Despite a small victory the battle for high definition television is still not won
In this cross-posting from Nelbie Kevin Perry lays out why viewers are still a long way from seeing their favourite sports in high definition on free-to-air TV.
This week viewers achieved a significant victory when Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull introduced a bill into Parliament that removes the requirement for TV networks to broadcast their primary channel in standard definition (SD). The legislation is expected to pass through the senate and become law in early September.
However don’t expect FTA networks to rush the process of converting current SD channels into HD channels once the law is changed. There are still significant technical and financial hurdles to cross.
Due to the botched process that introduced Digital TV in this country, there remains a small but significant percentage of televisions in the community that only support SD broadcasts. FTA broadcasters whom are already witnessing declining audience levels are nervous about leaving these viewers behind.
Then there are the viewers that don’t have an antenna, but access channels such as the ABC, Seven, Nine an Ten via the Foxtel cable or satellite networks. This is where the real argument begins as broadcasters battle over who should bare the costs.
Existing HD channels, Gem, 7Mate, and OneHD have never been made available to many Foxtel Satellite customers as the networks refuse to significant fees to have them added to the satellite owned by Optus. Many Cricket fans with Foxtel have been left angry this winter, unable to watch the Ashes coverage on Gem.
Nine, Seven, and Ten declined to comment yesterday but have previously argued that Foxtel should be paying the retransmission fee to Optus as the HD channels are providing a benefit to Foxtel customers. Foxtel argues that the Free to Air networks should be paying the fee as the increased audience is of benefit to those networks advertisers.
A spokesperson for the ABC yesterday told me that, “we have no date as yet for the transfer of our main channel to HD.“ and added, “the ABC does not support increases in fees to Foxtel.”
While viewers may believe it’s a simple process to add an additional HD channel to satellite line-up. In truth it’s a much more complicated scenario. A single HD channel takes up 4 times the bandwidth of an equivalent SD channel. Its further complicated by the fact each broadcaster provides a different version of the channel for each of the five major metro markets meaning if ABC, Seven, Nine and Ten were to include their primary channels to the Foxtel platform it would require the addition of 20 HD channels to the Optus satellite, and that’s not including SBS, 7Mate, Gem, and One which also require multiple channels to serve different markets.
A spokesperson for Foxtel told said that the Pay-TV provider was unlikely to pay the cost of adding FTA HD channels to the service. “The legislation has been introduced but not yet passed, so there is a bit of time to pass before this issue arises.
“FTA broadcasters pay Optus to have their signals carried on the satellite. We would expect that to continue to be the case. However, we have not had a chance to discuss the latest developments with the broadcasters.”
Foxtel recently introduced a new IQ3 set-top box that combines terrestrial TV with satellite channels, effectively bypassing the need to add FTA HD channels to the satellite, however user adoption of this device has been slow with a number of customers complaining about bugs in the IQ3 software.
With FTA Broadcasters and Foxtel heading towards a stalemate, it’s likely Australia could have two tiers of quality in TV coverage for some time to come.
- Kevin Perry is editor of TV website Nelbie
All they have to do is switch their analogue channel to their HD channel – piece of cake.
They won’t of course – why would they ? “Millionaire” looks the same in HD.
Don’t expect them to get rid of SD – they would have to completely re-engineer all their broadcast towers at a cost of millions for no new extra advertising revenue whatsoever. In fact, it would probably make more financial sense to ditch HD, which costs more to broadcast….
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Don’t think John (comments) knows what he’s talking about. Analog TV has been dead for a while. And I think Kevin means to say SD in his third par.
It’s all easily solved. Switch the primary channel to HD and simultaneously broadcast an SD stream for those that don’t have HD capable equipment. It could be in as poor quality as the datacasting channels (now used for shopping / racing) as those still watching in SD might not care. It’ll also give them an incentive to upgrade to HD.
Meanwhile 7Mate, Gem and One would revert to SD. They’ll have to.. there’s not enough bandwidth to carry more than one HD channel plus all the other stuff.
As for Foxtel.. the FTAs should just keep providing an SD feed of their primary channel. It’ll either force Foxtel to do the right thing by its subscribers and wear the costs of carrying an HD stream. Or those with Foxtel will just have to use their antennas to get the HD version.
Bottom line.. why should the vast majority of viewers be denied their favourite TV in HD just because of a very few laggards and issues with a pay TV carrier? It’s 2015 guys. Maybe the ABC can’t, but the other channels could offer primary channel HD almost immediately. It already exists within the networks’ internal infrastructure.
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The failure to standardize the EQ SD to HD is a bloody nightmare. My telly goes shouty when I cut to live TV off the SD channels on the PVR.
Also, we aren’t all watching ball bashing. You know those reruns we all love? they were telecine. Tell me you’re dreamin’ telecine looks better in HD.
The truth is out there. Digital is a mess. MPEG encoding is not kind to panning shots, and no amount of wavy grass under some rugga thuggas feet is going to convince me this is rational use of the bandwidth.
How much HD do we need to see the black dot at midnight anyway? Oh well, I guess the national anthem in stereo was worth it.
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Don’t blame MPEG for jerky panning shots. That is because of the rate of scan. TV broadcasters use a low scan rate because it’s _cheaper_ to broadcast.
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Nice sharp picture, shocking depth of field, jerky panning. Well, at least the once lost art of focus pulling has had a renaissance.
Frankly, I would rather see good production in s p beta-cam shot entirely with a 2″ lens than technical brilliance depicting dross.
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