This Morning

Hmm - it doesn't really work like that.

ITV is driven by advertising and profit. If they think switching to HD will drive audiences to their shows, and increase their advertising revenue, or will let them make the show for a lower cost, then there will be an incentive to switch. (Ensuring their sport production is HD is probably in this camp - as they are competing against the BBC and Sky - and now BT - for Sport viewers)

If they are using their own resources, which are already written off in capital terms (and thus cost little), to make the show in SD, and don't think HD will be a cost effective switch, then they won't switch for the sake of it.

However as in-house SD resources become increasingly older, and maintenance costs increase, replacement becomes an issue, and any new studio (or refurb) will be HD.

Yes - I'm sure ITV want to produce in HD, but only if it makes commercial sense.

Indeed, I recall back in the early 90s, the then IBA in effect had to 'pull technical rank' on Tv-am
to broadcast in stereo. I think there was similar technical pressure on the smaller ITV companies
over the introduction of colour in the early 70, although the IBA were able to offer a degree
of financial flexibility by off setting transmitter rental charges. For instance Thames paid far more
for its transmitters, than say Grampian and HTV who had expensive, complex, and large networks.

That's one major difference between the pre and post 1992 ITV.

Irrelevant of ITV's views, why on earth does it benefit viewers for This Morning to be in HD? I'd rather drama, sport and documentaries get priority.

I'm pretty sure all programmes of those genres are made in HD by standard anyway so they wouldn't be taking any HD budget away from other programmes if they made This Morning HD. It just stands out completely now from the rest of ITV's schedule.

"Why on earth does it benefit viewers for This Morning to be in widescreen?"
"Why on earth does it benefit viewers for This Morning to be in colour?"

It's just the evolution of technology, I understand the financial argument, however This Morning is pretty much the main stay of ITV's daytime schedule, from a technological point of view it just seems out of place.

Nonsensical argument. HD is far more subtle a difference to SD than colour is to B&W or widescreen to 4:3.

If there was a B&W BBC One and a colour BBC One, you know that viewers would opt to watch the colour version without question. Yet most viewers still watch SD channels even in cases where HD is available to them.

I'm sure when This Morning's studio is due a refurb/tech upgrade it will certainly be to HD but in the meantime it's really not desired by very many people outside this forum.

It must be the only studio at the London Studios to be produced in SD internally is the output in HD though surely it can't be?

My mother being one such viewer, to my perpetual frustration.

I suppose the problem is that for many groups of viewers (such as those of a certain generation and/or over a certain age, for example), the HD versions of a given station are often on "funny" channel numbers which therefore don't lend themselves to being committed to memory easily.

Certain stations have been inherently associated with certain channel numbers for as long as most people are willing/able to remember. So, for many Freeview viewers, the idea of associating "BBC One" and "ITV" with anything other than "1" and "3" respectively is never really gonna sink in.

Obviously, the likes of Sky viewers already have to cope with non-traditional channel numbering systems, such as 101 - 105 instead of 1 - 5. But even that clearly makes those five stations' channel numbers as similar to the traditional ones as they can be, within the constraints of being an exclusively three-digit numbering system.

Wrong regions/sub-regions or holding-card-instead-of-local-news on HD doesn't help with attitudes, as people see it as a pain to have to switch over whenever the local news starts/ends. (I personally find this to be a ridiculous attitude, because exerting the effort of a single finger to press a button on a remote control is hardly a strenuous physical task. But, hey, that's people for you).

Although the eventual availability of all BBC/ITV regions on HD will no doubt be of some help with attitudes, I imagine that some folk will only finally start watching in HD when it becomes the "norm" (i.e. the SD version either swaps places to the less memorable channel number or is closed altogether).

The idea that you can manually change channel numbers yourself is of course way beyond most folk, outside of us TVF types. I could spend 12 hours solid trying to educate my mother about such things, and five minutes after I finished speaking it would be as if the entire conversation had never occurred, for all the difference it would make to her attitude. As she's far from alone in that.

Yeah it's bizarre I have a non sky box which allows me to import a channel lists but it's for Techy geeks like me, but the advantages being that bbc news and bbc news hd are right next to each other as an example.

It's not necessarily just because of channel numbers though. I often record programmes in SD that I know are available in HD simply so I can get more recorded on the box. Until they increase the HDD size I'd quite glad Virgin haven't done a Sky and switched HD channels to be default!

And to be honest I'm hard pushed to notice the difference in most cases - whether that's down to channel compression, Virgin or my TV I'm not sure but it doesn't have the wow effect. The best I notice is a bit less pixelation when I get nearer the screen.

How big is the telly? the difference is less obvious from BBC SD channel to a BBC HD channel, but the difference should be more obvious between a Sky SD channel and a Sky HD one, as Sky SD is 544x576 with blurred edges, maybe on Virgin they resample the SD channels from Sky at 720x576 so the difference is less obvious.

But in that case you've made an informed choice to record in SD. If Virgin switched the channels you could still record in SD. Agree about the HDD; even with 1TB I'm low on space. Perhaps I need to watch more or record less.

My mother is like Three Left Do's, defaulting to 101/103 etc. I no longer remind her about the HD numbers because eventually they'll stick and when Virgin do switch channel numbers it'll be back to square one!