HD on Freeview

[Cobbydaler]

What are peoples views on this?

[awibble]

not sure how they think its going to delay the country so long. I know im not everything, but including the other halfs family, there is only 2 house that are not HD ready (brother-in-laws he only moved in last week, and one of my granparents) The others now all have V+ or Sky HD boxes on order or installed. (10 houses in total). So i think what will happen is that more and more people will not want to pay TV liences.

[JMcB]

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/High-Definition/

Petition for HD on FreeView

Originally Posted by awibble

not sure how they think its going to delay the country so long. I know im not everything, but including the other halfs family, there is only 2 house that are not HD ready (brother-in-laws he only moved in last week, and one of my granparents) The others now all have V+ or Sky HD boxes on order or installed. (10 houses in total). So i think what will happen is that more and more people will not want to pay TV liences.

Oh Buddha .... *Please* let's not make this another TV licence thread. The existence or otherwise of a TV licence won't affect this. The overwhelming majority of TV viewing that goes on in this country is of free-to-air public service channels. Their funding model is entirely besides the point.

I disagree with your suggestion that more people will go for Pay TV. Satellite and cable have been around for decades now and have still failed to get into as many as a third of the households in the UK. There is no sign of any breakthrough that would make a significant difference to the overall pay-TV market.

The BBC's submission to OFCOM is a very pertinent one. When you look at what was bid for the spectrum now used for 3G phone services, there is absolutely no way any TV network could afford to pay that kind of money. Ofcom (and the Treasury) needs to bite the bullet and accept that it simply can't auction off the analogue TV bandwidth as a quick way of reducing the national debt. If these frequencies are not made available to ensure there is an upgrade path for Freeview onto MPEG4 and HD transmissions, then exactly where are most UK households going to get HD TV from? As I already said, they have declined to pay for their TV for decades, despite the availability of alternatives.

---------- Post added at 11:03 ---------- Previous post was at 11:00 ----------

Originally Posted by JMcB

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/High-Definition/

Petition for HD on FreeView

Signed.

[popper]

like iv said for a long time, they should also take a slice of the released spectrum and setup perhaps an NGO/NFP company to administer a new country wide broadband Wireless/WiMax Mesh network as a 'return path' that your new [HD]PBS DVB-T[2] and DVB-H[2] could then use to do away totally with needing to pay any 3rd party for a 'return path' for any new IPTV services that the future PSB's might use.

HD TV is fine, but dont forget about the many low income people (and others)that will never buy into the pay-for TV and internet.

they to might pay into a pay-as-you-go or micro-payment card that you can annon charge up at any 'pay-point' outlet with say £5 a week for the odd cheap film or TV series Near VOD or multicast that could also use the new publicly owned and run backbone to operate on and innovate for the UK's future exports.