Barry Fox

Eleven years ago the BBC did a very brave thing and announced the start of limited but regular digital radio broadcasts, even though there were no receivers.

This gave electronics manufacturers the confidence needed to develop DAB (digital audio broadcast) receivers.

But the BBC’s publicity people promoted the engineering kickstart as a ‘new service launch’ and turned DAB into a bad joke. The BBC is wasting licence fee money on programmes that only a few engineers can tune into, the tabloids jibed.

Now the BBC is doing something equally brave and clumsy with high definition TV (HDTV). Hell hath no fury like a football fan conned.

For a year Sky has done a very efficient job of drip-feeding clear information on the Sky HD launch. At the last minute the BBC joined in with programme support – but a very muddled message.

‘The BBC starts the UK’s first free-to-air high-definition consumer broadcasts this week, at the start of a 12-month trial of this new sharper, clearer TV format... Starting on 9 June, the BBC’s World Cup coverage will be simulcast in HD, as will major Wimbledon matches.’

Said BBC director of television Jana Bennett: ‘Licence-fee payers expect high-definition broadcasts from the BBC.’

A pre-launch demo at London’s Curzon cinema, with a Christie 2K DLP projector filling the 3.5m screen, showed the stunning picture quality, and reporters from national newspapers were there to tell their readers how to tune in.

Bennett assured them: ‘Full information will be available on our website.’ But the only clear advice on the site is to pay Sky or NTL/Telewest cable in order to watch the free HD broadcasts.

The BBC programmes are not encrypted, and Pace and Humax both sell free-to-air satellite receivers, at about £300 each. Both should plug into a Sky dish and pull in the BBC programmes for free.

Pace warns that its box may not work with analogue component video connections, and Humax says its box will. However, the BBC could use digital flags to turn off these analogue connections; for instance, when screening Hollywood movies.

According to Seetha Kumar, head of HDTV, at the BBC: ‘There is no guarantee that the boxes will continue to work after the trial.’ There were sighs of scorn when she added the old chestnut: ‘For more advice viewers should check with retailers.’

There is a simultaneous trial of DVB-T (Freeview) HDTV in the London area from the Crystal Palace transmitter. But there are no receivers available for mpeg4 HD DVB-T.

‘The Ofcom licence is for closed trials, with restricted numbers.’ said Bennett. ‘We are choosing 500 trialists and will be making set-top boxes available to them. We can only demonstrate in closed sites, inside our own buildings.’

Next day the BBC’s Breakfast television programme ran a puff ‘news item’ that vaguely advised viewers they would ‘need to buy a special HD set-top box’ to get their free HD programmes.

Again, the only practical advice was to buy from Sky or a cable company and pay a subscription to get free HDTV.

The programme soon had to read out angry messages from viewers who had bought HD-ready screens on the strength of shop adverts for the World Cup, then found they couldn’t get an HD receiver installed until after the World Cup Final on 9 July.

‘There are plenty of boxes around’, said the BBC’s reporter, ‘but there is a big queue to get them installed. Sky can’t install boxes until at least the start of July.’

By mid-May Sky had 40,000 advance orders and confirmed: ‘We are no longer able to offer installation dates before the end of the tournament.’

The BBC promotion just made things worse.

If viewers already have a Sky dish, why can’t they just take home a Sky HD box and plug it in? Sky has ducked this question, but the answer is pretty obvious.

Connecting an HD receiver to an HD screen will usually involve HDMI cables. Left to their own devices, a lot of viewers would probably end up connecting by Scart, watching standard-resolution Pal and wondering what all the HD fuss is about.

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