[Spencer]

Quoting myself; just to check I wasn't imagining the improvement I compared last week's with this week's Politics Midlands. Both of these are shown at the same resolution on the iPlayer according to the stats.

The top row is last weekend's PM, complete with grainy and slightly blurry camera shots, the bottom row are this week's equivilant shots. If this is the start of the HD transformation that's a good sign as I expected we'd have to wait until 2026-28 to see the Midlands' output in HD. One thing I would say is it appears the racking/saturation isn't quite right on the newer kit. The Caspar astons also look sharper - I don't think they are from the new Xpression kit that's being rolled out.

I noticed the same changes on Look North from Leeds whilst they were in their temporary set including graphics looking sharper, and an end to the distinctive awful blurry pictures with crushed blacks. Subsequent BTS social media posts from presenters showed they had started using Sony cameras rather than the old Thomson ones. I’m guessing Birmingham must have had the same upgrade. 

Leeds is still broadcasting In upscaled SD though, so don’t get your hopes up of an imminent upgrade to native HD.