After the bizarre “press launch” of Freeview HD by Freeview at the BBC Television Centre, to which very few press were invited and where those who did attend got short change on answers to key questions, Humax has pulled some fat from the fire.

Freeview’s own literature had cheerfully shown Freeview HD receiver development continuing way past the launch schedule promised by Freeview’s managing director Ilse Howling.

But at a London briefing held by Humax, its commercial director Graham North assured us that he was “very confident” there would be enough chipsets to support Ms Howling’s promise of HD for London, Birmingham, Bradford, Glasgow, Leeds and Newcastle by March, and half of the UK’s 25 million TV households having access to HD in time for the soccer World Cup matches in June.

As well as demonstrating the service, Humax fleshed out technical details on what will be the first in the world to use the new DVB-T2 transmission system, with MPEG-4/H.264 compression.

New MPEG-4 technology (as already used by Sky) is more efficient than the MPEG-2 now used for ‘ordinary’ Freeview. It’s tried and tested. But DVB-T2 is completely new.

HD DVB-T2 uses COFDM with 256 QAM modulation to get 32 Mbps per channel. That compares with the 64 QAM for 24 Mbps or 16 QAM for 16 Mbps used for Europe’s current standard-definition COFDM DVB-T/MPEG-2 system.

More powerful error correction, and the higher transmission powers made possible by the UK’s rolling analogue switch-off programme, should prevent digital break-up of DVB-T2 HD signals in all but fringe areas, said Humax. But no one will know for sure how existing aerials work until they are plugged into T2 boxes.

The Humax box is backward-compatible with current MPEG-2 DVB-T broadcasts. It will also decode and play audio, video and photos from USB-connected storage in MP3, MP4, JPEG and Xvid formats, but not Windows Media.

An over-the-air upgrade due after launch will allow TV recording to USB storage. A Freeview+ DVR, the HD-T2, with 500GB HDD storage will be launched in Q2 of 2010, at a price to be determined, Mr North said.

 It will also upscale standard definition to 1080p Full HD, and even on a large projection screen it was hard to see much difference between live off-air reception of upscaled SDTV and the live HD test transmissions from the BBC and ITV. This may have been because some of the HD-transmitted material, particularly from ITV, had been upscaled at the source.

The bad news, and perhaps another reason why Freeview restricted invites to the official HD launch briefing, is that Freeview HD will invoke unpopular copy protection that will allow the box to record an HD programme to a hard drive or USB memory, but prevent the recording from being copied or played on another box.

Graham Plumb, acting controller of the BBC’s Distribution Operations Group, had no say in who was invited to the briefing, which Freeview arranged, but told me later of one special concern he had.

“There is a very important message to get across to consumers,” he said. “You need to look for new TVs or boxes carrying the Freeview HD logo. If your existing telly has a Freeview logo and an HD-ready logo, that doesn't mean it will receive Freeview HD unless you buy a separate HD box.”

Although a Freeview HD logo exists, it hasn't been promoted to consumers yet.

Why not?

Said Freeview: “The Freeview HD logo appears on our services page currently. There will be increased visibility as we ramp up to our consumer launch when viewers will see it on product and in marketing materials.”

Humax’s Graham North believes that Freeview’s failure to educate is because it could dampen holiday sales of current Freeview hardware.

This may be good for dealers who don’t mind upsetting customers, but I wonder what Ilse Howling will tell consumer bodies such as Which? and papers like the Daily Mail next year when customers realise they have bought obsolete equipment because Freeview didn’t publicise the new logo?

Barry Fox