Less than 8 hours to go until the AFL season starts…
No HD for AFL is not a good look. C’mon Seven don’t disgrace yourselves
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It surely must be happening sooner rather than later. Australia’s no.1 network is broadcasting in SD while Ten, Nine, SBS and soon-to-be-ABC are relaunching their HD simulcast in MPEG-4. Come on 7, join the other Freeview networks and launch 7HD.
If Seven’s main channel audience is mainly older people,would they really care if it was HD or not. My parents in their 60’s don’t even know what HD is .
Seven has been taking 16-39, 18-49 and 25-54 most weeks this year.
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Seven skews older than Nine or Ten, their median age is the highest of any network.
But “most” of their viewers still fall in 25-54
They are winning demo weeks because of MKR.
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my attempt of linking up the 7HD stream with 7digital audio. i think the frame drops towards end is my pc/capture not the stream
So there you go,If you’re in AEDT area, you can have HD and decent audio right now. 
Mute the stream, open up your tv software and 7digital and pause it until the stream catches up
As much as I love my HD but how many people out there really care that their channels are in HD? I know showing my parents on their 55" TV flicking between 9 and 90 they “can’t tell the difference”
Depends on how far back they are sitting. I can tell a huge difference about 3m back but any further back it becomes less noticeable.
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I know what you mean… I know of people with perfectly good eyesight who can’t tell the difference between SD and HD.
Last Christmas I bought my brother in law “Breaking Bad” on Blu Ray as they had also gotten themselves a new high end 55 inch Samsung LED TV, and when I asked him what he thought of the PQ (picture quality), and he said he didn’t realise it wasn’t a DVD!
I guess it’s really just us tech heads, and also sports fans, who want HD, as the difference in PQ becomes more marked, I think more people do notice the difference here.
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Well all I can say is that 7Mate and Fox Footy look superb in HD. If no one has the means to upgrade to MPEG 4 then there will always be an SD version of 7 and footy coverage.
What are they watching?
My parents are the same. Doesn’t help that the quality of the HD tends to vary
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There is a comment in the TV Tonight Lounge saying June for SevenHD. No idea whether it is accurate or not and what that month is based on . The person who made the comment I think is a member on MediaSpy … Andrew B .
If that is accurate then that is still a few weeks away.
I had a look at the DeciderTV blog and it said Seven would have HD in time for the AFL , then previously for the tennis and now says they have no plans for HD ? Seems this site isn’t accurate.
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It’s note.
As a separate channel.
yes, which is what would happen now
this should have been setup years ago so Seven could literally flick the switch. Did the networks really believe they could get away with not having their main channel available in HD? 6 years
Could have swapped 7mate and Seven. Flick two switches
I’ll make it simple for you: until we have an official announcement from Seven, we don’t know when Seven HD will start. if an insider has the inside word, I seriously doubt they’ll post it as a comment on whirlpool, tv tonight or media spy. They won’t go and update the Wikipedia article either.
God knows why people post fake dates on message boards, but if people keep falling for it and reposting it, they’ll keep it up.
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Agreed. And if you see an article next Friday that has a start date for 7HD, I’d ignore that as well. 
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there is no switch flicking involved, at all, anywhere.
Encoders and decoders need to be installed. New ‘playlists’ added to presentation, updates to the headends and MUXs at each transmitter site. New monitoring equipment installed at each station.
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Should have happened years ago.
I was assuming infrastructure required was already installed, hence ‘flick the switch’. sorry
While a Seven HD might not yet be announced to the general public (that won’t be happening until they’re almost ready), I think that the network would almost certainly be preparing for one at the moment. If you were to ask me, I definitely think that we will have a Seven HD sometime within the not too distant future. Exactly when will a Seven HD launch? Well, of course that’s absolutely anyone’s guess at this stage.
Realistically, I’m sure that many people at Seven also know/realise that a decent amount of their viewers would like to be able to watch programs on Seven’s main channel (many of which are considered to be Australia’s favourite programs, if the OzTam ratings are anything to go by) in high definition. I don’t think Seven would risk a potential ratings decrease (even if only a slow and gradual one) buy maintaining the status quo of having an SD-only main channel while SBS, Nine, Ten and maybe the ABC are all broadcasting their main channels in HD.
I’m sure that it would take many months (if not a year or more) of planning, infrastructure updates, etc by any network for the launch of any channel - no doubt about that. From memory, the launch of Nine HD and 9Life was something like a year or more in the planning according to one report around October or November last year.
And don’t we all forget the speculation about the launch of Nine HD? From memory, speculation about a possible Nine HD and a refreshed Channel Nine (from the then-current 2012 branding) was happening on Media Spy as far back as Late 2013/Early 2014. In the end, we finally got Nine HD, 9Life and refreshed general branding across most of the network in Late 2015/Early 2016! Now it probably won’t take until Late 2017/Early 2018 or longer for a possible Seven HD channel to launch (it would be reasonably safe to presume that the recent launches of Nine HD and Ten HD have sped things up just a bit), but it’s still worth keeping in mind of course!
But those were just the thoughts and theories from someone who has a very basic understanding of how these things work and I’d certainly be interested to hear if others agree or disagree with those thoughts! 
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The Seven Network is the #1 network in Australia. Nine, TEN and SBS have got HD channels (Nine being the only network that actually broadcasts the programs in HD). If Seven don’t add HD and broadcasts its programs in HD in time for the Olympics they are screwed. Not to mention that Seven picked up the rights for the Rugby World Cup next year so if they want their broadcast to be as good as good as Nines they better get 7HD ready! Seven Network is the primary FTA network for sport so an HD simulcast of their primary channel is a must!
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