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Freesat, the free to air satellite service from the BBC and ITV, is set to launch on May 6th. The service will provide a Sky style 7-day EPG with Freesat branded receivers available initially from Grundig (standard definition) and Humax (high definition), with a high definition PVR available from Humax in a few months time and receivers from other manufacturers expected later. Initially Freesat will be available from Comet, Currys, Dixons and John Lewis, but after the launch period receivers will be available from a wider range of retailers. Freesat will particularly appeal to people wanting an HD receiver or a PVR as these currently incur a subscription charge from Sky.

Now that the format war is over and we can all stop holding back, its time to consider which blu-ray player to buy. Here are the main contenders; (more…)

Reuters has picked up a story from Japanese broadcaster NHK that Toshiba is planning to stop production of HD-DVD compatible hardware, allowing the competing Blu-Ray format a clear run. The news follows a series of announcements over recent days that major online and high street retailers will no longer support the HD-DVD format, the most well-known of these being Wal-Mart in the US. Toshiba is expected to suffer losses amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars from its failure in the format war against Sony’s rival Blu-Ray format, which has often been compared to the Betamax-VHS battle of the 1980s in which Sony lost out. The Blu-Ray format will now be free to face up to its real competition; the continuing success of DVD and the growing popularity of downloads from the internet and on-demand TV.

A report by Deloitte for the BBC Trust into efficiency of spectrum use has stated that, in addition to more efficient coding and multiplexing, changes in modulation from 16QAM to 64QAM and future adoption of new technologies such as DVB-T2 and MPEG-4, efficiency improvements in the BBCs Freeview multiplexes over the next five years can also be achieved by reductions in the picture quality of servies.
The report considers reducing the capacity used by individual channels by increasing GOP length and reducing picture resolution to three-quarter screen or less to increase the number of services that can be accomodated within a multiplex. They acknowledge that lower picture resolution will generally look (more…)

Ofcom has issued a statement setting out what it describes as one of the most important decisions we have ever made: how to award the spectrum freed up by digital switchover, the digital dividend, for new users. The decision matters because the spectrum to be freed up is exceptional in that it can readily be used to provide high bandwidth services over long distances and into buildings, and because the opportunity to put this spectrum to new use does not arise often.

Ofcom favours a market led, service and technology neutral approach, arguing that giving spectrum to one use will tend to reduce flexibility and blunt incentives. The one exception to this market led approach is programme making and special events (PMSE) which already uses interleaved spectrum on a large scale. This is an extremely diverse community, and Ofcom considers that it would not be able to take part effectively in an auction. They will therefore award a package of interleaved spectrum to meet PMSE users needs.

Licence exempt use of interleaved spectrum will be allowed for (more…)

While we’re all eagerly awaiting OfCom’s expected announcement next month of an ambitious migration path that would transition Freeview from the current DVB-T transmission standard using MPEG-2 compression to the newer DVB-T2 and MPEG-4 standards by 2009, starting with a single multiplex, here’s some more news for those of us for whom HDTV on Freeview can’t come soon enough.
The Digital Terrestrial Television Action Group (DigiTAG) has suggested a spectrum efficiency improvement that could help ease the way for high definition to appear on the DTT platform. (more…)