Skip to main content

HDTV Free to Air Trial in London, England

Informitv reports that leading terrestrial channels have come together for the first trial of high-definition digital terrestrial television in the UK, which will include BBC coverage of the World Cup and Wimbledon.

The closed technical trial is officially limited to a sample of 450 households in the London area. The BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Five are contributing to the trial, which is initially expected to last for six months. It aims to test the technical aspects of delivering high-definition services to conventional television aerials.

The BBC HD stream is being transmitted by National Grid Wireless and the commercial multiplex is being broadcast by Arqiva, with technical support from Siemens and Thomson respectively. It is possible to pick up the low-power MPEG-4 signals from Crystal Palace in south London in many parts of the capital, but they will not be viewable on normal Freeview boxes.

Receivers are being produced by consumer electronics companies Humax and ADB. They are being made available to 450 selected households in an audience research panel being conducted by TNS Media. High-definition terrestrial television is already available in countries such as America and Australia, but the limited capacity within the available broadcast spectrum currently inhibits deployment in the UK.

Popular posts from this blog

Product Design AI to Reach $4.3 Billion by 2035

Artificial intelligence tools for product design have largely been sold to engineering leaders as a productivity story: faster renders, quicker iterations, fewer manual CAD operations. According to the latest market study by ABI Research, the market for artificial intelligence in product design is set to grow from $628 million in 2025 to $4.3 billion by 2035; that's a 21.3 percent compound annual growth rate. The trajectory reflects a market moving past assistive tools and into a phase where AI becomes structurally embedded in how products get engineered, simulated, and validated. For executives overseeing engineering, product development, and R&D organizations, this is no longer a tooling decision. It is a competitive positioning decision, and the window to shape it is narrower than most roadmaps assume. The Ten-Year Growth Outlook Mechanical product design and simulation is the AI beachhead within manufacturing. A full 62 percent of manufacturers are already running AI projec...