HDTV or High Definition Television is the next big thing in audio-visual entertainment in the UK. It offers a vastly superior picture quality to the current TV systems available. HDTV has already been introduced in the USA, Canada, Japan, Australia and South Korea. Viewers who have already experienced HDTV state that it is almost like looking out of a window with near life-like representation. The colour's are very vibrant and very fine details are viewable and the surround sound quality is truly breathtaking. Several European broadcasters have firmly committed to rolling out HDTV offerings.
The good news for UK viewers is that BSkyB have announced that they will be starting a HDTV service in the UK in 2006. This is likely to be offered initially as a premium service with a selection of channels chosen that will gain the most from being broadcast in HDTV, these include movie and sports channels. In addition, a selection of special events like rock concerts are likely to be transmitted in HDTV format.
Current Sky digiboxes cannot handle HDTV transmissions and you will have to have a dedicated HDTV digibox installed. The new HDTV unit is expected to have digital as well as analogue output - enabling it to be connected to an LCD display unit or Plasma TV, removing the loss in quality from having to convert the signal to analogue and back to digital again. The Sky+ digiboxes will require much larger capacity hard drives to be able to handle the greater storage requirements of HDTV units.
There are not likely to be HDTV offering on terrestrial network for sometime due to capacity limitations. Many terrestrial broadcasters are keen to offer HDTV broadcasts though this is not likely until analogue signals are finally switched off
HDTV transmissions take up considerably more bandwidth than existing digital transmission. This would limited the number of channels available per satellite transponder. One answer to this is to launch more satellites though this would be costly. Another solution is to have improved video compression technology. Currently Sky digital uses MPEG2 transmission. The transmission technology for Sky Digital HDTV has not been finalised. The compression system likely to be used is MPEG4 which can transmit about twice the data to today's current digital TV's signals.
Most current TV sets available are not built for HDTV transmissions. Viewers will have to upgrade their TV sets to accept HDTV transmissions and display the signals to their fullest potential. Expect to see new HDTV sets to appear in the next few years.
If you wish to be an early adopter of HDTV do be aware that there are no firm standards yet and you may find that your initial purchases may not be compatible with the most common standards that may emerge a few years later.
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