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ABC switching to HD in December

ABC will finally switch its primary channel to HD in December, with NYE fireworks as its first HD event.

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ABC will finally switch its primary channel to HD in December, with a full schedule in HD by December 31st.

But the move comes six months after ABC initially pledged HD availability.

“We said we would be HD ready by mid year but we didn’t actually specify a time. We will make it just before the end of the year. We will be HD from December and the first major TV event in HD will be New Year’s Eve fireworks,” Richard Finlayson, Director of TV told TV Tonight.

ABC is mindful that it has many viewers who will need some technical advice as it switches to HD.

“There’s a rollout that will happen and a number of people will probably have to adjust their sets.

“We need to make sure that when we go HD it’s a service that can be accessed by all Australians.”

Once completed this will leave Seven viewers in Sydney, Brisbane and Perth as the only primary channel not available in High Definition.

Viewers will have to wait a little longer for iview to switch to HD.

“We’re working on it,” Finlayson said.

“It’s a project that’s on the list and we will get to it as soon as we can. It won’t be too far away.”

31 Responses

  1. Great news. As I understand it, ABC’s main channel was due to go HD mid-year but because of the major technical demands of switching the WIN and Southern Cross Austereo regional TV affiliations at about the same time, there simply weren’t enough techies to go around then to allow ABC to switch its main channel to HD. So, for viewers in many regional areas of Australia, that means we will be able to watch all free-to-air primary channels in HD except Seven affiliate Prime7. That is unless it decides to add a Prime7 HD channel (and also hopefully 7flix) when Prime’s channels start being played out by Media Hub, reportedly from December 1. Let’s hope so.

  2. Great news. I just hope they increase the quality from ABC News24 as its headlines running across the bottom of the screen are always blurry unlike 9HD and TenHD.

  3. then we will be left with the false advertising 7HD Sydney which is actually 7mate , we said we would be HD ready by mid year , but never set a time frame . so what is saying you would be ready by mid year a guesstimate

      1. Introducing a new channel will reduce the bandwidth/quality of the other streams All the other FTA HD channels are using 1080i MP4 with a SD simulcast in MPEG2.

      1. With the next AFL game on March 23, 2017, Seven should be in HD for all markets now until then and/or until they sort out HD break aways or something for the AFL games in Syd, Bris and Perth.

  4. Awesome news. In the last year I only watched ABC content on Netflix, because of the lack of HD on ABC’s broadcast and iView.

    Now if they can also release the iView app for the 3rd Gen Apple TV, I’ll be really happy!

    1. “Now if they can also release the iView app for the 3rd Gen Apple TV, I’ll be really happy!”

      Highly unlikely considering the 3rd Gen is now a discontinued product.

  5. It says a “full schedule” in HD – I wonder if that means the state based 7pm news. And I wonder if that means field reports as well as studio cameras.

    1. I would imagine all of this is filmed in HD now, in fact I’m pretty sure it is because I have seen Adelaide based reports repeated on ABC News 24 and the quality looked much better.

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