BBC working on HD interactivity

The BBC's research and innovation department is investigating how to provide interactive content alongside high definition television services.

A document circulated at the corporation's recent Festival of Technology said that a core objective of the BBC's work "has been to ensure that interactive services can switch seamlessly between SD and HD resolution video without any disruption to the viewing experience", as would be used to bring high definition pictures from an event such as Wimbledon into a standard definition interactive service.

The BBC has also conducted research on ways of ensuring standard definition interactive services fill high definition displays without reducing the quality of text and pictures by stretching them. An "intelligent rendering" approach instead remaps standard definition location and size information about each on-screen element to a high definition equivalent, "thus promoting the maximum quality of presentation".