Early last year the BBC and the other major free-to-air broadcasters started a trial of terrestrial HDTV broadcasts in south London. While the others have packed up, the BBC is still broadcasting in 1080i and has many of its headline programmes on there - such as Planet Earth - along with a lot of previews and fillers.

I've been keen to get it for a while, as Planet Earth in particular really benefits from the added resolution. However, it is encoded as MPEG-4/H.264, whereas the SDTV channels (and hence the majority of set-top boxes) are sent in MPEG-2. Further, neither EyeTV for the Mac or Windows Media Centre support HDTV in H.264, quite possibly because the US uses MPEG-2 for HD broadcasts. However, with a little hacking I've managed to get it, under Windows at least.

The solution:

• Purchase (€15) DVBViewer.
• Track down a H.264 codec.
• Install AC3Filter.

H.264 codecs are a little tricky - while CoreAVC is widely recommended, the buggers won't let you buy it at present, effectively making it unavailable. Hence I've fallen back on the trial version of PowerDVD, which is apparently slightly slower but does work.

And so, we can now watch BBC HD. The resolution is superb - 1080i is above the size of most PC screens - and my MacBook Pro CoreDuo 2.0Ghz almost manages to keep up. Hopefully CoreAVC will add that last bit of speed, as it's almost there.

Oddly enough, though, I can't use my external digital receiver/speakers - the DVB stream stops dead when I plug them in. I'm blaming this on the BootCamp drivers at present, but it's odd.

Now, if only Microsoft and Elgato would pull finger...