UK regulator Ofcom has published plans for HD services on Freeview, while it’s good news that Freeview will go HD the plans do mean that existing Set Top Boxes and TV cards will need updating as the HD channels will be encoded with MPEG-4, I am not sure Media Center would need any changes as long as the TV cards support BDA (the driver standard for Media Center)
I will be happy to see HD content via Freeview as the current SD format is not brilliant on a large screen TV
Viewers will need new receiver equipment to pick up the services on multiplex B. Existing DTT set top boxes will continue to pick up existing Freeview services, but consumers will have to upgrade their equipment to watch the MPEG-4 encoded high definition services.
5 thoughts on “Ofcom confirms final plan for Freeview HD”
That’s great news. Will it be possible to view this terrestrial HD content in real time? I was under the impression that the bandwidth was such that it would need to be `downloaded’ as a recording and viewed later but perhaps that was an earlier proposal and before the re-organisation of the multiplexes.
Media Centre will need an update as it currently only supports MPEG2 in the DVR-MS files. I have seen a posting on TGB saying that the Fiji release will add MPEG4 support as it’s required for DirecTV in the US, but us non-beta testing mortals will have to wait to see if that is the case.
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That’s great news. Will it be possible to view this terrestrial HD content in real time? I was under the impression that the bandwidth was such that it would need to be `downloaded’ as a recording and viewed later but perhaps that was an earlier proposal and before the re-organisation of the multiplexes.
Unfortunately, it’s still at least a year away.
I would say its real time, that is why there was the need to re-arrange the mux locations
Media Centre will need an update as it currently only supports MPEG2 in the DVR-MS files. I have seen a posting on TGB saying that the Fiji release will add MPEG4 support as it’s required for DirecTV in the US, but us non-beta testing mortals will have to wait to see if that is the case.
Here is my roundup a recent posts, and don’t forget to post your Media Center setup pictures and enter…
Thats great news, does anybody know when they will start rolling this out?