Following the appearance of several new channels on my TV this year, without any effort on my behalf (and with thanks to an in-built tuner) I decided it was time to try and get a handle on where High Definition TV is up to and how many more channels might appear!

My initial search took me to the Freeview website. I discovered ‘Freeview’ is the brand name for the collection of digital TV channels from Australia’s free-to-view networks, as opposed to one channel or service. Not surprisingly Freeview is owned by ABC, SBS, Seven, Nine, TEN, Southern Cross, Prime, WIN.

The website informed me that Freeview “educates and encourages Australians to switch to free-to-view digital television by promoting its benefits to consumers”. So how many channels are we getting?__

To understand this you need to look at how High Definition TV has been rolled out here in Australia. In order to provide free to air HD TV channels to consumers the Australian government allocated the five national terrestrial television stations (ABC, SBS, Seven, Nine and Ten) one HD channel each. They were required to broadcast a simulcast of their analogue offerings in High Definition TV format, with at least 20 hours per week of HD TV content.

While consumers are happy to experience regular programming in high definition, the networks were aware that most consumers would be looking for other content in the High Definition TV format. HD TV channels such as sports or documentary type programming were always going to be popular choices for consumers, as they have been a strong offering from pay TV providers.

Network Ten were first to deliver a stand-alone HD offering, earlier this year, when it secured the sports crowd with its free digital channel, ONE. Channel 9 followed, launching its stand-alone channel, GO! . The ABC has the kids covered with the planned ABC3 set to launch in December. To my knowledge Seven has yet to announce which programs will be on its new digital channel. A call to my local regional sales office didn’t provide any further information on the timeline or likely format.

You would have also noticed that you are now able to watch some of your existing format channels on a new ‘mirrored’ HD station. That’s due to the fact that, in addition to these recently added HD channels, from January 1 this year government legislation allowed the commercial free-to-air networks to broadcast an additional Standard Definition (SD) digital channel each, in addition to their primary SD channels.

The word was that we would eventually have 15 free to air channels made up of the 5 long-established channels, their 5 respective SD digital channels and their 5 new stand-alone HD channels.

What has actually occurred to date is that when the networks launched their stand-alone channels they dropped any ‘break away’ programming and simulcast content from one of the other channels. Ten's second SD channel - One - became a simulcast of the HD sports channel, and Nine’s second SD channel reverted to a simulcast of Channel Nine when they launched GO.

Based on this, enjoy the only break-away programming on Seven HD while you can!

Steven Cox | Share This | 0 COMMENTS |

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