HD to kill Freeview and terrestrial TV?
It is a just a thought but I wonder if the great analogue switch off, which the Government has invested so much money in to promote, is actually just a dress rehearsal for the real switch off which will be the end of terrestrial TV.
If you start thinking about it getting rid of TV through an aerial is actually very sensible idea. After all if we assume that the future of TV is HD, unless someone comes up with some truly astounding compression technology there simply won’t be enough bandwidth via terrestrial to deliver the number of HD channels and the kind of choice that consumers will expect in the future.
Also by the time we get full HD via terrestrial, probably in 2012 after the great analogue switch off is complete, consumers will be so used to linear HD channels and video on demand via cable, satellite and broadband – all of which are cheaper and more efficient ways of distributing HD – that terrestrial HD will seem like a very poor alternative.
Let’s not forget too that those frequencies could be sold off to mobile phone networks – that is if they haven’t all gone VoiP and broadband by then – which will mean a nice little windfall for the Government of the day.
So TV via an aerial will be dead by 2020 at the very latest, and I’d expect to see a big announcement to kill it off by around 2014. Even better the Government should junk Freeview now and start subsiding cable, broadband and even satellite. It could save a lot of time and money and aggro in the long run.
What do you think?
