BBC World News | 30th October 2017 Onwards

Decamp to where?

I would imagine that they are using the Arabic/Persian SD facilities because there isn't an HD studio available at the time the guest is.

I can't imagine Hardtalk guest availability would be a reason strong enough to move BBC World News from their normal studio to a VR studio, even if it were available.

I’m surprised NBH ( emphasis on the N!) has any SD facilities! I’d assumed it was HD throughout !

BBC London's gallery was originally SD only when they moved in.

Last night's hardtalk was a "down-the-line" broadcast in what is their normal Hardtalk studio, so there's the possibility of making room there, that or using things like Studio B (the open plan studio used by VD and Newsnight) or decamping World News to B (where they already have some programmes being broadcast from anyway) so Hardtalk can use C. /shrug

Good grief, when was it built ?

Probably decades ago, I bet it was repurposed and not built specifically for the London news region.

No, it was new as it was part of phase 1 of New Broadcasting House - the Egton Wing or Peel Wing as its known now, so it opened late 2009/2010ish?

Yes, I think it was late 2009 when BBC London News moved from Marylebone High Street to where The One Show is now, the gallery is still in the Egton Wing.

Incredible! The Beeb are truly unique!

The last new SD facility I built was 2007 for an overseas army’s training dept. The last new SD facility I’ve been involved with for any broadcaster I think was 2004/5

Was it kit brought over from MHS, as it was only ever meant to be temporary?

They have been known to do Hard Talk at Millbank before now. It's surprising that they were not able to find somewhere better.

I think they had replaced some of their production system with some cobbled together Mac based thing which they took with them. Maybe some cameras and a few miscellaneous bits too but the hulk of what they used was new to them

They now have identical systems to the main news studios at BH so I suspect that they had some sort of temporary solution to get them through until the rest was decided on and installed.

What happened with Arabic and Persian I don't know, they don't transmit in HD and at the time the World Service was seperate to BBC News so it was probably part political, part financial

NBH IS pretty much all HD.

BBC Arabic and Persian aren't in NBH though... They are in Peel (was Egton) which was built earlier - and all SD.

They launched in 2008 - but their facilities were spec-ed quite a long time before they launched, and given that they were working to a tight budget I can understand the decision to be SD...