BBC Parliament now full screen on DTT

Any news yet on the plans for BBC News Multiscreen as a result of these changes?

Looking forward to this change tomorrow.

I wonder will the interactive service on BBC Parliament will stay the same or will it join the rest with the same service?

So this morning the changes happened:

Basically:

Ch 81 now has "BBC Parliament" in widescreen, with BBCi accessable by pressing RED / Text

In addition, on ch 305 the quarter screen service remains for now, advising people to retune to 81 for the full screen version. In time this will be scrapped in favour of an expanded News Multiscreen service, but no details have been confirmed yet.


One thing though I must say is it's highlighted the problem of getting scheduling info quickly (if you haven't got a full EPG). The 1/4 screen version led to a full weekly schedule at the touch of a button, but now you can only get the 24 hour listings via BBCi, which even if you go straight to p600 you have to go through a few pages to find.

most modern boxes have a 7day EPG Brekkie

Yeah I can't say I'm sad to see the back of the Parliament text service...that naff little schedule that would cover 2-3 days (if they remembered to update it), and would often be wrong. Surely most boxes have the 7 day EPG now?

Well both of ours don't, though one has the facility it's never had the EPG (Sagem ITD602).

OK OK I'll admit it does look better in full screen, I take back what I said...

Although the real benefit here is the expanded News Multiscreen.

Much easier to count the empty seats in parliament now then!

OK a few things.

I don't have a channel 305.
BBC Parliament is much easier to watch full screen, but to be honest, is it really going to add anything at all to the very few who watch it?
My BBC News Multiscreen doesn't work anymore - I just have two black rectangles where the video should be.

Yes.

The straps (indeed, any on-screen text) were unreadable on a 14" telly on the old quarter-screen system (the MHEG captions during live broadcasts never seemed to work properly)

It's generally much more pleasant to watch for sustained periods. I'm sure I'm not the only one who will be watching the channel much more often now. (It's chicken and egg - 'no-one watches the channel, so give it a quarter screen' v 'it's a quarter-screen, so no-one watches it')

And it's compatible with computer-based DTT devices that don't support MHEG. Previously I was only able to get Parliament audio via my Elgato EyeTV box.

Try a rescan again - the videos for News Multiscreen are hosted on 305 (previously on 81), with 303 just providing the MHEG graphics around them.


Any details of ratings for BBC Parliament - considering how low they are for the news channels, I'm not expecting much!