BBC Regional News HD from 21 October

[Rufus57]

BBC Regional News finally going HD from 21 October. No need at last to change to channel 101.

[newapollo]

@Rufus57 

Sadly the following link shows this won't be happening this year.BBC has denied the speculation that regional news etc is going HD this year.

The link talks about regional HD channels and not regional news, however I can't see how they can broadcast  regional news in HD on an SD channel.

Admittedly they could still broadcast HD versions of the regional news programs on iPlayer. I think for the time being it would be too costly to divert HD versions of regional news to the current BBC1 HD channel.

https://www.mediamole - hd-versions-of-bbc-ones-english-regions-still-due-in-2022 

"The BBC has denied speculation that HD versions of the BBC One English regions could launch as early as next month.

Earlier this year the corporation outlined plans to replace its generic HD version of BBC One in England with localised HD versions in the 12 regions and three sub-regions by the end of 2022.

A recent update to the BBC Schedules website, which carries comprehensive listings for all of the BBC's national TV, local TV and radio channels, suggested that the move could be coming much sooner than planned.

The site had provisional listing placeholders for the 15 new regional stations alongside the message: "Broadcast schedule begins on Thursday 21 October 2021."

A BBC spokesperson has now denied that the channel launches are imminent, however, telling Media Mole: that the schedules had appeared as a result of a "technical error" online.

The corporation remains on track to launch the regions in HD by the end of next year as planned.

BBC One viewers in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have already had access to HD versions of their national station for some time, while viewers in England are shown a national HD variant which switches to a holding message during regional opt-outs.

[japitts]

On some other industry fora, there's been threads for a little while about this - but suspicions that it will just be iPlayer links/streams for now.

Looks like some news sites are now reporting it as happening, but I don't see any announcement from the BBC yet.

[Roger_Gooner]

My understanding is that although content is captured in HD there's a lot more that has to be upgraded to be able to do HD broadcasting at all regions. For example I think that BBC's two multiplexes and any that must be leased need expensive upgrading. It's a lot of money for just news, and such is the size of regions that a lot of it isn't that local anyway to many people.

[Lee_R]

Hi @Rufus57 thanks for posting and welcome back to our community.

I haven't heard anything from here regarding the regional new channels in HD.  If and when there is news, youl'd be able to view it here.

Regards

Lee_R

[JLO1]

More information here

https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/articles/2021/bbc-one-hd-rollout-england

[Rufus57]

https://www.cordbusters.co.uk/bbc-one-gains-full-hd-local-news/

More details here. It's coming....eventually.

[oswaldp]

Only available on Sky's new Sky Glass product initially (delivered over internet). Rollout will complete to all platforms by the end of 2022 I believe, still a bit of a wait before we no longer see the annoying holding card and terrible music during local programming!

[japitts]

Cue the fun & games with series links....

TiVo/V6 can be toggled fairly easily, but I should imagine 360 may be slightly different. Perhaps by that time, the "all channels" situation may be different.

[newapollo]

Info in the link from the BBC states, " BBC One HD versions from regions in England will first become available to viewers on internet-connected TV platforms first" (Sky Glass)

The following are just guesses on my behalf and probably completely wrong.

Reading between the lines the English BBC regional HD versions may become available on VM's new entertainment service which is IP based, before it becomes available on the 360 and V6/TIVO boxes.

You can register your interest in that new service on the following page https://www.virginmedia.com/offers/befirst 

As far as I'm aware it's currently being tested in the trials forum, although as I'm not on the trial I don't have access to that closed forum, also any participants have to agree to a non disclosure clause.

Looking at the picture on the link it will be cloud based recordings, and I'm also assuming that like Glass it probably won't have have access to all channels, as there's a large number of freeview channels not available on Glass.

A recent post about Sky Glass on digitaltveurope stated, "Sky Glass is the next evolution of the Sky service for sure, but it is of little surprise that the company has taken such a huge step forward since Liberty Global and Telefónica completed the merger of Virgin Media O2. (It just so happened that approximately five hours after Sky wrapped up its launch event, I received a ‘save the date’ email from the newly formed mega telco for an unspecified product launch.)"

EDIT  The unspecified product launch may have been the Hub5.