I've just been through the EPG and noticed Five HD has arrived on channel 171. I didn't think Five were going to go HD seeing as I'd heard they had sold their STT slot to the BBC for BBC1 HD (or am I mistaken?).
They had Romeo Must Die in HD the other day and the picture quality was good, was just a shame it was ruined by the Five logo in the top left corner and a HD icon on the right corner. The DOGS were also still in a 4:3 frame!
Apparently it was on Virgin before it went on Sky on Wednesday, which is a first, beside to that though I've managed to catch Neighbours and Home & Away in HD and it looks superb, the upscaled picture too does it justice, just a shame there's little else HD at the moment, but hopefully that'll pick up soon. I was expecting it to be DOG-ged but it would look better if they had the Five HD in the top left, as the HD on the top right sticks out like a sore thumb.
Yes, it's a shame that a lot of their big American series which were made in HD, are only being shown in upscaled SD - although I did notice that The Mentalist was in HD last night.
Hopefully now they've got an HD channel we might see a rapid increase in the amount of HD programming being shown, as was the case with ITV1.
If I were to make a guess, it'd be because they generally bolt the HD channels together quickly, so probably want the main channel dog in the same place as the standard one so they can easily just upscale the SD feed. They've then just dumped the HD one in the safe zone too to match. Perhaps in a few months time (when no doubt they'll be due another rebrand anyway given Five) they'll change it to make it a little more dedicated to the HD channel.
