ITV HD Launching on Freeview HD Comments

I'm not interested in World Cup 2010 the horns in South African games become really annoying. I guess Mandela will be busy, at his photo studio.

".... the only way to watch the World Cup in HD will be via free-to-air broadcast services. If that isn't progress I don't know what is!"

One miffed Murdock mumbling "humbug" I guess...

Worth a mention that Sky HD users can currently manually add the ITV HD 'Red button' channel to their existing box and manually tune in to ITV HD content when its being broadcast.

I wonder if there's any plans to bring it to Virgin's line-up? I've heard rumours of a linear channel, but nothing concrete.

still not clear if i'd need a new box or if any tv's can handle freeview HD.

don't like the idea of another box...

@ilovethemonkeyhead - If I recall correctly, new boxes/TVs will be needed to receive Freeview HD, as it uses a new standard (the more efficient DVB-T2, compared to DVB-T which is currently used). Your old box will still be able to receive Freeview, just not HD transmissions, as the two systems will co-exist for a period of time.

...and as I found out earlier today, the beeb has halved the bitrate used for its satellite service to ~9Mbps from ~19Mbps.

People are reporting problems on fast motion images with the Championship footie game from the weekend being used as an example.

Beeb say they have moved to some spiffy new encoders and say the 19Mbps rate was "unsustainable".

Any day now the HD service will go below the picture quality we used to get with an all-analogue recording and broadcast path - which really was excellent on a telly with a good tube (Mullard or Trinitron).