Why is there no BT Showcase HD?

[ChelseaFCinEurope]

I get the BT TV channels via ADSL and over freeview I thought at least I would get a few matches in HD? But it seems that the only way BT are allowing you to watch in HD is if you have fibre optic. Is there plans to make BT Sport Showcase in HD at any point? It is a sad state of affairs when we cannot get Champions League on terrestrial in HD in 2015.

Cheers

[ney]

It will depend if there is space and if BT can get it on an HD MUX. So for meantime I don't think there will be any BT Showcase HD channel anytime soon. Which is a shame for those who don't have BT or don't want pay TV and have been used to watching the likes of the Champions leauge on ITV/STV in HD.

Darren

[umpire]

It would cost BT more money to do a Freeview HD channel. They want you to pay for HD via BT TV, Sky or Virgin.

I agree that it's a backward step for the free-to-air matches after years of excellent quality ITV HD transmissions on Freeview. The SD BT Showcase channel looks to be pretty low picture quality and is not even currently available to everyone (not on relay transmitters).

[davidmridge61]

.....and why is the AMC Channel on Sky not available in HD?

[benwiddowson]

Money I guess,

[umpire]

The live Man Utd match on Freeview BT Sport Showcase was very poor quality SD. Possibly only 3/4-SD 544x576 instead of full-SD 720x576?

The same match on multicast BT Sport Europe SD on BT TV was clearly better. However it still wasn't as good as the highlights on Freeview ITV SD later on.

Will a rubbish quality picture or a high quality picture on Showcase encourage more people to sign up for the full BT Sport service? Depends how you look at it I suppose.

I wish in this day and age of digital and large screens that all SD pictures had to conform to a set high standard. The variation across Freeview SD channels is quite drastic. From excellent to appalling.

[davidmridge61]

I don't think that a SD is ever going to look that great on a 'flat' screen.

[Hunter2660]

Sadly DTT mirrors DAB with quantity over quality the norm. Whenever "more efficient encoders" are found, it's just an excuse to cram even more channels in. 

[umpire]

Yes, SD was standardised back when we used analogue signals on much smaller screens at the 4:3 aspect ratio. Over the decades it has been stretched for widescreen, made digital and now shown on much larger screens.

Obviously it's no longer really suitable and HD is the way forward, but bearing in mind we aren't going to change to totally HD any time soon you would hope broadcasters would be trying to squeeze every last bit of quality out of SD. However in the race for channel choice the opposite has happened. An already unsuitable format has been made even worse on many channels to save bandwidth and costs. Compare sport on BBC1 SD with ITV4 SD or BT Showcase SD and the difference is obvious.

Poorly done SD isn't really good enough for an old 14" 4:3 CRT portable, never mind a 60" widescreen flatscreen digital TV!

In the past people have campaigned for Full-HD. How about campaigning for Full-SD first. 🙂

[davidmridge61]

Unfortunately I have had to return to the SD channels to reduce my TV package costs so I could do with my old TV back!