BBC HDTV - Yet more Hypocrisy

Remember when Sky proposed converting some to their DTT channels to MPEG4 encoding and therefore requiring viewers who want to see the programmers to purchase a new set-top box? Of course, Sky being a commercial company proposed to charge for the service and presumably add their own flavour of encryption technology.

One of the more pathetic arguments against the Sky proposal was that MPEG4 transmission could cause problems with consumer confidence about the wonderful ongoing process of Digital Switch Over and potentially there are incompatibility problems with the existing set-top boxes.

Yesterday, the beeb released its plans for a High Definition channel on DTT and sure enough it is with MPEG4 encoding requiring a new set-top box.

The 9-page beeb produced HDTV product description document (pdf file) does not mention a single word of potential confusion for Digital Switch Over or even potential problems with the older generation MPEG2 set-top boxes.

Funny that...