Haute Définition
With a few hours to kill last weekend, I thought I'd go for a wander around town and get some window shopping done (I'd incorrectly assumed that the supermarket opened at 10.00 on a Sunday morning, so rather than being the first person in the store, I was actually an hour early). This is always a slightly dangerous thing to do, because I'm not very good at resisting the temptation to actually buy something - usually music, but occasionally a new gadget or piece of hi-tech kit to play with.
It was with a certain sense of inevitability then when I saw an ex-display (read: reduced price) HD Freesat box on offer in John Lewis... and ended up taking it home. In the battle of Head vs Heart, the latter was victorious, despite the very strong argument from Head that there was no guarantee that the "SAT" connection plate on the wall of the flat was connected to a dish at the other end.
I'm very glad I did though, because although the channels available through Freesat are on a par with Freeview (no Dave or Sky Sports News, but you do get er... Zone Romantica?), you can't yet get high definition (HD) broadcasts through an aerial.
Only the BBC HD channel and selected ITV programmes are available, but they are well worth the outlay. The first thing I watched was the England vs France game, and the difference in the quality of the viewing experience is incredible. I had previously doubted what benefits HD would bring to sports coverage, but I rescind these unreservedly.
Similarly, and even though I'm not really a big fan of nature documentaries, Nature's Great Events is mesmerising television in HD. The crashing waves, soaring birds, swarming fish and murdering whales looked almost 3D, even on my "half-HD" (720p) set.
Sometime in the future, everything will be HD. That day can't come soon enough, because it's the way that television should be in the twenty-first century. Shame it can't do much for the script-writing - if you're going to watch Law & Order: UK, do with the sound off.
