade her to go for a blu-ray dvd player too?

class_A

The new Sky HD box will be made under contract by Thompson and will feature Sky+ like PVR functionality. The transmissions will be in MPEG4 (probably Part 10/AVC/H.264) and if you want to keep an all digital signal path, your display device will require a HDMI connection capable of dealing with an encrypted video stream (HDCP). From reading around it looks like the HD picture will be available via HDMI/HDCP only. HDCP currently appears optional for those broadcasters who wish to activate it but I guess most of them will. Only basic analogue connections will be provided alongside for backwards compatibility with standard def. sets.

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/article/ds19617.html

DirecTV in the USA (also NDC owned) are moving to a similar system shortly.