Back in early 2006 the BBC in the United Kingdom launched a High Definition television channel. Billed as a ‘preview’ channel, the BBC used the channel up until December 2007 to test high definition scheduling.

After the trail ended in December 2007 the channel dropped the ‘preview’ title and became ‘BBC HD’. This signaled to me that all the kinks in delivery had been ironed out and that the channel was to be treated like the other free to air BBC digital channels.

However, the HD channel falls short in terms of quality and reliability when compared to the other channels that the BBC broadcast. Most notably, the BBC channel suffers audio quality control issues with sound dropping out etc. Another issue I have is that the BBC don’t seem to be monitoring the output like the do for the rest of their broadcasts.

The first incident that I recall was the live coverage of the 2008 Eurovision Song Contest when he BBC HD channel failed to broadcast the backing music tracks properly resulting in only the vocals being broadcast during the broadcast. In response to this screw-up Seetha Kuma (Head of HDTV for BBC Vision at the time of the incident) responded on the BBC’s Internet Blog stating:

What happened with Eurovision was an isolated incident, but it does flush out teething problems with a technology that is still evolving.

An isolated incident? Okay these thing’s happen. But then just a few weeks later, the BBC HD channel experienced similar issues with a live broadcast of the ‘I’ll Do Anything: Nancy’ final.

Jumping forward to August 2008 and to the Beijing Olympic Games Opening Ceremony, the BBC had to apologized immediately after the transmission for the poor audio quality as seen in this on screen title slide:

Not only did the BBC have audio problems with the live broadcast, I also noticed some digital artifacts etc in the HD video - really spoiling my enjoyment of the games.

While I like the fact that the BBC are experimenting with HD, I’d much rather they roll the channel back to an experimental trial channel that suggest that the channel is a fully fledged channel as right now there is much to do to bring the quality of the channel in line with the other BBC broadcast channels. What do you think? Your thoughts in the comments below…