Great news gang, while we’re all in the process of getting ready for 4K, with our televisions and our consoles and our Netflix subscriptions and our NBN — the ABC is getting ready for the almighty switch…
To regular HD.
The change will take place in December.
To be fair to the ABC, multiple factors outside its control dictated the slow pace of change, but it doesn’t negate the fact our national broadcaster is tremendously behind the curve here.
Well, Australia as a whole is tremendously behind the curve. 7 and Ten only recently launched its HD channels within the last year.
But yeah, talk about coming late to the party. The party is literally about to finish.
You can find out more here, on the official ABC site.
Comments
13 responses to “The ABC Is Changing To HD, Just In Time For 4k”
Seriously ABC?
im pretty sure its some dumb law that means australian tv channels can only have one HD channel at a time?
I’d be prone to agree with you there.
Some outadted and useless telecommunication law twisted from it’s first draft when Aussies first got Radio broadcasts?
Here’s the thing, the early 00s, we had HD channels but were basically upscales of their SD counter parts.
It didn’t help either that MPEG2 was still being used and no doubt with higher compression to keep the bandwidth requirements down thus causing the image quality to suffer.
What was needed was HD native content for those channels.
Instead, they got killed off and the bandwidth used to create multiple SD channels instead.
This is just beyond a joke; in had HD channels in the first decade of this millennium but they got the axe and now they are moving to actual HD (and hopefully with H.264 which should have been the case in the first place).
Something is seriously wrong, when getting back to the level achieved in 2007 is considered a big, news worth change.
Ohh the irony. LH takes the pi$$ and kicks sand in the ABC’s face like 4K is a new thing… You should have said we’re just about to go to 8K!!!
Exciting stuff though… we get to see our white trash politicians strut their stuff in all the glory that is 1080p (or i). I couldn’t care if it was even less that 576i…
most likely poorly upscaled & heavily interlaced 576p SD to bloat the HD channels and lie about HD programming.
EDIT: Upscaled, interlaced SD programming CONFIRMED!
http://s172.photobucket.com/user/Hoover1979/media/TV%20Upscale%20test%2002a_zpsejmtmzfp.png.html?sort=3&o=0
Guess it proves that hi-def ads (the only reason FTA tele exists is to advertise) don’t sell any more burgers/cars/gambling tools than standard def…
The ABC isn’t a streaming service – it’s a free to air television channel. Now it will have a main HD channel like the other free to air television channels. Very premature to say the party is finished, just because some people in some circumstances can watch some things in 4K.
“To be fair to the ABC, multiple factors outside its control dictated the slow pace of change”
So what were these factors?
I also would like to know about these “Factors” I smell a BS excuse, the kind our government excells at.
Mark Serrels you say Ten is showing their main channel on HD but Seven is still showing 7mate on HD and SD. They switched the HD to the main channel for the Olympics but when that finished…. straight back to 7mate.
If their excuse is because the AFL needs to be shown on HD on 7mate in sydney… Well they can do a switch while they show games on HD and then when it’s finished switch it back to the main channel!!
Ahahahaa! You’re a funny man, Mark.
Now it is March 19th 2017 and I have noticed a lot of upscaled and heavily interlaced 540-576i content on these “so-called” 1080p HD channels. 7HD is a prime example of this. I have taken screen captures and zoomed in on them to see the 7HD logo is at 1080i and the rest is a blurry mess of upscaled, interlaced garbage.
Example:
http://s172.photobucket.com/user/Hoover1979/media/TV%20Upscale%20test%2002a_zpsejmtmzfp.png.html?sort=3&o=0
So far it seems that only sport (AFL, NRL, etc) has 1080i broadcast. Everything else seems to be a cheap upscale of the SD broadcast to bloat the stations content. We Aussies are being lied to. (like with NBN, A.K.A FraudBand)
This bears a striking resembelence to the poor implementation and even poorer rollout of the NBN. (Spruiking a “so-called” next-gen approach, that is still leaps and bounds behind the rest of the world, and underwhelming considerably with complete garbage, pi$$ing away tax dollars hand over fist in the process), and like NBN this is because of Turnbull buggering it all up, as he does so well. (like saying he would make the NBN cheaper, easier and quicker. In fact the NBN became slower, more expensive and most people are STILL waiting for it, because of Liberal mismanagement, due to being dirty on the fact the NBN was Labor’s idea.) We are always pawns in these childish, immature political games.
Maybe Australian TV may one day get true 1080p when every other contry gets their TV signals beamed into a brain implant, affecting all of their senses, to keep them occupied on their light-speed spaceflight for a holiday in another galaxy?
I have yet to see ANY show on ANY Television station here (Adelaide, SA) to not be upscaled, interlaced SD. (with the obvious exception of sporting events), and no TV broadcast in Australia is without interlacing. So 1080p is a blatant lie. It’s ALL 1080i (mostly upscaled 540-576i with 1080i TV Station logo watermarks)
Australia always has and always will be behind the eightball in the technology front.
Falling way behind even countries classed as third-world.
I have absolutely no doubt in my mind whatsoever that this will be the case for all time. (especially with the Liberal, National Party pulling the strings. They hate science and technology as they are primarily a catholic biased political party, in the poclet of the Australian Christian Lobby. Determined to keep Australia in the dark ages of scientific repression, the rest of the world broke free from eons ago)
Australia is an absoulute laughing stock on the world stage and I, for one am deeply ashamed of being born here.