I’m basically a cheerleader for anything ‘great’ about media and communications. It’s why I love the sector so much. And nothing in the past 10 years has excited me as much as HDTV.

Freeview? Well, it’s okay… I’ve posted before on its limitations as a viewing platform, but at least it does one thing well — it serves as a near-ubiquitous, affordable platform for the transmission of multichannel television. But as I recently posted, Ofcom’s initial inclination in the digital divided review (DDR) to auction spectrum otherwise suitable for HDTV might leave Freeview stranded when it comes to HDTV.

You would think this is a no-brainer: HDTV is here to stay and should be available on all U.K. viewing platforms. Sales of HDTV sets are growing and great HD programmes like movies and sports are now available. HD in the U.S. is now so commonplace that my mother who lives in a very rural area has 14 HDTV channels (5 of them local) she enjoys. Let’s just say she is the benchmark I use to determine when something has become completely mainstream. I could ramble off numerous statistics but just consider this: for less than 1000 GBP, the average person can now purchase a high def camcorder from amazon.co.uk. Expect that price to drop continually until we read about the first high def ‘happy slapping’ incident.

How sad will it be if the average person’s holiday video is of higher quality than the Freeview platform? Or if a citizen journalist captures a newsworthy event on her high def camcorder, and the BBC downgrades the video quality to air it on Freeview?  We’ll soon be enjoying HD movies on BluRay or HD-DVD players, then switching over to Freeview for the news and watching the signal go from great to average.

Anyway, people with louder voices than ours (BBC, Sony, etc.) have put together a campaign called HDforAll. Click here for their website. HDforAll have a form letter you can send to certain decision-makers. It reads in part: “Ofcom has used research to determine that HD on DTT is not in the public interest, research the experienced television industry challenges and refutes.” It’s really one of the more important occasions where Ofcom’s thought leadership is being challenged in the political arena by some heavy hitters.

So stay tuned…