According to a flyer from Cablecom I got today SF1 HD, SF2 HD, TRS HD RSI HD are due to start in February 29....

SSR Idées Suisse signals broadcasted on satellite will go HD as well.
Swiss DVB-T will not broadcast HD channels.

I've had the test channels via Satellite since Dec. It comes on once in a while. Looks very nice, and glad to see now they have a launch date!

Excellent. ORF did it just a few months ago. Can't wait for HD movies on SF2! wooooooo!

I would assume these 6 new channels replace HD suisse are not an addition to it. I hope they will be available on the Basel UPC network, unlike the "new" HD ORF ones which are not, due to capacity issues.

As far as I know, the HD Suisse frequency will be taken over by RSI LA2 on 1 February (so no more HD suisse). The others will also come online on that date but not showing the full serviceuntil the official launch on 29 Feb. Maybe this applies to satellite only and not cablecom?

Swiss TV.....HD......can hardly wait

February 29?

Were they aiming for a 2008 launch but weren't quite ready? Then it was too hard to change the date.

http://www.srgssr.ch/en/television/hdtv/

SRG is switching off HD suisse on 31 January.
HD suisse was only a test channel anyway.

the change to HD applies to the whole country.

I imagine every distribution network, ie: all 300 or so cable TV companies in Switzerland, will do their darndest to broadcast the new SRG HD channels.

I'm not sure about DVB-T, the technological limitations may prevent HD from being broadcast on DVB-T at the moment.

But you can certainly expect to get the (relevant) SRG HD channels on your local cable network.

Hello,
I set my Swisscom fibre optic HD the other day and first it was kept freezing. It has settled down a bit now. But i really do not notice much of a difference - maybe i need better glasses!

VDSL just cannot deliver the same quality as a cable network, so Swisscom HD will never be as good as HD on a cable network.

It's a bandwidth thing....
Swisscom: about 20Mbps max, max 1 HD channel, and not so good, and internet suffers
Cable: many many Gbps, many many HD channels, all at the same time, and high speed internet as well

I assume our BILLAG bill will go up then as well right? Someone has to pay for those extra pixels!

It'll go up anyway, they don't need an actual reason for that :-)

But no, actually: the satellite network providers have recently lowered their prices for HD broadcasting, so this will not mean a price-hike. Also, Swiss TV has been producing everything in HD for years already - the big shift towards HD-ready gear happened a long time ago and won't affect costs today.

The best thing about the switch to HD: re-runs from the 80s are going to look like a**, so perhaps they won't broadcast those anymore :-)

I think you're right as I think it depends if the DVB-T network is MPEG2 or MPEG4?

I know some EU countries have gotten rid of the MPEG2 standard all together as it doesn't have the capacity to broadcast in HD as well as other factors...

I have the new SF1 & SF2 channels set up now, and see their test transmissions. I read somewhere there will be test trnsmission from 29 Jan i.e. 1 month before official launch.
But, the Swiss SF1 / SF2 HD is only 720 pixels, not full HD 1080 pixels like the BBC ones if you re comparing it to those, so not as impressive viewing but still better than what we had before.

By the way, I am receiving SF 1 & 2 HD on a UK Humax Foxsat HDR box (DE/CH channels set up in a non-freesat mode), with a second dish for DE (Astra 19.2 E) and CH (Hotbird 13.0 E) channels and a viacess CI module (cheapest I found was SFR 41 here) in the Foxsat box and a SRG access card (SFR 60 from here) in the CI module. Then SFr 0 / month, and no contract with Cablecon :-)

I remember my friends at SRG explaining that SRG decided 720 was enough definition and that 1080 was not needed.

I wonder how long they will stay on 720 until some management type demands that they move to 1080...?

1080 means more bandwidth, bigger file sizes, different equipment in some areas, etc etc etc

I guess the next move will be to 4k in 20 years time.
Much of the stuff shown on Suisse HD looks up rezzed Pal & is shot with cameras that don't resolve anything like 1920 x 1080. The Canon 5DMKII is big in CH for production, the BBC won't allow it to be used as the resoloution is way too low, not even 720p.

There is of course the subtle difference between progressive and interlaced. BBC is 1080i.

If you only count pixels HD Suisse (720x1280=921600) shows more of them per frame than BBC HD (1080/2*1440=777600).

They would argue 720p will give you better image quality. I disagree as they use cameras with 1080 lines sensors and the displays at home have 1080 lines of resolution, the hardware was not built for 720p.

It was all meant very well but is very much nonsense in reality but I think they will be too proud to admit to that.