io9: hdtv

Get More Classic British SF In HD Starting Next Month

Charlie Jane Anders — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 12:25:20 PDT

BBC America is launching its HD channel with a week of science fiction, starting July 20. They'll be premiering the Easter Doctor Who special, "Planet Of The Dead" — which happens to be the first Who shot in HD — and running the new Torchwood miniseries "Children Of Earth." On July 20, a Torchwood behind-the-scenes special called Inside The Hub will air at 8 PM, followed by the first episode of "Children." Succeeding Torchwood installments will air at 8 PM on the following nights. The season finale of Primeval airs that Saturday, and then "Planet Of The Dead" airs the next day, the Sunday.

Tardis Is The Enemy of HDTV

Graeme McMillan — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 06:30:00 PDT

Sorry, ladies. And gentlemen. While America's TV shows fall over themselves to broadcast in HD, you'll be waiting a long time to see a sharper, more realistic David Tennant on your screens if producer Russell T. Davies has anything to do with it. His reason for television ludditeness? A High Definition picture would show just how cheap the new Tardis actually is.

With Who spinoff Torchwood having made the jump to HD this year, Davies says that that unpleasant experience was enough to make him realize that Who should stay lo-fi as long as possible:

I had a terrible experience on Torchwood. There was a lack of training and there was no extra time or money... We'd have to stop and rebuild the tardis. The flaws would show and it would take a lot of money to fix it. So we won't move to HD while I'm there.

Personally, I think he's missing an amazing opportunity here. Ignoring the fact that the Tardis was always meant to be kind of crappy - wasn't it meant to be broken, after all? - the idea of offering hardcore fans of the original series this kind of olive branch is too good to pass up: "I may not be able to offer you four-part stories or overacting by classic British sitcom actors dressed in aluminum foil pretending to be aliens, but now that we're in HD, I can promise you a return to the days when the sets were so bad that you expected them to fall down in the middle of the episode!" The internet would fall at his feet.

HD 'Who' 'would mean rebuilding Tardis' [Digital Spy]

Moon Camera Has Earth Under Surveillance

charliejane — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 08:40:00 PST

A special HDTV camera on Japan's lunar probe, SELENE, captured the first ever hi-def image of the Earth sinking over the Moon's horizon, released Nov. 13. You can just see the brown shape of Australia on the top left. And click through for a gallery of cool images of last Friday's spacewalk at the International Space Station. Photo by AP/Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and NHK, HO