John Howell

Half way though the Six O’clock News – on HD 09 Dec 2016 – instead of the usual insert (Sports Presenter from Salford) we had a shot of an empty chair and heard the usual music!

A nice interlude, who didn’t show up then?

Isn’t it time we got the same content on both HD and SD?

Peter Neill

It’s not that simple – and very expensive.

To start with, you need 13 discrete HD satellite channels. Then you need to upgrade the editing and TX facilities in most of the regions to HD (they all shoot HD these days).  Then there’s all the connectivity infrastructure . . .

It will happen, but slowly over several years.

And before you say – "But ITV can do it".  They have only a few mega regions.

If I watch ITV HD I get local news and ads for the South East coast. And I live in Cambridgeshire. And even that is upscaled SD.

I have just checked it back – and they didn’t cut to Salford (for whatever reason), so what you got was the empty chair in London that F Bruce had just vacated. I suspect an automation macro fail.

Barry Bonner

Ah! the News Dept! Not my favourite and they’re not very fond of technical staff, the rudest people I had the displeasure of working with.

I think, given that London is supposed to be the capital of the UK, London News could go on the Satellite instead of the boring clips of old dramas.

If you are watching BBC News at six o’clock in HD on Freesat and then switch to watch London News you always miss the first few words. Also, if you’re watching BBC News in HD, Salford’s Sports News haven’t gripped making the words fit their slot in their opt in and often leave us with a few shots of mute action at the end. BBC Scotland (Freesat 973) has its local news in HD of course.

I like to look at a different region’s local news each day …  Far more interesting than the poor London News.