German public broadcasters face flak over HD picture quality

Posted by Julia Glotz Monday, February 22nd, 2010

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They have only been broadcasting in HD for a week, but German public-service broadcasters ARD and ZDF are already facing hefty criticism for their HD picture quality.

This is an interesting development particularly because the HDTV debate in Germany has most recently been dominated by concerns that many cable households would not be able to receive ARD HD and ZDF HD at all before the broadcasters struck an eleventh-hour carriage agreement with Kabel Deutschland. A week into the broadcasters’ HDTV service, such concerns seem largely forgotten.

Instead, it is the two PSBs’ decision to use the 720p format (rather than 1080i) for their HDTV transmissions that is making headlines - a technology decision that has not gone down well with some TV viewers who claim that they are being short-changed on quality.

Members of the “HiFi-Forum”, an online discussion forum about digital-TV and media, argue that 1080i has become the de facto standard for HD production, broadcasting and TV set-top boxes and that transmissions in 720p are therefore “counterproductive”.

They’ve set up an online petition (HERE), calling on ARD and ZDF to drop 720p in favour of 1080i. “We want to be able to enjoy the international HDTV programmes offered by ARD and ZDF without any loss of quality,” say the petitioners. “We are calling on ARD and ZDF to join other EBU [European Broadcasting Union] members and to accept 1080i as the common European standard for HDTV.”

The EBU’s own stance on 720p vs 1080i in the past has been that it prefers progressively-scanned formats to interlaced formats (at least where HDTV emission is concerned), which should make it a candidate for supporting rather than opposing ARD and ZDF’s choice of 720p.

The debate in Germany will sound familiar to anyone following the controversy over the picture quality on the BBC’s own (1080i) HD broadcasts, which has produced lively exchanges on the BBC Internet Blog and is now allegedly the subject of a complaint to the BBC Trust.