Chris

I understood that HDTV and Digital were not rolled out together in this country because of the large costs involved.

A further consideration might be that the Government wants to switch off analogue TV broadcasts so it can make a fortune selling licences to broadcast other signals on those frequencies. If it is to switch off analogue TV, everyone must move to digital. The best way of moving everyone to digital is to allow the majority of people to continue receiving their TV signals through an aerial, just the way they always have. Yet HDTV cannot effectively be delivered in this way, according to the article you linked to.

So, you give everyone the choice of either digital HDTV by cable/satellite or nothing at all, or, you allow people to choose standard-definition digital TV from cable/satellite/aerial. The majority of people in this country will never subscribe to pay-TV services, so the latter is the only viable option, in the absence of a Free-Sat service (which, co-incidentally, the BBC has also started talking about today, according to this morning's Telegraph).

In the future, the BBC clearly hopes data compression technology will improve to the extent that HDTV through a rooftop aerial will become a viable proposition. If it does, the BBC appears to be signalling that it might take the lead in the roll-out, in much the same way as the 'digital revolution' of standard-definition has only gained real momentum since they stepped in to salvage Freeview from the wreckage of on/ITV Digital.