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The corporation has announced that 'highlights of its schedule' will be made available in high-definition format to selected digital satellite and cable viewers. It will also be tested on digital terrestrial TV in London.

According to the BBC, licence payers are due the highest quality television: 'High definition may take time to grow in Britain,' said the BBC's director of television, Jana Bennett, 'but as with the other technologies we helped to build, the BBC wants to prepare now to be able to deliver the benefits of HDTV to all its licence payers in the long term.'

Some co-productions - for example, the current Bleak House and Rome - have already been made the in HDTV format, which requires a compatible TV and receiver. But the BBC's avowed intent is to produce all its programmes in high-definition format by 2010.

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We reported last month on the German broadcaster, ProSiebenSat.1, being the first in Europe to launch HDTV and Sky has already publicised its HDTV plans, with a service 'being on track for 2006'.

A key driver of the new technology will, believe it or not, be the 2006 World Cup being held in Germany next summer. Consumer Electronics manufacturers are well aware of the spikes in demand for major international sports events - such as the Olympics and World Cups. For this latest technological step-change, the German tournament is a hot spot when it comes to deployment schedules.

Current 'standard defintion' broadcasts are in the PAL format, consisting of 576 interlaced rows of pixels (720 x 576) and HD can almost double the number of rows for a higher resolution image (1,920 x 1,080), in a 16:9 format, and the broadcasts can also include Dolby 5.1 surround sound.

There a number of variations in the standard, but the 720 rows of 720/60p (60Hz, progressive) (of the 2001 SMPTE 296M standard from the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers) and the 1080 rows of 1080/50i (50Hz, interlaced)(from the International Telecommunications Union ITU BT.709-5 HDTV standard) seem to be pre-eminent. Note that receiving equipment should be capable of supporting the variations in format. See www.hdtvforum.org for more details.