Sky News

The van registration would be a remarkable coincidence if it was a hired vehicle, don't you think?

I noticed this before with her. Must be her idea of innovative presenting.

Bit misleading that they've been putting 'Sky Sports HD' in the corner of the picture when showing highlights of the cricket from Bangladesh.

The coverage from Bangladesh has only been in SD and 4:3.

I think it's OK to put Sky Sports HD if the pictures were in HD originally but not for SD. Just Sky Sports would suffice.

Coincidence? Yes. Remarkable? No.

I don't see the point of Sky News letting people know they are there and if they did want to let people know they are there, would they really do it via the medium of a numberplate?

I'm sure if it were the beeb, we'd have 'BBC' as the last 3 letters!

It was funny how she was walking with one guest and then she left her and walked across the street to the corner where a new guest was waiting for her and then they continued the stroll.

I'm fairly sure that one of the BBC TV OB units had a BBC private reg - I'm not sure if it was transferred over to SIS, or it someone smart kept it and moved it to a Radio OB vehicle that's still owned by the BBC.

BBC News uplink trucks tend to be plain white. I think SISlink (who Sky use a lot) generally have branding.

See if you can spot ITN in this photo:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2651/4037991470_278a9c9400.jpg

I guess that van has had a new side door on it at some point

The Sky sat trucks do have SKY as part of the numberplate.

I appreciate I am technically 'new' to the forum, as my post reading reads '1', but I've been following this site for years now and used to be a member called 'newsbeat' when I was a teenager. Now I'm doing a MA in journalism and last week, as part of a trip, all us MA students were shown around Sky News by the Editorial Development Manager.

So, I appreciate totally that you may want to rubbish this post as something that's probably not true, but not only did we get to see around the studios and offices, we also got to spend some time in the graphics department.

Sky News HD seems like the most ambitious project they've ever undertaken, and together with their election coverage, it seems they're VERY busy! In fact, at the end of tour Q&A session we were told that you have to be a 'sky' person to work there - I.e., ready for change, ready to try new things and to take the flak when it goes wrong, overall, an entrepreneurial journalist.

We were standing outside at that point...as someone was on the roof measuring the rooftop sign/logo, which is due to be replaced soon.

Anyway, the most exciting element, apparently, is the fact that the ticker will be able to flow along the entire length of the screen for the first time since it was introduced (in 2003 I believe).

The logo, as I'm sure the forum has picked up on, is a white box with 'sky' in black and then the red and white 'NEWS' remaining the same. The 'HD' logo, simply has HD in back on white, like the 'sky' element.

I've seen what looks like the onscreen graphics by peeking over a desk and looking at someone working on them on a large iMac. Like suggested, the ticker runs along the bottom, and the captions are more of an evolution rather than revolution. From the example I saw, there was only one line of text under the topic heading. The font was hard to discern, however it looks remarkably similar to the secondary Sky corporate font...which can be seen at the top of this page: http://www.sky.com/shop/tv/

Although, like I said, I was around 5 meters away, so I couldn't get that good a look.

The main selling point of sky News HD, seems to be the side panels. I saw the financial panel up on the screen, which had a black semi-transparent background with white text, and coloured graph of the FTSE, with relevant figures. I couldn't work out from what was said, as to whether Sky News SD viewers will see these panels or not...perhaps that can be answered by people with knowledge of HD transmissions.

We also saw the office of Sky News Active, which is preparing to reduce the number of screens available, in order to fit in with a Sky wide portal that will be available via the red button.

We also visited the chroma-key studio, which, as was apologised for, a tip!! I counted at least 5 flat screen TVs all packaged up, and a fellow student counted 6 Mac servers too. We were told that Sky News would be coming from this studio 'in a few weeks' as HD rehearsals get under way. Although it was sort of assumed that the graphics would launch when the election was called, we were told that Sky don't say specific dates because things can go wrong, obviously!

Like I said, I know a lot of Forumers will rubbish this post as erroneous. It doesn't really matter to me...what I have seen was obviously in development, but looking towards the later stages.

It's an amazing place, certainly, and we were certainly built up to try and aim for it! I'm hoping I may be able to work there at some point!!

Just to validate, here's a few pics one of my course mates took, one of the studio with Dermot presenting and the other of the incredibly immense gallery (the most advanced in Western Europe).
http://photos-b.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc3/hs502.snc3/26374_697045009662_61110618_42713717_5122341_n.jpg


http://photos-g.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc3/hs502.snc3/26374_697045019642_61110618_42713719_2237698_n.jpg

Very interesting read - thanks for the info.

Seconded. Really interesting insight, thanks very much. Interesting that they still intend on moving into the second studio at some stage. With the election likely to be called on Tuesday week I wonder will they be ready to launch in time? Presumably all the election graphics etc. have been designed in the new style so it will be intriguing to see what they will do if HD isn't ready for the start of the campaign.