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US TV Widescreen

erm, widescreen? (May 2007)

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TP
Techy Peep Founding member
Johnny83 posted:
Jonathan H posted:
Johnny83 posted:
We seem to be far ahead TV wise compared to the US, Widescreen has been over here for 5 years, Analogue switchoff is about to start with us possibly been one of the first, if not the first to be completely digital in the world.

You make that sound like it's a good thing!



What's wrong with us been ahead of anyone else, if anything it would be nice to be ahead of the Americans for a change technology wise


No fighting guys please. It would be nice to see a topic actually staying on topic for a change with no bitching Wink
JO
Johnny83
Techy Peep posted:
Johnny83 posted:
Jonathan H posted:
Johnny83 posted:
We seem to be far ahead TV wise compared to the US, Widescreen has been over here for 5 years, Analogue switchoff is about to start with us possibly been one of the first, if not the first to be completely digital in the world.

You make that sound like it's a good thing!



What's wrong with us been ahead of anyone else, if anything it would be nice to be ahead of the Americans for a change technology wise


No fighting guys please. It would be nice to see a topic actually staying on topic for a change with no bitching Wink


Of course not, that's not my intention, it's just he has stated like it's a bad thing & I'm interested to know why.

No punch ups from me Very Happy
JH
Jonathan H
Johnny83 posted:
Jonathan H posted:
Johnny83 posted:
We seem to be far ahead TV wise compared to the US, Widescreen has been over here for 5 years, Analogue switchoff is about to start with us possibly been one of the first, if not the first to be completely digital in the world.

You make that sound like it's a good thing!

What's wrong with us been ahead of anyone else, if anything it would be nice to be ahead of the Americans for a change technology wise

Forgive me - I was speaking about digital television purely from the technical quality standpoint. Whilst I guess there must be some excellent benefits to the digital television era, there are many downsides. Picture quality and compression is one particular area that has suffered.
JH
Jonathan H
Techy Peep posted:
No fighting guys please. It would be nice to see a topic actually staying on topic for a change with no bitching Wink

Oh please. This is called debate and as far as I can see is very pertinent to the topic.
OV
Orry Verducci
Johnny83 posted:
Jonathan H posted:
Johnny83 posted:
We seem to be far ahead TV wise compared to the US, Widescreen has been over here for 5 years, Analogue switchoff is about to start with us possibly been one of the first, if not the first to be completely digital in the world.

You make that sound like it's a good thing!


What's wrong with us been ahead of anyone else, if anything it would be nice to be ahead of the Americans for a change technology wise

I think they'll still be ahead of us, as last time I checked, their switchover is planned for 2009 countrywide, compared to our countrywide by 2012. I won't speak too soon however as they might push it back.

Also, I see them as ahead of us as there are many HD networks, and they've been using HD longer. They just skipped 16:9 SD altogether and went straight to HD.
IS
Inspector Sands
travisp posted:
Ditto to the Aussie's and European countries, they've had widescreen for a good few years as well. Perhaps its the NTSC signal that is conflicting the widescreen?


There's no reason that a 525/60 can't be 16:9 FHA, but they can't really broadcast widescreen on their analogue TV (NTSC) just in the same way that we don't with our PAL system.

The diffrence with the US is that they've gone straight from analogue 4:3 SD to digital 16:9 HD. Although there are some SD digital services; digital in the US equals HD, also they don't use DVB like the Europe and Australasia.

The alternative ways of doing things are probably to do with the states of our respective TV systems. The US has a very high level of cable penetration and due to geography and use of VHF & UHF the terrestrial system carries more stations in the cities...... but the picture quality isn't great at times. Us in Europe on the other hand had a system with better quality pictures, but not many channels.

So over here the drive was more channels, whereas in the US the drive to digital is picture quality. The problem with the US way is that the services started later than ours and take-up is slower due to the need for new TVs
IS
Inspector Sands
Orry Verducci posted:
I think they'll still be ahead of us, as last time I checked, their switchover is planned for 2009 countrywide, compared to our countrywide by 2012. I won't speak too soon however as they might push it back.


It does seem a very tight deadline, but then their reliance on terrestrial TV broadcasting is less than over here. Cable is king in the US
JO
Johnny83
Jonathan H posted:
Johnny83 posted:
Jonathan H posted:
Johnny83 posted:
We seem to be far ahead TV wise compared to the US, Widescreen has been over here for 5 years, Analogue switchoff is about to start with us possibly been one of the first, if not the first to be completely digital in the world.

You make that sound like it's a good thing!

What's wrong with us been ahead of anyone else, if anything it would be nice to be ahead of the Americans for a change technology wise

Forgive me - I was speaking about digital television purely from the technical quality standpoint. Whilst I guess there must be some excellent benefits to the digital television era, there are many downsides. Picture quality and compression is one particular area that has suffered.


True that is the one disadvantage to it, there is alot of interferance (sp) at the moment but from what someone told me the reason there is the alot of interferance on digital is due to the analogue signals still being on & that the Digital signals are not at full power as of yet
JH
Jonathan H
Johnny83 posted:
True that is the one disadvantage to it, there is alot of interferance (sp) at the moment but from what someone told me the reason there is the alot of interferance on digital is due to the analogue signals still being on & that the Digital signals are not at full power as of yet

Interference? On digital?
JO
Johnny83
Jonathan H posted:
Johnny83 posted:
True that is the one disadvantage to it, there is alot of interferance (sp) at the moment but from what someone told me the reason there is the alot of interferance on digital is due to the analogue signals still being on & that the Digital signals are not at full power as of yet

Interference? On digital?


You know when the picture goes all brocky & freezes and the the sound breaks up, not the same as analogue interference but at least analogue interference is more watchable
NG
noggin Founding member
Markymark posted:
Johnny83 posted:
We seem to be far ahead TV wise compared to the US, Widescreen has been over here for 5 years, Analogue switchoff is about to start with us possibly been one of the first, if not the first to be completely digital in the world.

Odd considering the US had colour long before us


We've had widescreen transmission here since 1994, if you count C4's PAL+ service. Anamorphic widescreen broadcasts came with D-Sat (aka Sky) in October 1998, almost 9 years ago.

However there is already an all digital country, The Netherlands, they switched off all analogue transmission last December.


We had anamorphic 16:9 well before 1998 - don't forget that D-MAC and D2-MAC supported anamorphic 16:9 in analogue component - and they were knocking around from the time of BSB (which had 16:9 telecine and VT gear ready for it - which was then used by C4 and Scandinavian broadcasters to do their 16:9 film transfers!)

I watched the 1992 Albertville and Barcelona Olympics in 16:9 anamorphic from the TV-Sat and TDF broadcasts of the HD-MAC broadcasts, albeit in SD via a converted BSB receiver feeding an RGB 4:3 monitor that had been scan-crushed to 16:9.

There were 16:9 MAC broadcasts - of films mainly - on a number of European satellite services during the 90s - well before DSat and DTT launched in the UK.
NG
noggin Founding member
Techy Peep posted:
OK, the wanderer returns to TV forum from a long winter away from TVF.
I've moved to the US from the UK, got myself a 16:9 plasma, Direct TV satellite (SD, not HD)

My question is a very simple one.. do *any* US stations broadcast widescreen? I can't find any except for a few films which are "letterboxed" as they call it on the EPG


In the US 16:9 really equates to HD - though there is SOME 16:9 SD upconverted to HD, there are very few 16:9 SD outlets.

The US ATSC digital terrestrial system (equivalent - but different - to our Freeview) system is mainly used to broadcast a single 16:9 HD service by network affiliates, with 4:3 (and in the case of Fox some 16:9) SD material upconverted.

ABC and Fox use 720/60p, NBC, CBS and PBS use 1080/60i.

There are very few 480/60i 16:9 outlets - which would be the US equivalent of our SD 16:9 broadcasts.

The US mainly uses 4:3 centre cut to broadcast 16:9 HD material on the 4:3 analogue outlets (and other SD digital outlets for that matter) - though some material is broadcast in 16:9 letterbox. 14:9 letterboxing is not widespread - that was a particularly British (though now other European countries - and possibly Aus - are also using)

If you want 16:9 live TV then you need to use either HD cable, HD satellite, Verizon's FIOS Fibre system, or get a decent aerial (antenna your side of the pond) if you are in an area with decent OTA coverage.

You may find that if your plasma is a recent model it includes an ATSC HD digital tuner - AIUI these are mandated either now or shortly will be.

A major difference between the UK and US satellite systems is that in the UK broadcasters uplink their services themselves (BBC, ITV and C4 all have their own transponders on Astra 2 satellites and handle their satellite broadcasts themselves). In the US the satellite services arrange for their own reception and uplink arrangements I believe...

Some satellite services in the US re-compress and resolution reduce 1920x1080 to 1280x1080 at the expense of quality.

The thing to remember is that the US went 16:9 at roughly the same time as the UK - but instead of going 16:9 SD as we did, they went straight for 16:9 HD. It has meant that they aren't 100% 16:9, as they aren't 100% HD (shows like Survivor, The Amazing Race etc. are still produced in 4:3 SD) - but rather than go 16:9 SD for some shows, they wait until they can go HD. In the UK we have moved pretty much to universal 16:9 SD production - but we now have another transition to HD to make - and at the moment we don't have any terrestrial spectrum to broadcast HD over the air - as they can in the US. On the other hand by going HD 8-9 years later, we can use a much newer and more advanced compression system - MPEG4 H264 AVC rather than MPEG2 - which delivers much higher quality results.

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