There are four major forms of

digital television Digital television (DTV) is the transmission of television signals using digital encoding, in contrast to the earlier analog television technology which used analog signals. At the time of its development it was considered an innovative adva ...

(DTV) broadcast in the United Kingdom: a direct-to-home satellite service from the

Astra 28.2°E Astra 28.2°E is the name for the group of Astra communications satellites co-located at the 28.2° East position in the Clarke Belt that are owned and operated by SES based in Betzdorf, Luxembourg. It is one of the major TV satellite positions s ...

satellites provided by

Sky UK Sky UK Limited is a British broadcaster and telecommunications company that provides television and broadband Internet services, fixed line and mobile telephone services to consumers and businesses in the United Kingdom. It is a subsidiary of ...

, a

cable television Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with bro ...

service provided by

Virgin Media Virgin Media is a British telecommunications company which provides telephone, television and internet services in the United Kingdom. Its headquarters are at Green Park in Reading, England. It is owned by Virgin Media O2, a 50:50 joint ventu ...

(known as Virgin TV); a free-to-air satellite service called

Freesat Freesat is a British free-to-air satellite television service, first formed as a joint venture between the BBC and ITV plc and now owned by Digital UK. The service was formed as a memorandum in 2007 and has been marketed since 6 May 2008. Free ...

; and a free-to-air digital terrestrial service called

Freeview Freeview may refer to: *Freeview (Australia), the marketing name for the digital terrestrial television platform in Australia *Freeview (New Zealand), a digital satellite and digital terrestrial television platform in New Zealand *Freeview (UK), a ...

. In addition, an

IPTV Internet Protocol television (IPTV) is the delivery of television content over Internet Protocol (IP) networks. This is in contrast to delivery through traditional terrestrial, satellite, and cable television formats. Unlike downloaded med ...

system known as

BT Vision BT TV is a subscription IPTV service offered by BT; a division of United Kingdom telecommunications company BT Group, and was originally launched as BT Vision in December 2006. As of the end of June 2019, BT TV had 1.9 million customers. ...

is provided by BT. Individual access methods vary throughout the country. 77% of the United Kingdom has access to

HDTV High-definition television (HD or HDTV) describes a television system which provides a substantially higher image resolution than the previous generation of technologies. The term has been used since 1936; in more recent times, it refers to the g ...

via terrestrial digital television. Satellite is the only source of HDTV broadcast available for the remaining 23%.

Major forms of broadcast DTV

Terrestrial

The initial attempt at launching a digital terrestrial broadcasting service, ONdigital (later called

ITV Digital ITV Digital was a British digital terrestrial television broadcaster which launched a pay-TV service on the world's first digital terrestrial television network. Its main shareholders were Carlton Communications plc and Granada plc, owners ...

), was unsuccessful and the company went into liquidation. Some observers have argued that this failure stemmed from the Government's eagerness in having sold off too much TV spectrum to launch Channel 5 (the last UK terrestrial analogue channel), and ONdigital's short-sightedness in over-extending its use of available bandwidth: using poor signal encoding to maintain compatibility with early

set-top box A set-top box (STB), also colloquially known as a cable box and historically television decoder, is an information appliance device that generally contains a TV-tuner input and displays output to a television set and an external source of s ...

es, optimising their broadcasts for capacity rather than reliability, and cramming too many channels into the available bandwidth. ITV Digital was replaced in late 2002 by

, which uses the same

DVB-T DVB-T, short for Digital Video Broadcasting – Terrestrial, is the DVB European-based consortium standard for the broadcast transmission of digital terrestrial television that was first published in 1997 and first broadcast in Singapore in Feb ...

technology, but with higher levels of

error correction In information theory and coding theory with applications in computer science and telecommunication, error detection and correction (EDAC) or error control are techniques that enable reliable delivery of digital data over unreliable communi ...

and more robust (but lower-capacity) modulation on the "Public Service" multiplexes in an attempt to counter the reception problems which dogged its predecessor. Rather than concentrating on

Pay TV Pay television, also known as subscription television, premium television or, when referring to an individual service, a premium channel, refers to subscription-based television services, usually provided by multichannel television providers, b ...

services,

uses the available capacity to provide a

free-to-air Free-to-air (FTA) services are television (TV) and radio services broadcast in unencrypted form, allowing any person with the appropriate receiving equipment to receive the signal and view or listen to the content without requiring a subscripti ...

service that includes all the existing five free-to-air analogue terrestrial channels and about twenty new digital channels. All services are transmitted in

standard definition Standard-definition television (SDTV, SD, often shortened to standard definition) is a television system which uses a resolution that is not considered to be either high or enhanced definition. "Standard" refers to it being the prevailing sp ...

—

576i 576i is a standard-definition digital video mode, originally used for digitizing analog television in most countries of the world where the utility frequency for electric power distribution is 50 Hz. Because of its close association wit ...

in the UK—many using an

anamorphic widescreen Anamorphic widescreen (also called Full height anamorphic or FHA) is a process by which a comparatively wide widescreen image is horizontally compressed to fit into a storage medium (photographic film or MPEG-2 standard-definition frame, for e ...

format. 31 March 2004 saw the return of a limited pay-television offering to the digital terrestrial platform with the launch of

Top Up TV Top Up TV was a pay TV service in the United Kingdom which launched in March 2004, operating on the digital terrestrial television platform. The aim of the service was to "top up" Freeview customers by providing additional content and services ...

. This new service is designed to appeal to those who do not want to pay the higher subscription fees that Sky Television and the Cable networks demanded. The service carries some of the UK's most watched channels including the

Discovery Channel Discovery Channel (known as The Discovery Channel from 1985 to 1995, and often referred to as simply Discovery) is an American cable channel owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, a publicly traded company run by CEO David Zaslav. , Discovery Chan ...

, UKTV Gold, Discovery Real Time, British Eurosport and

Cartoon Network Cartoon Network (often abbreviated as CN) is an American cable television channel owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. It is a part of The Cartoon Network, Inc., a division that also has the broadcasting and production activities of Boomerang, ...

. The 10 channels are split into five different slots and broadcast for only part of the day. In October 2006, Top Up TV became Top Up TV Anytime, taking advantage of the increase in the popularity of PVRs, and its limited channel space. Now over 100 programs are broadcast overnight and added to the box's

hard disk A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magn ...

, so that it may be watched at any time. Channels that joined the service include

MTV MTV (Originally an initialism of Music Television) is an American cable channel that launched on August 1, 1981. Based in New York City, it serves as the flagship property of the MTV Entertainment Group, part of Paramount Media Networks, a di ...

Nickelodeon Nickelodeon (often shortened to Nick) is an American pay television channel which launched on April 1, 1979, as the first cable channel for children. It is run by Paramount Global through its networks division's Kids and Family Group. It ...

and

Hallmark Channel The Hallmark Channel is an American television channel owned by Crown Media Holdings, Inc., which in turn is owned by Hallmark Cards, Inc. The channel's programming is primarily targeted at families, and features a mix of television movies a ...

. 2005 saw the first areas of the United Kingdom losing their analogue signal in a pilot test. The residents of Ferryside and Llansteffan in

Carmarthenshire Carmarthenshire ( cy, Sir Gaerfyrddin; or informally ') is a county in the south-west of Wales. The three largest towns are Llanelli, Carmarthen and Ammanford. Carmarthen is the county town and administrative centre. The county is known as ...

Wales Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the Bristol Channel to the south. It had a population in ...

who had not already upgraded to digital television were given a free set-top box to receive the

television service, which includes

Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a fourth television service ...

(previously unavailable terrestrially from transmitters in Wales) and

S4C S4C (, ''Sianel Pedwar Cymru'', meaning ''Channel Four Wales'') is a Welsh language free-to-air public broadcast television channel. Launched on 1 November 1982, it was the first television channel to be aimed specifically at a Welsh-speaking ...

~2, which broadcasts sessions of the

National Assembly for Wales The Senedd (; ), officially known as the Welsh Parliament in English and () in Welsh, is the devolved, unicameral legislature of Wales. A democratically elected body, it makes laws for Wales, agrees certain taxes and scrutinises the Welsh Go ...

. Digital transmissions for this pilot commenced in December 2004, at which time a message was added to the analogue picture advising viewers that the analogue services would end in February 2005. The pilot paved the way for full switch-over to digital television signals throughout the United Kingdom by the Government's deadline of 2012. The year 2005 also saw the announcement by

Ofcom The Office of Communications, commonly known as Ofcom, is the government-approved regulatory and competition authority for the broadcasting, telecommunications and postal industries of the United Kingdom. Ofcom has wide-ranging powers acros ...

of the proposed analogue switch off plans for the UK. It is proposed that the switch off will progress on an ITV region by region basis starting in 2008 starting in the

Border Television ITV Border, previously Border Television and commonly referred to as simply Border, is the ITV (TV network), Channel 3 service provided by ITV (TV channel), ITV Broadcasting Limited for the Anglo-Scottish border, England/Scotland border region, ...

region and ending in the Channel Television region in 2012. The coverage of the three public service multiplexes will be the same as that enjoyed by the current analogue TV stations, while the three commercial multiplexes will cover approximately 90% of the UK population. To improve long standing interference issues in the Meridian and Anglia franchise areas a small number of new transmitters will be brought into service when those regions are converted in 2010 and 2011. These plans were confirmed by the Secretary of State for Culture, Tessa Jowell, on 15 September 2005

See Digital terrestrial television in the United Kingdom#Digital switchover, Digital switchover in the United Kingdom.

Freeview HD

Freeview HD launched in December 2009, from the Crystal Palace and Winter Hill transmitters, to coincide with digital switchover at the latter. Receivers did not, however, appear in the shops until February 2010.

BBC HD BBC HD was a 24-hour high-definition television channel provided by the BBC. The service was initially run as a trial from 15 May 2006 until becoming a full service on 1 December 2007 before its discontinuation on 26 March 2013. It broadcast ...

, ITV HD,

BBC One HD BBC One is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's flagship network and is known for broadcasting mainstream programming, which includes BBC News television bulletins, p ...

and

Channel 4 HD Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a fourth television service in ...

are the currently available terrestrial HDTV channels. The broadcast mode is

DVB-T2 DVB-T2 is an abbreviation for "Digital Video Broadcasting – Second Generation Terrestrial"; it is the extension of the television standard DVB-T, issued by the consortium DVB, devised for the broadcast transmission of digital terrestrial tele ...

, using MPEG4 encoding. The BBC, ITV,

and Channel 5 ran terrestrial HDTV trials involving 450 homes in the

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

area during June–December 2006 on locally unused frequencie

As part of this trial, the BBC broadcast

free to air. The trial homes received an HD-capable set-top box; the services could also be received and played back by a PC equipped with a DVB-T card that is within range (as the broadcast is not encrypted) using a software H.264 decoder.

Cable

Digital Cable in the United Kingdom is available through

and several local cable companies. Trials of the UK's first

service began on 2 December 2005. Telewest, a

cable TV Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with broa ...

company now part of

, distributed

programs to 400 customers in the south

area. Following the merger of NTL & Telewest and the creation of

was rolled out across the network, including former NTL areas. The service is provided via a personal video recorder, branded as V+ and formally known as TV Drive.

Satellite

On 1 November 2005 ITV turned off

encryption In cryptography, encryption is the process of encoding information. This process converts the original representation of the information, known as plaintext, into an alternative form known as ciphertext. Ideally, only authorized parties can d ...

on all of its satellite based signals, following the lead from the BBC. These transmissions are on a limited spotbeam which is aimed primarily towards the United Kingdom, via the

Astra 2D Astra 2D is one of the Astra communications satellites owned and operated by Société Européenne des Satellites (SES), and located at 28.2° East in the geostationary orbit until June 2015. It is a Hughes Space and Communications HS-376HP ...

satellite located at 28.2° east. This theoretically limits reception to the UK, Ireland, Iceland and the northern region of France, allowing ITV to fulfil licensing agreements with content producers. However, many people report successful reception of these signals from across Europe by using larger dishes. Sky HD is offered by Sky in both the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and ...

and

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel, the Irish Sea, and St George's Channel. Ireland is the s ...

as an add-on to their existing Sky subscription service. The BBC is broadcasting

as a

channel from the

satellite, and the channel can be viewed for free with suitable satellite reception equipment. There are additional equipment and subscription charges for HD from Sky TV but they are broadcasting an increasing number of channels in the HD format. Sky also offers a free-to-air version of its regular Sky service known as

Freesat from Sky Freesat from Sky (FsfS) was a British satellite television service from Sky UK. It offered over 240 free-to-air (FTA) channels in its EPG. This is a greater number than its competitors, Freesat, which has 200+, and Freeview, which has 70+. I ...

. Freesat from Sky provides a non-subscription card for public service broadcast channels

and Channel 5, however Channel 4 London,

Film4 Film4 is a British free-to-air television network owned by Channel Four Television Corporation launched on 1 November 1998, devoted to broadcasting films. While its standard-definition channel is available on Freeview and Freesat platforms ...

, Film4+1 are free-to-air. In September 2005, the BBC and ITV announced a free-to-air satellite service as a competitor to Freesat from Sky, to be called

. Launched in May 2008, Freesat offers all BBC and ITV digital TV channels, plus other channels, interactive services, and radio channels, all using existing broadcasts from

. It is being touted as the satellite equivalent to Freeview, especially for areas unable to receive the Freeview DTT service.

High-definition

The UK now has 3 main ways of accessing high definition television channels.

Free-to-air

The BBC has launched its own high-definition service called

which is currently available via Digital Satellite. Rather than simulcasting one of the corporation's existing channels, the channel broadcasts for several hours per day and broadcasts a selection of its high-definition programming. BBC HD is also available on

and Freeview. BBC One HD was launched on 3 November 2010 on Sky, Virgin, Freesat and Freeview. During 2006, ITV trialled its high-definition service ITV HD. This trial was a Digital Terrestrial trial which broadcast only from the Crystal Palace transmitting station in London. The channel was transitioned as a full service initially only on Freesat in Spring 2008.

Free-to-view

Channel 4 launched a high-definition simulcast,

of its main channel on digital satellite on 10 December 2007. It also took part in the terrestrial trial mentioned above and launched on Freeview on 31 March 2010. ITV HD, which first aired on 7 June 2008, operated as an occasional service as part of the Freesat network, available on the "red button" with Freesat receivers only. It then relaunched as ITV1 HD on 2 April 2010 as a full service across all platforms.

Subscription

Sky offers five HD sports channels, along with a HD sports news channel, ten HD movie channels, and several other subscription HD channels, such as Discovery HD. With Sky, there are

HD,

Sky1 Sky One was a British pay television channel operated and owned by Sky Group (a division of Comcast). Originally launched on 26 April 1982 as Satellite Television, it was Europe's first satellite and non- terrestrial channel. From 31 July 1989, ...

HD, FX HD, Sky Arts HD, Luxe.tv HD, Sky Premiere HD,

Sky Movies Sky Cinema is a British subscription film service owned by Sky Group (a division of Comcast). In the United Kingdom, Sky Cinema channels currently broadcast on the Sky satellite and Virgin Media cable platforms, and in addition Sky Cinema ...

HD1 & 2,

Sky Sports Sky Sports is a group of British subscription sports channels operated by the satellite pay television company Sky Group (a division of Comcast), and is the dominant subscription television sports brand in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It ...

HD1,2 & 3, Discovery HD,

National Geographic Channel HD National Geographic (formerly National Geographic Channel; abbreviated and trademarked as Nat Geo or Nat Geo TV) is an American pay television network and flagship channel owned by the National Geographic Global Networks unit of Disney General E ...

, History Channel HD & Sky Box Office HD1 & 2 and Sci-Fi HD. Public consultation on the Trust's provisional conclusions on the proposed BBC HD service ended on 23 October 2007.

References

External links

Digital TV Consumer test reports
UK Government-funded website to support Digital Switchover
High Definition for Europe - a progressive approach
article from the EBU technical review
GovernmentFreeviewTop Up TVVirgin MediaSky
(BSkyB)
OFCOM digital switchover proposalDigital UKTV Packages in the UK
{{Navboxes, list1= {{Digital television deployments {{Media in the United Kingdom, television {{Telecommunications

Science and technology in the United Kingdom