BBC Scotland channel - service to also launch in HD

It would make sense really to take the opportunity to rebrand Reporting Scotland and have the 6.30pm BBC1 bulletin and the new BBC Scotland Channel bulletin basically be the flagship editions of the new news brand. Ideally taking it one step away from the corporate branding just to freshen it up a bit would help too - and sell their independence from the BBC in London too.

How are they technically going to achieve this - we know the HD version will air from 7pm on the CBBC stream in the old BBC3 HD slot but how are they squeezing the SD version in when they already have BBC Alba in addition to the network BBC channels anyway.

BBC Scotland SD is a straight replacement is it not for BBC TWO SD north of the border?

With all due respect I think politics have huge ramifications in this case. Scotland has a massive sense of its own identity and shouts incredibly loudly about it, with the IndyRef vote being extremely close a few years back. Of all three "non-English" nations they are without a doubt the most peripheral.

Discussing why BBC Scotland might have its own news programme over the other nations, the politics behind that and the merits of it? Makes sense to me.

Some snarky comment about voting for independence only to go back into a "puppet state?" That veers us off into a discussion about politics, in my personal opinion.

In terms of Scotland being the most peripheral of the non-England nations, I imagine there's a few people in Northern Ireland who would disagree with you on that.

(and again, this isn't solely about one post. I'm seeing it sneak in every so often and personally find it dull. Feel free to point 'you're not the moderator', you'd be completely right, it's solely my view)

Northern Ireland aren't pushing for an independence referendum let alone a re-run. When I said Scotland is peripheral, they are the most likely to do things their way and opt-out from everyone else - not just in television!

Fair enough. There are people in Northern Ireland who have been pushing to be part of a united Ireland for some considerable time, and it's difficult to categorise that country as one single entity. However, I accept Scotland has traditionally had its own media industry and been more likely to, as a whole, do things differently.

To be honest, my complaining was more to do with the whole Brexit thing and references to politics creeping into discussions, when I do enough work to try to avoid that on Twitter.

Operationally yes, but in terms of distribution, no because Scotland will still have to have a BBC Two as well

That's what I was getting at - although I stand by my point that Holyrood would clearly rather be subservient to Brussels than Westminster; by ditching one union for another they can never be truly independent.

In the same way the UK could be considered peripheral - we opted out of the Euro. A look at our attitude to Eurovision, trivial as it is, says a lot. Indeed, we are the only country to opt out of much of the content in the semi finals. We do things our way, cheers Junker. Erm, Sand?

The fact that Scotland is the last bastion of ITV's federal structure is a very illustrative point. Even people I know in ITV don't see it happening any time soon. UTV they did, largely because their radio assets were a bigger deal. Channel they did, because of the Compliance thing. But I can't see STV falling in the near future.

Once again, in my view if you wish to express your views on Scotland's constitutional future or Brexit there are plenty of places you can do that without shoehorning them into a debate on the future of BBC Scotland.

By all means, views on Scotland being different to the UK in the prism of the media landscape are solidly on topic. "Here's my view on independence and Brexit" can surely be expressed elsewhere.

I’m told BBC Scotland SD will be squeezed into PSB1 mux in Scotland, using <cough> modern encoder enhanchments. So it will contain one extra service, compared with PSB1 in the rest of the UK

The same recently happened on PSB2 with ITV3 being squeezed in I think ?

Sounds like a missed opportunity to launch it as HD only and see if anyone notices they can't get it. There can't be that many SD-only set top boxes around still, can there?