25-01-2023, 03:39 PM
(25-01-2023, 03:25 PM)Keith Wrote: Does anyone know if there's any plans in the medium to long term to do something similar on Freeview. I thought I'd spotted the equivalent of the Freesat channel 799 screen tucked away on Freeview recently.Freeview will get regional HD BBC1 very soon, but there's no plan to de-regionalise or convert PSB1 to T2.
Obviously this couldn't happen until PSB3 becomes fully regionalised to support local BBC One HD in the English regions. Once that has been completed there may be a case for rolling out a version of Nightlight so that PSB1 effectively only contains variations for the nations. I assume that would also make it easier for PSB1 to upgrade from DVB-T to DVB-T2 at some point in the future, even if at least one BBC SD channel had to move over to PSB2 to provide a limited service for older devices.
There's not the same upgrade path for SD box owners as there is with Sky and getting to the stage where there are HD regions has been a big enough project for now I suspect.
That's not to say it won't ever happen, and yes doing the same on DTT will probably be a good way to do it. Thing is that the BBC don't have enough services to fill PSB1 with HD. I suspect any move like that would involve a big reshuffle of PSB channels - with both PSB 1 and 2 going T2 converting all their channels to HD. PSB3 has 7 HD services, so that would be space for 23 HD slots for BBC, ITV, C4 and C5
But anything like that would have to be agreed by everyone involved