Sky Sports News HD

Yep - I agree totally with Michael.

Sky Sports News HD is the HD simulcast of Sky Sports News (and the original channel is called Sky Sports News). Exactly the same as Sky News HD is a simulcast of Sky News, and Sky 1 HD is a simulcast of Sky 1.

Sky Sports HD 1 was NOT a simulcast of Sky Sports 1 - so calling it Sky Sports 1 HD would have been confusing. (Originally there were fewer HD channels than SD - so rather than simulcast they ran separate schedules)

The better question - I guess - is whether it would make sense to rebrand Sky Sports HD 1-4 as Sky Sports 1-4 HD now? (I'm assuming - though not certain - that they ARE now simulcasts)

Well as more and more sporting events become filmed in HD Then I suppose its more likley that they will be simulcasts oftern HD Is a few secounds behind the standard channel but the picture quality is better which draws the subscribers and means that there is demand for its programming to be in HD Hence the reason there is a simulcast .

Sky Sports News is a brand, whereas channels numbers 1,2,3,4 are not. Sky Sports prefer to collectivley brand their sports channels, which I think is a good idea. Thats why they preference the Sky Sports HD brand over channel numbers.

Sky Sports News is a more important brand to that particular channel than the HD brand.

Eh?



If you look at the SS1-4 and SSHD1-4 schedules at http://www.skysports.com/tv_guide/0,19953,,00.html, you'll see that all stations are now simulcast. It is not "likely" that the HD channels are now simulcasts, it is a fact that the HD channels are simulcasts.



That's to do with the technology - it takes fractionally longer to encode, send and decode a bigger datastream.



Really? You think so? I wonder why no-one else has thought of that?

PS - thanks to Noggin for putting it much succinctly than I did!

The relative delay between HD and SD channels can be based on a number of variables - but isn't specifically to do with "bigger" data streams (the data rate of some HD channels is actually the same as the early digital SD channels...)

Different implementations of MPEG2 and H264 (MPEG2 is used for SD and H264 for HD in the UK broadcast world) can add differing amounts of delay. Both technologies buffer the signal to analyse motion across groups of frames - and the number of frames stored and analysed for encoding, and that need to be stored on decoding for reconstruction can vary between implementations.

There can also be other differences between the two transmission chains that can cause relative delay differences.

It isn't specifically because the signal is HD or at a higher data rate that an HD channel may be "late" compared to its SD counterpart. (In some cases it might not be)

Does anyone know at what point it drops off Freeview? Midnight tonight, or at some point tomorrow morning? I'd quite like to watch it...

It's still on Freeview, and according to a promo I've just seen, Sky Sports News HD launches at 6am, so I imagine that's when it'll be pulled from DTT.

Hopefully, somebody will see it off with a lovely video capture and upload it to show all of their TV Forum buddies.

Well, that's it.

Gone from Freeview at 5.59 mid-advert. MHEG on screen telling viewers to rescan for Sky3+1.

A sad day for sports fans with Freeview.

TOTH: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLG6zDdDQ_8
Breaking: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WheSMRgnf4U

More caps and video are available on http://www.tvnewsroom.co.uk