BBC Regional SD/HD Transmissions

I don't think that's got anything to do with broadcasting the regions in HD. Last I heard there were no plans to do it and I imagine that Covid and the belt tightening at the BBC have made it even less likely. The over 70s license fee thing is a massive loss of income

Also the fact that ITV are expanding their HD regions on satellite but not on terrestrial (at least they're not yet) is also an indicator of this. The HD mux, which is the BBCs, carries both BBC One HD and ITV HD so ITV expanding their regions on there would help the BBC do the same.

I think the BBC still try and be platform neutral so if its done on DTT they'll probably have to do it on satellite too and that's an extra expense


Regional HD production will be happening, the kit in the regions will be replaced soon and no-one in their right mind would do it in SD (and of course you can't buy SD kit now) but how it'll end up being seen by viewers in HD I don't know.

Are all the ITV HD Regions available for us all to see on Sky or Freeview or is it by going to Settings and Manual Tuning still on Sky?

BBC North West is still SD 101.

You'll need to play with manual tuning options on Sky or Freesat receivers to see the other ITV HD regions, including those new regions already on-air ahead of joining the EPG on Tuesday.

(11097 vertical, symbol rate 23000 or 23Mbaud FEC 3/4.
SID 21010 Meridian North
SID 21015 Meridian South
SID 21070 Anglia West
SID 21080 Central East
Best to tune them in before Tuesday, when they will all be relabelled ITV HD.)

There's no change to ITV HD on Freeview and there's no change to BBC services.


...Edit: plus ITV HD Yorkshire East SID 20820 on 11068V

Thank you.

Will this be before or after Lord Lucan rides Shergar into the lost city of Atlantis?!

That holding screen on BBC One HD makes me "see red" in more ways than one. It feels like the lack of English Regions on BBC One HD has been going on for about 94 years.

I'll never believe that it's really happening until the day that I neglect to switch over at 6:30pm, and actually see with my own eyes that Points West is there on Freeview channel 101.

My understanding of the technicalities of broadcasting is nada.

I have always been of the opinion that making BBC One HD capable of splitting into the umpteen regions/sub-regions should be prioritised regardless of whether all regional centres' programmes are actually being made in HD yet. If a fair few regions are therefore shown in upscaled/unconverted SD on the HD channel for a period, so be it.

I know that having to press a button on a remote control is hardly a big ask, but I do wonder how many Luddites (e.g. my dear old mother) end up staying on the SD channel for The One Show etc because of the "faff" of switching back and forth.

Stat muxing video is very complex as an MPEG stream has a lot of data in the I frame and then a lot less in each if the B and P frames .... and the frame order is changed for transmission ..... and that every frame duration a whole frame needs to have been transmitted from each coder in the stat mux...

This example illustrative not what is always done,

As I frames are large ..... set the coders to send I frames at diferent times
( this is used at a macro level by the BBC on DSAT where a second or so delay on the input videos means that complex scenes in BBC one do not hit the stat mux at the same time )
If thing look like overloading reduce the quantisation level, it will not be noticed for a frame or two ...
Detect that a fade is taking place and do not reduce bit rate much in that coder .
Generally allow a large B or P frame without too much reduction as this is a shot change .....

Implementions may have multiple goes at coding , and some coder code two diferent ways in parallel and then choose the one which has the fewer bits if the quality is better... but if demanded have a lower but version available if there is not space ....

As a rough indication quality is determined by peak bit rate which on PSB3 Is arround 12 to 14 Mbit/sec ( I can go on about windowing over GOP or Frame as a measurement ....) which with seven services in 40 M bits/sec total mux it relies in the average being say 4 Mbit/sec ..

It is far from simple !!!!

I actually doubt anybody other than 'people like us' who have sat through the regional news, see the One Show in HD.

As the London area accounts for about 25% of England's population, then at a stroke 1 in 4 HD viewers could at least have the correct regional news on BBC 1 HD, but the Beeb continues to cut its nose to spite its face....

My folks don’t even know where bbc 1 hd is it’s always stuck on 101

Which inherently means that 75% of England's population (i.e. the MAJORITY of England's licence fee payers) would be getting explicitly the wrong region on HD!

Auntie Beeb is surely pretty much obliged to be more neutral than that, and should avoid perceptions of a "serves you right for not living in/around London" bias?

Unlike the Red Screen Of Death, this would not serve to explain to average viewers in other regions that they need only switch over to find their local programme. Many a Luddite might begrudgingly sit through the London news, needlessly missing their local news on a different channel number.

If they did show BBC London nationally on the HD channel, there'd have to be a caption (conveying the same info as the current Red Screen Of Death) on screen throughout the bulletin for the benefit of viewers in other regions.

I would suggest that it be small and occupy the very bottom of the screen (i.e. the same size, shape, and position as the NC's flipper) to avoid clashing with namestraps, so that HD viewers in the London region aren't negatively impacted.

This might be regarded as too small and subtle however, whereas the current full-screen caption in lieu of any programme is "un-ignorable".

Totally agree on the comments above. I also don’t necessarily understand the technical aspect too well, but most viewers probably struggle to understand why BBC1 SD can be regionalised but HD can’t. Do any other countries have a national broadcaster with this “can’t do” attitude the BBC seems to have?

The BBC have had plans to do this for many years .... I did some in 2008
but given the LF situation the easiest thing to cut is capital investment , and going HD what ever that means times 12 or more is far from cheap.....
Traditionally Nations and Regions have been at the end if the queue ...
But we have seen Vilor rolled out across all Local Radio and BBC Wales move to a new home and wherever an existing project could get HD in it was done
( like connectivity and news-gathering)
.... and other things like LR on DTT sort of came free becuse of cunning designs.
Now money is a bit easier
the BBC have started one project (centralised opt) to help things
and have said that they will have a plan for all regions going studios going HD
and at a time where technology may be cheaper and certainly can aid being more efficient ..
So that as for the last round of Project England ..
..... economies of scale can be applied...

But there was some expection that the Vaizey plan would be adopted
by government so saving dual emission

I think the trouble with how furloughing was initially set up (though I understand the BBC were not part of the government scheme) was it forced companies to work with less people - and clearly when they realised things still worked with less staff at a time when less money was coming in many have taken that as a sign they can reduce staff. There is of course some logic there but in addition any company needs a bit of slack too so that things do run smoothly when there are reduced staff numbers - arguably had some of the changes being implemented been in place at the beginning of the year it would have been much more difficult to continue "business as usual" when you've already had your staffing cut to the bone.