ITV HD regions on Freeview

It's worth the effort to at least have nice clean native 270 meg SD upscaled to HD for the regional news, and of course remove the requirement to have to change channel from HD to SD.

By the way, no upgrades to the CCM centres to transmitter circuits are required. If the Beeb were to follow ITV's regional opting architecture, fewer HD distribution and contribution circuits would be required, I can't believe they're not thinking along those lines ( no pun intended)

Financially, it's not worth it for an hour a day of local news that gets limited viewers, when they can get it on channel 1. In the fullness of time, with equipment obselescence it makes sense though.

Though the BBC Trust have apparently now endorsed the idea ? Waiting for equipment obsolescence won't make it possible, a pile of extra codecs and new circuits will still be required

Couldn't they use the DIRAC or something similar. I don't think a 1.45 Gbps line is necessary. After all they used the DIRAC to send HD feeds from the Beijing back to London and is used for outside broadcasts.


Must be one of the difference between the U.K. and the USA. Usually reporters in the field edit using NLE systems either on the laptop or a desktop in the truck while they're there when they will go live on location. They can produce (may not be the right word but I used it initially as they take different parts of video, voice overs and graphics) or edit a package out in the field. With cellular hotspots they can connect to the news system and with some graphics engines (or they have a templates available) from the field.

I saw a demo by a station group when their graphics were updating showing how to insert graphics from the field using the Viz engines back at the station. The editing software (I think it was Adobe Premiere Pro CC and Final Cut Pro) has a Viz plugin where they can access all the templates and insert data. They preview the templates, click render and a ZIP file is delivered to them. They then open dozens of images and insert them into the timeline. The finished product could be sent/fed to the station via microwave, satellite or what ever means that their going live and is played out from there after the reporter introduces and tags out the package. In short circumstances it's played out from the camera or from the truck.

[b]Edit[/]: Here's a similar setup demo from the VizRT website.

No it's quite common in the UK to edit in the field when necessary, and it was even in the days of linear editing. Yep, that sort of situation is one that, Operationally, crosses the line between the two functions of the newsroom

But there's little point doing it in HD if the production/playout system and studio facilities back at base is SD. With a couple of exceptions the BBC's English regions were refitted in the mid 2000's, with a few bolt ons since. Those systems aren't small or cheap and are the sort of major infrastructure that's replaced rarely.

It'll have to be done at some point, sounds like they're trying to decide what to upgrade them all to

Yes, DIRAC is an option ( already used for DTL contribution from the regions)

I don't see a post but I swore I mentioned this earlier that HD quality would look good for the small screens right now such as Facebook, Twitter, BBC.co.uk/News , individual apps on the connected TV (do they allow selection of clips from regions?) and packages that maybe distributed outside the BBC. Plus having the packages in HD will give them a good quality backlog (of packages and maybe potential stock footage from it) when they finally make the switch.

Slightly off topic, but I've just noticed that the ITV HD version I get on Sky has now changed from ITV Central (West) to ITV West Country (South West). I'm not sure when this happened, but I'm guessing it was in the last week or two.

EDIT: I notice from Lyngsat that there is also an ITV HD West Country (West) for the folks in Brizzle.

Yes, both sub-regions of West Country were launched on ITV HD (on Freesat & Sky only) on 24th November.

Freeview and Virgin Media viewers from Gloucestershire to Cornwall are still stuck with Central West HD, sadly.

I'll probably be about 80 years of age before there's a remotely-half-decent number of (or all) ITV HD regions/sub-regions on Freeview, at this rate! (My current age being 36)

This is in the wrong place but didn't really know where to put it as I couldn't find a general ITV thread.

During the Jonathan Ross Show the continuity announcer just came on and kept going while the show continued in the background. Rather strange?

Nice continuity link in the middle of #TheJRShow there - well done @ITV!

— Benj (@BenjaBitch) December 10, 2016

So ITV mess up continuity playout at the most important point of the @JRossShow when guests are introduced.

— Bellyflop (@Bellyfloptv) December 10, 2016

Individually the numbers may be relatively modest - but if you add the viewers of all the BBC One regional shows together (i.e. look at the number of people watching BBC One 1830-1900) the BBC 1830 regional opt is one of the most watched news shows of the day, sometimes the most watched. (It doesn't appear in the BARB ratings as every show is rated separately)

Yep - though AIUI because PSB3 is fully statmuxed, doesn't there already have to be an encoder for BBC One HD, BBC Two HD, CBBC HD, ITV HD, C4 HD and C5 HD for every ITV / C4 regional variation combo - to allow for full statmuxing? (ITV and C4 regional advertising also has an impact)



This is the bigger argument. It's currently very difficult to argue for the additional cost to provide SD content via an HD platform. Annoying as the 'Switch to SD for your BBC One reigon' is, the costs of providing full HD opt-chains for all the SD-only regions is still difficult to justify. Yes - there is a quality improvement by upconverting SD to HD (though the state of some English regions studio cameras may mean you wouldn't want to experience them in all their glorious SD upconverted to HD glory...) but with the current BBC finances - it's difficult to justify.

However - as BBC regional centres inevitably upgrade from their (often first gen) 16:9 SD gear as it reaches the end of its life, HD gear will inevitably replace it, and the arguments to provide HD regions IN HD will have a lot more validity. However the big question is when the BBC will do 'Vilor for TV'. Plymouth's HD upgrade was a lesson in the real cost of in-situ HD upgrades, and it was not a low cost exercise. I think there will be a pause on any other HD upgrades until IP can be properly evaluates.



You may think that. Others disagree. Spending millions of pounds to provide a short-term upgrade to existing SD regional centres to provide SD upconverted pictures is a difficult thing to justify, particularly if you are then going to have to replace the gear any way as you upgrade the regional operations to HD.



No - that's true - because PSB 3 is PSB 3 - it leaves CCM to go to the transmitters as a 40.25Mbs transport stream anyway. However other infrastructure in the BBC is changing (the move from Raman to BT for instance...)