10 Facts About BBC HD

BBC HD was a high-definition television channel provided by the BBC.

BBC HD began broadcasting on 15 May 2006 as a trial station to test the possibility and technical practicality of broadcasting programmes in HD.

The trial by 450 businesses and homes was set to last until June 2007, however just before this deadline the BBC HD Trust began a Public Value Test of the service to determine whether, as the BBC HD argued, the service was of worth to the general public.

Channel's future was again called into question following the BBC HD's Delivering Quality First review of the corporation's spending.

At the time of the official launch, BBC HD was available universally on all HD broadcasters as a free-to-air station.

Channel was broadcast at a display resolution of 1440 by 1080i, which despite being less than the usual 1920 by 1080 resolution used for HD broadcasts was still acceptable to the European Broadcasting Union of which the BBC HD is a member.

Meanwhile, the international version of BBC HD continued to broadcast on satellite at the higher bitrate and screen resolution.

The following year, on 30 April 2010, a delegation of viewers who had complained met with Andy Quested and Danielle Nagler to argue that BBC HD was failing to "deliver a very high quality technical service to viewers, by adhering to, or seeking to exceed, industry standards for picture resolution".

Issue was resolved when, on 3 June 2010, the BBC HD introduced variable bitrate encoding and fixed previous problems with mixing, fading and noise in pictures.

Whenever the BBC HD has broadcast programmes or events in 3D, there were other technical changes made to the channel that accompanied it.