KEY POINTS:
Another chapter in the history of New Zealand television is being written over the next 16 days as the Beijing Olympics are brought to us for the first time in high definition - free.
TVNZ's Games coverage will be viewable via Freeview's terrestrial - as opposed to satellite - service in high definition. With a suitable TV and Freeview receiver, the action should be clearer than ever.
Fewer than 10,000 households will be getting the benefit, though. Of the 124,000 or so Freeview receivers in use at the end of June, about 7600 of them were for the UHF terrestrial service, which was launched in April.
Freeview general manager Steve Browning is happy with the digital service's uptake, and expects it to get a boost from TVNZ's Olympics coverage on TV One and Sport Extra, a Freeview-only channel that burst into life on Wednesday night.
If history is a guide, there should indeed be a bit of a spike in receiver sales for the new platform as the world's sporting elite cough and splutter around Beijing's smoggy arenas.
John Magness, who has worked in the family's Auckland appliance retailing business for more than 40 years, says colour TVs started going out the door in numbers in 1974, around the time of the Christchurch Commonwealth Games.
"There was a surge in sales - that was the change from black and white to colour."
Colour TV came to New Zealand the year before, 13 years after television services first began here, and two years sooner than colour brightened Australians' lives. Curiously, Cuba was the second country in the world, after the US, to get colour TV, in 1958, but it only lasted a year - Fidel Castro turned it off until 1975.
Magness says big sporting events do tend to spur people to adopt new technology, and he rates high definition as the biggest improvement since colour.
Many of the people buying TVs in his three stores - about a third to a half of them - are throwing in a Freeview receiver. Satellite and terrestrial are selling in equal numbers, he says.
Another option has come on the market in the past couple of months for people wanting the terrestrial service - two ranges of Sony TVs with built-in digital receivers. But Magness says they sell at a premium of up to $1000 over comparable receiver-less models. Buying a receiver on its own for $350 to $400 is cheaper, but less convenient.
For Graeme Treeby, who's been a broadcasting technician for 39 years, the move to high-definition TV pictures is as significant as going from black and white to colour. His career began in radio at the NZBC, then he moved to Television New Zealand, and he is now a technical manager at On Site Broadcasting, which covers major events for Sky and others.
Many of the milestones of television's evolution are marked for Treeby by big sporting events. He remembers seeing film from the 1956 Melbourne Olympics at the local cinema in New Plymouth - spectacular, but some time after the event.
The 1964 Tokyo Games were hailed as the TV Games, with live coverage relayed around the world. Not to New Zealand, however. "There was no method of getting it in," says Treeby.
That changed with the 1971 opening of the Warkworth satellite signal receiving station. But we missed another Games - Munich, 1972 - before getting our first live Olympics coverage from Montreal in 1976, where New Zealand won the men's hockey gold medal. "I remember the excitement of watching that at home."
By 1976, black and white equipment was virtually obsolete as colour took over. Treeby reckons within a couple of years of high definition's arrival, standard definition will have gone the same way as black and white. The firm he works for will have fully equipped itself with high-definition cameras and production gear by next year and has been recording high-definition pictures for months.
Magness and Treeby both see competition between the Sky and Freeview digital platforms as a fly in the ointment for consumers. A Sky receiver won't pick up Freeview signals, and vice versa. But Browning says the difference is clear - watching Sky costs money, while Freeview is free. And for consumers to have to choose between the two is nothing compared with Britain, where they have half a dozen services to weigh up.
At present Sky is in about 45 per cent of households and Freeview in about 8 per cent. Browning doesn't think it's outside the realm of possibility for Freeview to catch its paid-for rival. "By the analogue switch-off [in 2012, or when 75 per cent of households have digital] we would love the end game to be that 50 per cent have Sky and 50 per cent have Freeview."
As the Beijing Games get under way today, they are unlikely to harm the cause.
In the clear
* TVNZ's Games coverage will be available in high-definition quality on Freeview.
* Viewers will need a UHF aerial, an HD-capable TV, and a Freeview receiver - or a TV with a built-in digital receiver.
* Freeview says the HD service is available in Auckland, Hamilton, Tauranga, Napier, Hastings, Palmerston North, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin.
Anthony Doesburg is an Auckland technology journalist
