London's terrestrial HDTV trial goes live

And we got on it. In the London area, the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Five are starting to test terrestrial broadcasts of high definition TV. That's proper HD television, only though a regular aerial.

To do it you need a special box:



This isn't the special box, just the normal box the special box came in. Thanks to this box, we're able to tell that our terrestrial HDTV decoder is a Humax HDCI-2000T. You can't buy them in the shops, which makes us feel this cool: VERY.




This is the slightly more special box. It has a yellow sticker on it that also makes us feel very cool and substantially superior to everyone else right now. It also picks up all the usual Freeview digital channels.




The display of SUPERIORITY! If you click on it the picture will go bigger, and you'll be able to see what the icons say and what the buttons do.




Here she is with her flaps open.




And a bit of rear-end action. We're connecting via component to a 32" Hyundai Q321. It's all very nice and looks hot, plus it worked first time which is a hell of a relief. We might upgrade to an HDMI-to-DVI lead later on, but the picture via component is pretty damn awesome - on the rare moments when some proper HD footage is actually shown.




This is the Humax decoder's remote. It's a bit 'Pay as You Go' but does the job.




These are its batteries! We LOVE looking at foreign batteries!




When we go old and mental and start collecting things, it's going to be different types of weird foreign batteries. These are the ones from our amplifier remote. They're ace!




These are the ones the XBox 360 came with! Bonkers foreign batteries! We love 'em!




And these are the ones in our alarm clock!




This is the Humax EPG. It's pretty good, and miles better than the awful one that's built into the Hyundai Q321. That's really quite annoying, as we now have to go back to using two separate remote controls just to watch telly with again. Oh, the humanity.

The BBC HD preview you see listed is by far the best of what's currently broadcasting. It's an hour long loop of trailers from its natural history documentaries Planet Earth and Galapagos, clips from Bleak House and loads of Later with Jools Holland for some reason. It looks very very sharp and lovely.




Usually, though, the BBC just shows upscaled regular stuff on its HD channel, accompanied by a disclaimer about it not being proper HD material.




Holy shit! It's Jessie Birdsall on BBC One in Holby City! Jessie's one of our favourite character actors, having risen to a sort of prominence in the BBC's soap opera disaster Eldorado, then taken a lead role in sexy Saturday spy drama Bugs. Since then he's been in loads of stuff, and is always ace.




Five is currently showing nothing - in low-def. The Humax EPG tells you what picture resolution the display is being broadcast in down there on the left. This is boring old PAL. Stupid PAL!




Channel 4 is showing a logo in high-def!




Look at how sharp it looks in extreme close-up. For people who like sitting really close to their TVs, high-def is going to ROCK! (for everyone else it's probably going to look about the same).




ITV is showing scenes of London and trains. That's trains AND high-def TV pictures. It's a geek's dream.




ITV's also gone out to Primrose Hill to take some nice landscape shots with its new HD camera.




ITV's using 1080i. Looks better on the screen in real life than in a photo of the screen, obviously.




We took a close-up to illustrate it looking better, but it didn't really work or make a difference.




We used to live in the third tower block on the right, just above the river there. It was a shit-hole. Ian probably still lives there, in his own filth.




And that's the end of that. The BBC and ITV will both be showing World Cup matches in proper HD from Friday June 9, so, if we can be bothered to do all this again, we might do all this again. As long as they don't take our special box away from us for talking about it on the internet.