How many of those shows being shown at the moment are new episodes? Probably not many at this time of year. The may have decided that it’s a better use of tax payer resources to not reacquire copies of shows they already have just to make repeats look better.
Who knows? But is a gigantic fail for ABC to what Ten initailly did. Then Ten were smart to at least put some sporting in HD.
Yes, it does the beg questino why ABC made the decision to launch without having any HD content available? Yeah I’m a bit annoyed myself now . 
(delayed reaction)
I’ve worked in aqquistaitins in tv stations. The cost of aqquiring a HD master is negligible. You’re talking $80-$100 for the tape
But the cost of recompiling, recaptioning and preparing a show for broadcast, plus the additional server space extra copies of the same episodes takes up is of far greater unnecessary cost.
I suspect once they’ve upgraded their studios and acquire new programs in HD, we’ll see a lot more native content.
Again why bother launching one now? Wouldn’t it have been smart to wait a bit if that’s th case because of costs ?
I completely agree with @pelican. All of that taxpayers money spent on technical upgrades and promotion is a bit of a waste when the end product is basically only a slightly better looking SD picture!
OK, we also saw ABC News 24 revert to SD but I highly doubt that any major technical upgrades would’ve been needed for that change to happen. Until/unless we see some native HD content on ABC HD, I think it’s safe to say that they would’ve just been better off changing ABC News 24 to SD and allocating the spare bandwidth into improving the SD picture quality of all channels until the ABC is 100% ready to broadcast a decent HD channel.
Yes, I’m well aware that not all programs shown would’ve been native HD. I get that, all broadcasters are probably going to be in that position from time to time. But broadcasting a HD channel without any native HD content to show at all? Why bother?
Re, HD news/current affairs programing: While it’s understandable that somewhere like ABC Darwin wouldn’t have the infrastructure for HD news, I would’ve thought that at least the Sydney and Melbourne studios (where multiple national news/current affairs programs are produced from) would be able to do HD broadcasting in this day and age. Mind you, I don’t know how often the ABC (or any network) upgrades its studio cameras and control room desks, etc required for the production of news/current affairs programing.
If any of the content was actually in HD, you really should be able to notice the difference in picture quality between it and the SD broadcast even without a “HD” watermark addition.
As I’ve said before the LCN name in the EPG should be enough of a channel identifier to viewers, just like how we don’t have “Channel 9 Sydney” or “Prime7 South Coast” on the watermarks even though they’re actual LCN/EPG names on Digital TV.
Surely “Please Like Me” would’ve been produced in HD, for the now-defunct US network Pivot? Whether or not it actually aired in that format on ABC HD last night is a completely different story though of course!
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Even if some ABC news studios are HD-capable, is it possible that their field teams are not? Since they air stories from mobile teams all over the country maybe they don’t want to keep switching between HD in the studio and poorer quality ex-studio reports.
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ABC News Melbourne programs will be in HD from next year.
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Yes. The ABC put out a request for tender in November 2015 to replace the news studios in every capital, but it states the replacement will occur over 3-5 years. So probably the smaller states will be last?
https://www.tenders.gov.au/?event=public.atm.showClosed&ATMUUID=C1772240-0178-3BDE-910D096BC525FDFF
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It says 12 news studios
I’m guessing
Syd
Mel
Bne
Per
Adl
Can
Can - Parliment House
Hob
Dar
That’s 9
Would the others be:
Townsville
Gold Coast
Cairns
Newcastle
?
Wouldn’t the ABC have at least two news studios in Sydney? One for News 24 and the other for the 7pm news in NSW, the 12pm bulletin, etc?
Yes agree
Yes, they do.
The beauty of streaming is that it is on Netflix in HD .How ridiculous .Even worse quality on Iview.
Also, for me the HD channel looks worse than the News24 channel. on a 2009 lcd tv.
Maybe the ABC blew the budget just to get MPEG-4 up and going .
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In the ABC’s defence, the episodes of QI that they are showing tonight (2007 series) weren’t produced in HD.
But stuff like the current series of Would I Lie to You has just ended in Britain, with the first episode shown in September 2016. This is well into the planning of ABC HD. You’d have to have been pretty dumb to ask for delivery of it in SD.
I have a feeling that they do have these programmes in HD, but the playout isn’t ready. That would be pretty embarrassing though, considering how they had all the fanfare and time to prepare.
Why all of this wasn’t gradually updated to High Definition for an eventual HD switch anyway is beyond me. You’d think that the switch to Mediahub would’ve been the perfect opportunity to install HD equipment on the backend for at least their main channel. That was around the time that other public broadcasters started HD simulcasts. It’s not like they were going to transmit SD forever.
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They’ve had 15 years to prepare. They’ve even had their primary channel HD-ready once in those 15 years. I’d like to know if this is the worst HD channel launch in the history of digital television. I think it might be. And I paid for it.
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Same her, ABC HD @ 1080i MPEG4 looks worse than ABC24 @ 720p.
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I can’t find any Screen Australia technical standards, but you would assume they would expect all productions they fund these days to be made in HD.
Yup, it’s not like HD just appeared last year. Infrastructure should’ve been put in place for HD years ago.
It’s baffling that sets have been replaced and new studios built and occupied, but I presume no one bought and/or wired the cameras to be HD capable. Even more baffling is that the ABC receives more funding now than it did 10 years ago - upgrading facilities to be HD ready should’ve been a logical investment point to cut the long-term cost of having to replace it all again, especially in the public environment where funding is never guaranteed. I’d much rather the ABC spent money on HD readiness than fucking Tractor Monkeys.
It’s just crazy that an organisation in 2016 cannot output HD whatsoever.
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So then we should have C31HD and WTVHD etc…