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Due to the minimal regional broadcasting on BBC Two in England, it was not seen as cost-effective to create digital versions of these regions. On Satellite, this would have meant as many individual feeds of BBC2 as BBC1 whilst in the case of digital terrestrial, a decision to encode all BBC services other than BBC1 using the more efficient statistical multiplexing technique made it technically and economically much harder to provide variations without either equipping each regional centre with costly equipment or using the same method as for BBC1 and suffering reduced picture quality as a result. Consequently, short BBC London bulletins continued to be broadcast throughout England on BBC Two.

In 2004, all regional news bulletins were moved to BBC One and in 2006, the last remaining regional programme, The Super League Show, shown in some northern regions was also moved. Although it is still technically possible for most regions to opt-out on analogue, any variation in programming is rare. The teletext service Ceefax, does still carry regional content on BBC Two, however. During the Commonwealth Games in 2006, BBC Breakfast was shown on BBC Two, so regional opt-outs on the digital variant in England were replaced by a newspaper review for digital viewers. During the Wimbledon tennis competitions of 2008, a scheduled news bulletin was moved to BBC Two. As some regions had already switched to digital-only TV, these areas received BBC London News instead of their local news.