TNS to Assess HDTV Trial

Britain's terrestrial TV broadcasters have selected TNS to recruit and monitor a panel of 450 households to trial the latest High Definition (HD) technology on Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) services.

Clients are the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Five - representing all the country's terrestrial channels. The trial will last about six months and aims to test both technical aspects of delivering high definition to an aerial and audience opinions of the service. Each HDTV picture contains up to five times as much digital information as an ordinary TV picture.

The trial is a closed technical test under licence from Ofcom and is restricted to 450 households within the London transmission footprint. The audience panel was selected from online volunteers who registered on a web site in April - all had existing HD Ready television sets and will be supplied with special DTT HD set top boxes. Both the BBC HD stream and that of the other three clients are being transmitted from Crystal Palace.

TNS Media will use online questionnaires and an interactive forum to gather panellists' thoughts and opinions on UK households' first ever viewing of high definition TV through a standard aerial. Results will play a major part in determining how the technology will be used in the future.

Jennie Beck, Group Director, TNS Media, comments, 'The information TNS provides will be crucial in offering the broadcasters an insight as to how to get the best out of HDTV. We are very pleased to be working on this exciting new development, it further cements our position at the forefront of media research in the UK.'

TNS' group home page is at www.tns-global.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.

• Kantar TNS
• All news
• MrWeb info