Wednesday, 3 November 2010

BBC One HD launches...and the 8320HD fails to notice

When I got home tonight, I checked the 8320HD's EPG shortly after the BBC One HD launch on channel 50 at 7.00pm GMT, only to find that there was no automatic detection of the new channel (or the move of the existing BBC HD channel from 50 to 54). A big let-down there really - people who are unaware of the BBC One HD launch (e.g. my TV Times paper magazine, which refused to mention it at all) might not retune for weeks or months and miss out on a fair chunk of BBC One HD output.

Channel 50 still showed BBC HD on my 8320HD, so I went into the preferences and did a full automatic tune of channels. When that completed, the EPG and channel listings were correct and sure enough, choosing channel 50 selected BBC One HD plus the BBC HD channel had moved to channel 54. Sadly, the BBC have decided to put a "BBC One HD" opaque logo in the top-left - is this the first time a BBC One or Two channel has had a permanent (24x7) logo? Considering it's now simulcast content, the BBC should be consistent and either put logos on both BBC One (SD) and BBC One HD or on neither. I hate that we now get an improved BBC One picture, only for it to be "exclusively" spoiled by a permanent logo on the HD version - ludicrous!

Oh and shouldn't the BBC One HD channel listings indicate with an "(HD)" which programmes are native HD and not upscaled SD? My TV Times magazine does this, so it's very poor that the BBC Website doesn't. I've also noticed that channel 53 is conspicuously unallocated and sits between Channel 4 HD and BBC HD. I suspect it's been left like that for a future allocation to Channel 5 HD when they get their act together in about 4-5 years' time at this rate.

This BBC One HD launch yet again emphasises that the 8320HD needs a channel move/renumber/delete capability (no, not the awkward Favourites system). The vast majority of 8320HD owners would surely want BBC One HD on channel 1, ITV 1 HD on channel 3 and Channel 4 HD on channel 4? Instead, we get the awkward double key presses of channels 50, 51 and 52 respectively, so even the second digit doesn't match the "expected" channel number  - horrendous! It now means the only "correctly" positioned channel in the first four is BBC 2 (SD) on channel 2.

No comments:

Post a Comment