[Earlie37]

The set is pretty much finished but a lot of rehearsals still to come. So don't expect anything for a few more weeks yet as a date within November was always the plan. Amazing how much quicker things are when you have a proper sized and spec'ed studio with a decent scenery door with ample car park space!

Yes - Southampton will be the first English region with both HD infrastructure and the new gallery setup in place and the new set.

As mentioned before, gallery changes, updating HD infrastructure and the new style set roll-out are three separate projects. All sites have differing levels of complexity. A new set doesn't mean that the gallery and other infrastructure are updated at the same time. It is dependent on resource, the site constraints and the amount of upgrades that are required. Southampton is lucky as it was the trial site for the new gallery spec being rolled out to all English regions and was made HD capable at the same time. So it's the first site where the set upgrade is taking place after the other projects have already been completed. For the majority of regions, it is the other way around - the set is arriving before the gallery is refurbished and infrastructure is stripped out for HD provision.

As others have mentioned installing the new set is a much quicker project than the gallery and HD work. However, it does take a long time as there are power requirements needed to power the LED walls. There's also a lot of work to incorporate control of the imagery into the gallery and train the producing team on the templates to be used. Plus, for many regions, they have to rehearse a completely new format to presenting in the new set up - you've probably noticed a lot more consistency in how each region starts the program, how sport and weather are presented etc. Tunbridge Wells was a bit of an exception due to other factors creeping in which delayed the original timescale.

PS The photos in Russell's post are Southampton - the beige wall panels at BBC South are often a big giveaway!