[Orry Verducci]

I just wish more channels would make use if Samsungs TV Plus to deliver the channels in HD. If we can have 5 Cops why can’t we have 5 Select?!

Samsung charge to be on TV Plus. So it's not worthwhile being on TV Plus when your channel is already widely available to those TV's on Freeview/Freesat. You also can't link from a Freeview service to a TV Plus service, so the vast majority of viewers would probably continue to watch the SD Freeview services on the channel numbers they know, not realising it's in HD down the bottom of the EPG.

That's why TV Plus is mainly FAST channels that aren't on the traditional platforms, or channels that aren't on Freeview (e.g. CNN).

Making HD available via a HbbTV "red button" application is a much better option in this case as it appears on the existing Freeview channel numbers and it works on all brands of TV (not limited to Samsung TV's). Which some broadcasters are now doing.

The only Freeview channels streaming in HD is GB News and Talk TV.

I would speculate the GB News launched on TV Plus as part of a strategy of getting themselves on to every possible platform as a way of getting as many viewers as possible on the then new channel. I would also speculate that TalkTV is on there because their direct competition (GB News) is on there. So I would take them as being very much the exceptions here.

In addition those streams run at 25 fps, so while they're a higher resolution than the Freeview channels they have half the motion (after 50i is deinterlaced). Can't speak for everyone but I personally find that more irritating than the channel being in SD, so I'll take the Freeview channel over the TV Plus stream any day.