Originally Posted by TYCO:
“I think it's ridiculous that at this time, there are still TV's which are Freeview incorporated but don't include the HD tuner.
It's actually for my grandmother that I'm looking. I bought a Samsung TV recently, it wasn't even a consideration if I could view the HD channels. Luckily it could. I live in Italy I don't know if that makes a difference but even my old TV could play Rai HD and Rete 4 HD, as can all my friends TVs. Everybody views HD there, I don;t know if there;s a difference in their broadcast methods or if all TV's there come with HD tuners.”
In many European countries, apart from the UK, HD is broadcast using the same method as SD, known as DVB-T. It's just the method of encoding the video that differs between SD and HD.
In the UK it was decided to use a different method of broadcasting digital data for the HD channels, known as DVB-T2.
It is quite possible that a TV set that can only receive SD in the UK could receive HD in a country that uses DVB-T for HD. Many sets are pan-european so they may well have the necessary video decoders for HD on-board even though they won't be used in the UK.
By the way it's not the just tuner that determines whether a set is HD or SD it is the video decoding circuits and what is actually broadcast on a mux that determines whether a TV can receive HD or not. It is perfectly possible to mix SD and HD on the same mux and if you so wanted you could use DVB-T solely for HD and DVB-T2 solely for SD!