HD D-Day for Duke
January 11, 2018 
14 Comments
TVNZ’s Duke channel will broadcast in HD from 11am today — but only on Freeview | HD.
The male-skewing entertainment channel will continue to be SD-only on Sky’s satellite platform.
TVNZ hasn’t officially publicised the changeover, other than via promos on Duke and updating progress with ScreenScribe, and the programme billings it provides media don’t cite which series will be in HD.
This isn’t surprising, as TVNZ’s listings tend to highlight only local shows as being in HD, even though most of its content is now 1080i (Maori TV doesn’t reference any of its HD shows).
Three has always led the way in this respect, providing a far more comprehensive overview of its HD programming — which is reflected in most of its Freeview EPG listings being tagged as such whereas TVNZ’s aren’t.
But it’s safe to say sports, most movies and new series like The Mick, which will have its second season premiere tonight on Duke instead of TVNZ 2 (where the first season aired), will be in HD.
As for Sky’s reluctance or inability to add HD feeds of free-to-air channels like Duke and Maori TV, this will do nothing to arrest its subscriber decline and should help to bolster sales of the next-generation Freeview recorders.
The first of these, from Dish TV, is due to go on sale within the next couple of months and will be the first device to combine Freeview Live TV, Freeview On Demand and Freeview Record capabilities.
As well as on-demand content from Māori TV, TVNZ and Three’s apps, it will enable access to local and international third-party video on demand apps.
Other features will include:
- a 1TB hard drive for live pause and record
- dual DTT and DTH tuners for recording up to three channels while watching one
- a USB input for loading personal content
Freeview chief executive Jason Foden says the 1TB drive should be ample given the device’s on-demand capability.
“It’s also 4K capable. I expect OTT services on the box will be 4K first. The broadcasters aren’t there yet but they are increasingly adopting simulcast and see a future in IP transmission.”
The Dish recorder is part of Freeview’s strategy to offer a truly viewer-centric approach, with a single application combining all broadcaster content in one simple-to-use interface for both content discovery and streaming.
“We will work with anyone to produce an integrated Freeview experience,” Foden says. “Dish have been fantastic in terms of their willingness to produce a quality recorder specific for this market.”
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January 11, 2018 at 9:57 am
The hell? No HD on Sky? Why????
When will Arrow and Flash new seasons come?
They land next month but not on Duke — Sky has acquired them for its revamped Box channel, which will be relaunched as Sky 5 on February 2. Unfortunately, it will still be SD so Flash, Arrow etc will look less than super heroic.
I actually was thinking of starting to watch Duke for HD … that ain’t going to happen now.
Actually season 2 of The Mick premiered on TVNZ 2 last October- it aired behind Will & Grace– so Duke are airing repeats
D’oh! Quite right. Thanks, Tony. I confused this month’s mid-season premiere in the US with the season two eps on Duke.
“The hell? No HD on Sky? Why????” Payback for Prime only being available on Sky’s paywall in HD but SD over the air?
It won’t be payback, Paul W … Sky have an entire unutilised Mux (remember Igloo?), which they could put Prime on in HD, Prime +1 and return both Trackside channels FTA. But SKY chooses not to, because they only are concerned with pay-tv, and that increasingly outdated business model that delivers pay-tv. If TVNZ wants to pay for HD on Sky, then it will be there. If Sky wants to pay for Prime HD on Freeview, then it will be there.
The thing I don’t understand is being HD on one platform — eg SKY or Freeview — and not on the other one. And the lack of HD on these on-demand services and SkyGo. Someone get to the bottom of this!!
Please get a explaination on why TVNZ Duke is not HD on Sky TV.
I emailed Sky TV and they said it was a TVNZ decision … could this be actually true?
No, it’s not true. TVNZ says it would love Sky to carry Duke in HD but the fact is Sky doesn’t have the bandwidth capability. It’s not even able to screen all the Winter Olympics in HD.
This is the response I got from Sky tv. “Thanks for your email regarding the transmission of DUKE in HD. We appreciate this is frustrating, but you will need to address these concerns with TVNZ as this is not a SKY decision as they are only transmitting this in HD via their DDT (UHF) service. Check the following link: http://freeviewforum.co.nz/duke-hd.”
If Sky had any more bandwidth, wouldn’t they prioritise HD’ing their own channels which currently look like 1980s picture quality, such as Discovery, History or Box Sets? I’m sure Sky customers would appreciate Duke HD (just like us Freeview customers would appreciate Prime in HD!), but I think Sky’s HD priorities would be their own content?