subsequently, BBC Two HD launched on 26 March 2013, replacing BBC HD. Broadcast Availability At the time of the official launch, BBC HD was available universally on all HD broadcasters as a free-to-air station. Satellite viewers could watch the channel on Freesat or Sky, who received their signal from the Astra 1N satellite. The channel was also available to cable television customers through Virgin Media's basic package. The service was also carried on digital terrestrial television in London, from Crystal Palace, until May 2007 as part of the channel's trial and gradually made available nationwide on a region-by-region basis from 2 December 2009. The service expanded into the Republic of Ireland with the channel's carriage on UPC Ireland's Digital+ HD service from 5 August 2009 and on the Sky Ireland platform from 27 April 2010. Technical specifications The channel was broadcast at a display resolution of 1440 by 1080i, which despite being less than the usual 1920 by 1080 resolution used for HD broadcasts was still acceptable to the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) of which the BBC is a member. But after years of pressure from bloggers and tech experts alike, the BBC finally relented and switched BBC HD to full 1920 resolution for all broadcasts, not just when 3D was being broadcast. The channel encoded in H.264/MPEG-4 AVC for satellite and terrestrial broadcasts and in MPEG-2 for cable transmissions. Over time, changes were made to the way that the channel is broadcast or received. Following the launch of BBC One HD on 3 November 2010, both the new channel and BBC HD were statistically multiplexed on the satellite feeds. Equally, on 6 June 2011, the satellite transponder carrying BBC One HD and BBC HD was upgraded to DVB-S2. In addition to the satellite changes, alterations were made in March 2011 for the Freeview HD encoders to change automatically between 1080i at 50 fields per second to 1080p at 25 frames per second depending on the programme's GOP. Unfortunately some receivers did not handle the transitions between these modes well, resulting in sound and picture disruption. 2009-2010 bitrate drop On 5 August 2009, the channel's satellite encoders on the Astra 2D satellite were replaced by newer models. A side effect of this change was a drop in bitrate from 16 megabits per second (Mb/s) to 9.7 Mbit/s, leading to a large number of complaints to the BBC. The problem only