October 31st, 2008 3:34 pm

Sport? Who The Frack Needs That In HD Anyway?

It’s only been a few days since the announcement, but already we’re starting to see the fallout from Network Ten’s new 24/7 sports channel, One HD, which will arrive early second quarter next year.

The biggest question being asked is, what will happen to all my Ten HD shows? You know, the shows that were shafted from their original home on the standard Network Ten channel.

Well, with One HD taking over, it appears as though all those Ten HD shows will once again disappear into the television void. Just when we thought “Hurray to Ten for showing entire seasons of Battlestar Galactica and Friday Night Lights“, they’re taken from us once again and we’re left thinking, “Sport? Who the frack needs that in HD anyway?”

We’re also left wondering, if One HD will be a 24/7 sports channel, what happens to all of Network Ten’s regular shows like Neighbours, Rush and Australian Idol which are all produced in high definition? The networks view seems to be “Dude, SD digital television is awesome – it like totally looks better than analogue, so quit your bitching’ yo!”

Now, while they may not have been so colloquial on their position, they haven’t seemed to have provided any solution at all for those people out there with 42-inch 1080p plasma screens who actually watch Neighbours (I know, there’s like five of them out there at the moment, but still).

The more serious question at the moment seems to be, and bear in mind if your not technically sound, this may bore you to pieces. How will Network Ten broadcast one HD channel and 2 SD channels over a 23mbps signal without reduced image degradation?

As it stands Network Ten current broadcast one HD channel and one SD channel. With the addition of an extra SD channel, the bandwidth for both the existing HD and SD channels will have to be reduced. In other words, the image quality on the current HD and SD channels will be reduced so that the extra SD channel will have reasonable image quality.

Our current digital television quality is already questionable (especially in high motion scenes), reducing it even future would be like going back to analogue. I exaggerate of course, but just exactly how many channels will our television signals be able to support without the picture looking like it’s made of lego?

One solution someone on the Ten.com.au forums pointed out was that they could end up broadcasting the HD channel in 720p rather than higher 1080i format like the existing channel, which would free up quite a bit of bandwidth. But with ‘HD’ in the name of the new channel, it’d seem odd to only broadcast in 1080i’s smaller, less developed HD cousin 720p.

I think Neo Kitten over at the DTV Forum has summed things up quite well, if you don’t have Ten HD you probably wont get it, but for those who do:

I can see clearly now my show has gone
The networks put all these obstacles in my way
I can see more money spent on broadband plans
It’s gonna be a big
Downloady day
Yeah it’s gonna be a big (big! big!)
Downloady day

It seems people want to embrace the new channel, but not at the expense of their current Ten HD programmes or reduce image quality, and until we receive some kind of clarification from the network, we’re all going to be left in a frenzy of confusion and frustration.