Opinion
Freeview’s HD
Broadcaster focus
launch may
face problems
despite Ofcom
giving the
green light to
Five’s new HD
HD delays on the cards
channel, says
David Wood
The recent news that media regulator Ofcom has reserved capacity (in
principal) for commercial broadcaster Five to provide new HD services
on DTT from 2010 represents another important piece in the jigsaw that
is the roll out of high definition television.
At the very least it’s good news for Freeview’s proposed HD launch,
with Five joining the BBC, ITV and C4 in a four channel HD free-to-air
offering, with roll out starting in the Granada region in late 2009.
For viewers this means that Five’s US acquisitions such as CSI and House DAVID WOOD
as well as films and sport including the UEFA Cup and home grown shows Industry journalist
The Gadget Show (pictured) and Fifth Gear will be available in HD. Five estimates David Wood is a TV
that 43% of content would be natively HD at launch with the remainder and technology
up-scaled. Its entire primetime lineup will be broadcast native HD by 2018. journalist and former
The importance of Ofcom’s decision to give Five the greenlight is that editor of Broadcast
it makes the whole Freeview HD service stronger. Viewers considering who regularly writes
spending around £100 on a new set-top box capable of decoding the new for Televisual, The
transmission specification DVB-T2 and MPEG4 compression system, will Guardian, Broadcast,
need to be persuaded that there is enough HD content on Freeview HD and World Screen.
to make it worth taking the plunge.
If HD broadcasting has an Achilles heel it remains the availability of
content. The good news is that 1.8m have already signed up to
subscription packages on Sky and cable, and there’s no doubt the public
is receptive to HD technology, with HD televisions flying out of the shops.
Sky has a pretty good track record for migrating subscribers to new
technologies, as it showed with Sky+, but a free-to-air HD service would
expose a much wider number of viewers to the benefits of HD – if the
content proposition is strong enough.
Which is why the successful launch of Freeview HD is so important.
And with three out of four of the partners currently feeling the full force
of the recession, it’s no surprise to hear rumours that C4, ITV and Five
may delay their HD launches to save money. If the rumours prove true,
the timetable for the transformation of HD broadcasting from a minority
pay TV business into a mass market medium could be derailed.
This of course is bad news for anyone with a stake in the HD market,
from the technology and kit manufacturers to the hire companies and
indies which have set out their stall in high definition production. There’s
little doubt that HD broadcasting will become standard over the course
of the next decade, but just how quickly is difficult to forecast.
Perhaps the commercial terrestrial broadcasters need to focus on the
big picture. HD broadcasting could become a vital bulwark against the
inroads being made into broadcast television by the internet. Constraints
over the delivery of video over IP mean HD broadcasting will be unique
to broadcast platforms for the forseeable future, offering broadcasters a
USP which they can use to stem the tide. in my view
Summer 2009 theproducer 7
Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36