BBC News HD no longer available on Freeview from 30th June 2022

[muon]

But the TV license was still a thing before we even had HD channels.

I don't think you get the point. The limit here is the bandwidth that is available. As the SD vs HD thing doesn't cost the BBC much anything different. They have a fixed badwidth to allocate between channels. It is simply a sign of priorities that they will relegate BBC News in favour of content that isn't public service.

It is indicative of the BBC at large. They have luckily been massively cut back in size over the last 10 years.

Think about how bloated they must have been at their peak income levels in 2010. Imagine if that trajectory prior to 2010 continued for another 12 years. They would probably be +50% the size they are now, producing even more non-news content to squeeze into that fixed bandwidth.

Television licensing in the United Kingdom - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[bigmike20vt]

It's the whole reason a tv licence fee is justified. Impartial news available for everyone as well as educational services. The fact that people see this as a less important and more minor part of the BBC shows how bloated the organisation is.

If anything that's where all the money should be going. Scrap anything else which is covered by commercial channels. Otherwise you are just forcing people to pay for stuff that isn't of national or public importance when they probably don't even watch it.

It would be like if taxes started paying for elective surgery on the NHS or taxes were used to pay for school holidays abroad. These are things that should be paid for by individuals that want it, not subsidised by forcing everyone to collectively pay for it, regardless of whether they wanted it.

The news? local radio? documentaries? children's tv? All makes sense as they serve a genuine public service.

Freeview channel numbers | Help receiving TV and radio

www.bbc.co.uk

There is plenty of bandwidth available. Get rid of BBC Three HD. Get rid of BBC Four and move the content onto the main channels.

not at all.... I think you are jumping to the wrong conclusion. I don't want BBC news to be dropped , I just don't believe it needs to be in HD and if it was a choice of having to drop films and stuff like blue planet in HD or the news, I would drop news HD every time (but still watch in SD)

 

[jpaul]

demise of recent HD channels is symptomatic of the other (more deserving) channels never having been updated to HD,
5G land grab (Tories?) as commented; boris is highlighting his superfast broadband today, that boosted devon (second home) housing market.

I would watch more of ITV4/quest , and the adverts, if the current Vuelta cycle race was at a decent HD bitrate, similarly for some of the TDF broadcasts,
blurry mess as commented

 

[visibleman]

The limit here is the bandwidth that is available.

That's the crux of the issue here - the on going quest for mobile bandwidth by the Government has reduced what's available to DTV.

Get rid of BBC Three HD. Get rid of BBC Four and move the content onto the main channels.

The BBC obviously deem BBC3 and 4 are more worthy than news being in HD; probably why Sky, GB, Al Jazeera etc don't also offer their news channels in HD on Freeview.

Either way, if you want BBC news in HD then there are multiple ways of getting it.

Hopefully though, there's a push for H266 to get implemented as it could possibly lead to more channels being available in HD.

 

[soundb0y]

Why are all channels not HD yet? Anything not on a TV bigger than 55" looks like absolute dog crap.

 

[muon]

That's the crux of the issue here - the on going quest for mobile bandwidth by the Government has reduced what's available to DTV.


The BBC obviously deem BBC3 and 4 are more worthy than news being in HD; probably why Sky, GB, Al Jazeera etc don't also offer their news channels in HD on Freeview.

Either way, if you want BBC news in HD then there are multiple ways of getting it.

Hopefully though, there's a push for H266 to get implemented as it could possibly lead to more channels being available in HD.

The BBC are going against their charter. They don't want to become primarily a news service as they couldn't keep asking for increasing budgets (or justify one). News is uncontroversial so they want to use their bandwidth for other things even if it is at the detriment of the first item on their charter. The BBC shouldn't decide what is important. They are given powers to raise money through taxation to fulfill their obligations under the charter.

Mission, values and public purposes

The Royal Charter states that the BBC’s object is “the fulfilment of its Mission and the promotion of its Public Purposes”

www.bbc.com

It's like how they always bring out David Attenborough, as if anyone is querying the BBC spending money/effort on documentaries which probably actually pay for themselves.

 

[visibleman]

Why are all channels not HD yet? Anything not on a TV bigger than 55" looks like absolute dog crap.

Cost and bandwidth available. Moving to a new codec might help with bringing or converting channels to HD.

The BBC are going against their charter.

They clearly offer a news channel on Freeview, so how does not offering a news channel in HD go against the charter?

 

[LuckyBenski]

Cost and bandwidth available. Moving to a new codec might help with bringing or converting channels to HD.

TBH I don't think implementing a new codec and thus ruling out all existing TVs from accessing it, is good use of bandwidth here. More likely they will just push for new TVs to have IP capabilities and move towards providing a proper suite of IP channels.

 

[muon]

Cost and bandwidth available. Moving to a new codec might help with bringing or converting channels to HD.


They clearly offer a news channel on Freeview, so how does not offering a news channel in HD go against the charter?

They are offering a substandard news service in favour of other content (which coincidentally is expensive). If BBC news in HD wasn't worthwhile, it wouldn't still exist or previously have existed.

Offering news isn't a tickbox exercise. It is the raison d'etre for the BBC.

Imagine if the BBC news website was rendered in 480i.

Home - BBC News

Visit BBC News for up-to-the-minute news, breaking news, video, audio and feature stories. BBC News provides trusted World and UK news as well as local and regional perspectives. Also entertainment, business, science, technology and health news.

www.bbc.co.uk

Just look at the BBC Two and Three content

BBC Two Guide - Sun Dec 29 2024 - BBC iPlayer

Browse the TV Guide for programmes from the BBC.

www.bbc.co.uk

BBC iPlayer - BBC Three Guide - Tue Aug 30 2022

Browse the TV Guide for programmes from the BBC.

www.bbc.co.uk

Does this in HD or BBC News in HD fulfill the charter, which is nearly all about quality news, information and education.

 

[Werewolf]

The BBC are going against their charter. They don't want to become primarily a news service as they couldn't keep asking for increasing budgets (or justify one). News is uncontroversial so they want to use their bandwidth for other things even if it is at the detriment of the first item on their charter. The BBC shouldn't decide what is important. They are given powers to raise money through taxation to fulfill their obligations under the charter.

Mission, values and public purposes

The Royal Charter states that the BBC’s object is “the fulfilment of its Mission and the promotion of its Public Purposes”

www.bbc.com

It's like how they always bring out David Attenborough, as if anyone is querying the BBC spending money/effort on documentaries which probably actually pay for themselves.

You don't seem to understand their charter as well as you think

Entertainment is also in their charter, and for example BBC4 is very much "public service" in multiple aspects given it covers history, the arts, education and entertainment (in that a fair bit of it's content is history of cultural events including major "arts and histical entertainment" items that formed major parts of the culture of various times).

It's also worth noting that the News/documentaries on the BBC already take a far larger share of the fund than most people realise, given that your average news content is good for maybe the day it's broadcasts but has to be made fresh every day, whilst something that costs the same per hour on BB1 or 2 as "entertainment" can also be at least marginally educational/news related but may have a value that means it can be shown repeatedly in the future, or pretty much pay for itself over the course of 10 years (the film industry calls it the "long tail").
The Richard Attenborough documtentaries are just a very small percentage of the documentary output the BBC does, albeit the highest profile and usually the most expensive/longest to produce ones, which as you say do have the ability to pay for itself over time, however for every hour of "Life on Earth" or similar there are dozens, if not hundreds of hours of far more niche but for their subjects equally important other documentaries that the commercial sector will rarely touch and will likely never make a "profit" in monetary terms but will encourage people to look at things in a different light and hopefully result in people taking up the subject as a career. I tend to find myself watching BBC4 more than BBC1 most of the year

It's also worth noting that most of the previous increases in the BBC budget over the last 25 years have been either to cover the cost of services/obligations the government has required them to deal with (for example the digital switch fund, and to cover digital content to encourage people to make that switch), or below inflation. IIRC one of the reasons the BBC is cutting it's news channels is because they're effectively working on something like 30% lower budgets than they were in the early 00's due to them covering the cost of the over 75's licence (a government policy that the government decided not to fund), and that they're covering parts of the world service that used to be funded specifically by the Foreign Office back when we had a government that understood the value to the UK as a nation of having a branded news service that you could listen to (in your own language) and would give you the truth about the world and useful information for your daily life. For all our government talks about "global britain" they've got very little clue about things like "soft power" such as promoting the country and fostering good feelings towards it in the average person in other countries.
It's also worth noting that generally the TVL goes up far slower than the commercial subscriptions and doesn't require you pay additional fees to get better than SD or watch on more than one receiver.

 

[Werewolf]

They are offering a substandard news service in favour of other content (which coincidentally is expensive). If BBC news in HD wasn't worthwhile, it wouldn't still exist or previously have existed.

Offering news isn't a tickbox exercise. It is the raison d'etre for the BBC.

Imagine if the BBC news website was rendered in 480i.

Home - BBC News

Visit BBC News for up-to-the-minute news, breaking news, video, audio and feature stories. BBC News provides trusted World and UK news as well as local and regional perspectives. Also entertainment, business, science, technology and health news.

www.bbc.co.uk

Just look at the BBC Two and Three content

BBC Two Guide - Sun Dec 29 2024 - BBC iPlayer

Browse the TV Guide for programmes from the BBC.

www.bbc.co.uk

BBC iPlayer - BBC Three Guide - Tue Aug 30 2022

Browse the TV Guide for programmes from the BBC.

www.bbc.co.uk

Does this in HD or BBC News in HD fulfill the charter, which is nearly all about quality news, information and education.

The BBC website doesn't rely on common, shared transmitters with bandwidth the government is selling off...

Broadcast bandwidth is limited, and there is generally speaking little need for HD/UHD news broadcast given how much of it is not dependent on great pictures all the time, and the amount of text is limited.

It's comparing apples to mushrooms.

 

[muon]

The BBC website doesn't rely on common, shared transmitters with bandwidth the government is selling off...

Broadcast bandwidth is limited, and there is generally speaking little need for HD/UHD news broadcast given how much of it is not dependent on great pictures all the time, and the amount of text is limited.

It's comparing apples to mushrooms.

My point is that offering news in high fidelity is more important than showing 50% of the content that fills BBC2 and 3. Even BBC4 has moved a fair bit from it's initial content it used to have (that also isn't even in HD although arguably closer to fulfilling the charter).

No where more so is that obvious on websites where we have become used to it. Imagine going backwards as the BBC News channel has in favour of protecting other HD content.

 

[jpaul]

when they (recently) restarted three HD they must have know news HD would be cut so the decision to pursue the entertainment aspect of charter to re-attract the younger/diverse demographic was made then

 

[visibleman]

TBH I don't think implementing a new codec and thus ruling out all existing TVs from accessing it, is good use of bandwidth here. More likely they will just push for new TVs to have IP capabilities and move towards providing a proper suite of IP channels.

Whether they deploy a new codec or bring in IPTV, it'll still require hardware changes and they have migrated codecs in the past, so it's certainly doable.

But you're right in that IPTV is arguably the future and what we/they should be going forward with. I just think it needs to be a national effort deploying a known standard rather than it getting locked away behind subscriptions and/or different providers with their own standards and hardware.

My point is that offering news in high fidelity is more important...

Unfortunately that's your personal opinion.

But suggesting the BBC doesn't meet their own charter because they don't offer a news channel in HD (whilst still offering it in SD) on a single platform is completely bonkers and incorrect.

And i'm completely lost to how their news websites comes into play given they aren't limited to spectrum/bandwidth in the same was Freeview is. As @Werewolf says, you're trying to compare apples to mushrooms.

Fact is, if you really want to watch BBC News HD then it's freely availably on a number of platforms - so go have at it.

 

[bigmike20vt]

My point is that offering news in high fidelity is more important than showing 50% of the content that fills BBC2 and 3. Even BBC4 has moved a fair bit from it's initial content it used to have (that also isn't even in HD although arguably closer to fulfilling the charter).

No where more so is that obvious on websites where we have become used to it. Imagine going backwards as the BBC News channel has in favour of protecting other HD content.

why? the point of a news channel is to get news accross.... the quality of the reporting is not affected by the fidelity of the disasters they are reporting on, or whether you can see every pimple on the news readers face..... where as for "entertainment" i would argue that the image quality is more important.

but either way........ i am reminded of this (unfortunately it is not in HD)

Argument - Monty Python

Argument by Monty Python with some scenes cut

www.youtube.com

 

[jpaul]

it's worse than that he's dead Jim

Strike action brews over plan to close BBC News channel

Exclusive: TUC tells director general merging UK-focused channel with BBC World News would damage democracy

www.theguardian.com

The BBC’s centenary celebrations season could be hit by strike action from corporation journalists concerned about plans to close the BBC News channel.

Scrutiny has intensified over the proposal announced earlier this year to merge the UK rolling news TV channel and its global commercial stablemate BBC World News into a new, combined service called BBC News.

..
The new channel will show news of interest to international and British audiences, with adverts only shown abroad and a UK “opt out” stream to cover big domestic stories, using reporters and a breaking news team, that will simulcast BBC Breakfast, BBC One bulletins and a televised version of Radio 5 live presenter Nicky Campbell’s show.

5 live .. can't we have r4Today to see presenters expressions ... but I don't really care as never yet watched tv in the morning

 

[jpaul]

BBC4 HD freeview - you're back in the room, and cbeebies

 

[Vanquish-Storm]

BBC4 HD freeview - you're back in the room, and cbeebies

Wonder if it was down to loss of viewers?

 

[dlockers]

Old people who **** out in front of the telly and young people who **** out in front of the telly.

UK viewing habits are changing. Once the old fogies die out Sky et al. are buggered. Luckily nutters will pay unlimited cash to watch people play with balls.

 

[jpaul]

Wonder if it was down to loss of viewers?

could actually be related to funeral - additional footage option

UK viewing habits are changing.

GenZ spending their,thought it was 5 hours daily VOD, inches from their phone
.. I balk at browsing the web on a 7" tablet, it is useful to access the tv guide and change the telly channel autocratically though