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Top of the Pops

1990 on BBC Four (January 2018)

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NG
noggin Founding member
I'm perpetually slightly miffed that they won't upload SD material to iPlayer at 50fps.

Would Starlight/Numero Uno at 10:45 come with a flashing images warning these days?


All the TOTP repeats on BBC Four will have been through a compliance edit and made safe for broadcast under current rules.

A show like Top of the Pops wouldn't really be allowed to just put a warning up if it were made these days, unless there were very strong reasons to broadcast material that would fail a photosensivity test.

All recorded shows - with few exceptions are expected to deliver with no photosensitivity failures. Live shows are expected to monitor their rehearsals through a Flashing Pattern Analyser (like a Harding) and modify anything that fails in rehearsal so that it passes a second rehearsal.

There are exceptions - but these are quite rare.
LL
Larry the Loafer
I'm surprised BBC Four didn't warn of flashing images. I'm not even epileptic and that video makes my eyes go a bit funny.
TE
Technologist
But if it passes the Harding test is is unlikely have a warning ...
and as the repeats all have quite a but of POST it would be fairly easy to make it comply
Vignetting would not be that obvious to a casual viewer,...

But compared to modern shiny floor shows there are very little obvious PSE issues.
JA
james-2001
Amazon Prime Video have 50 or 60fps streaming for their live sport output. They switched very soon after they started doing Tennis.


Only on cerain platforms. It is 50/60fps when I watch it through the web browser (even on the lowest quality setting!), but I've used the Virgin, Roku/Now TV and Samsung Amazon Prime apps over the last few months, and they still only show it at 25/30p.

Plus their non-sport 50/60i streaming content is still only 25/30p through any platform.

I've said it before, but I don't see streaming as a suitable replacement for linear TV or DVDs/Blu-Rays until 50/60Hz streaming is standard. I can't really understand why it's not widely available, and many of those that do still only have it on limited content and certain platforms, it's not exactly hard to do a decent quality de-interlace to 50/60p these days (and any UHD content is made progressive anyway) and processing and bandwith limitations aren't really an issue any more (especially when it's SD content). If the BBC and ITV can manage it, the likes of Netflix, Amazon and Disney really should. They can give us UHD and all fancy kinds of audio configurations, but they can't give us a frame rate higher than 30p?
Last edited by james-2001 on 18 May 2020 5:33pm - 3 times in total
JA
james-2001
TOTP may be treated as HD within the BBC now - as the repeats have often been taken through an edit to comply them for modern broadcast standards (particularly for photosensitivity) and this may mean the final delivered master is now HD.


I don't know if they're treated as HD, but they're definitely treated as 16:9 as there's been some episodes where they've had to change the brightness and the likes to comply with modern standards (as we've been discussing) and the pillarboxes at the side have changed in brightness with it. Boris Gardner on the 1986 Christmas episode is probably the most noticable example.
NG
noggin Founding member
But if it passes the Harding test is is unlikely have a warning ...
and as the repeats all have quite a but of POST it would be fairly easy to make it comply

I believe that one of the reasons they have to go through post, other than R128 stuff, is that any PSE fails are fixed prior to broadcast.
Quote:

Vignetting would not be that obvious to a casual viewer,...

That will help with minor luminance flash fails, but doesn't do that much for spatials (though I doubt many of those pop up), and red and extended flashes are tricky to comply with just a vignette. I've seen some stuff where you have to do some very extreme contrast reduction to get stuff to pass. I wouldn't be surprised if extended luminance was the main issue - where the luminance flash threshold is reduced.
Quote:

But compared to modern shiny floor shows there are very little obvious PSE issues.


As a regular viewer you can spot pretty frequent Harding fixes though - it's usually cranes passing foreground interest that causes background lights to flash (when the lamps themselves aren't flashing) or beams that are being broken up and catch a camera.
NJ
Neil Jones Founding member
This Tom Scott video's been uploaded today which is slightly related to some discussion in the thread at the top of page 149:


(pretty sure there was some other discussion about this in the thread, or on the forum at least, but I've pasted it into the box now so I'm going to leave it here. Please try not to fall over it. Thanks.)
VM
VMPhil
Sounds like someone forgot to flick the stereo switch until about 8:30 in on this episode.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000jb8f/top-of-the-pops-31081989
JA
james-2001
Only one episode in two weeks time again, due to a Tom Jones 80th birthday programme.

I wonder if one of the reasons BBC4 are getting behind is because they're planning on putting extra episodes in the slots that will presumably be vacated by the proms? I imagine many of those concerts won't go ahead this year (though I guess some still might, with a smaller or no audience), and they'll need something to fill those slots with. Makes a change from past years, TOTP has had to make way for some of the proms (and back in 2015 we had around 2 months with no TOTPs over the summer as a result, before they put it up to twice a week the next year).
JA
james-2001
Sounds like someone forgot to flick the stereo switch until about 8:30 in on this episode.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000jb8f/top-of-the-pops-31081989


As it was a live edition, it's quite possibly a fault made at the time. Possibly accidently recording a mono feed to the master tape for the first 8 minutes, may well still have gone out in stereo on Radio 1 (and wherever NICAM was being trialled at the time). At least they didn't only record the mute links audio like those 1988 editions.

Ironic that at the start Gary points out it's a year since the stereo Radio 1 broadcasts started.

28 days later

JA
james-2001
Interesting screwup on today's second episode- on Debbie Harry's performance the song was listed as being at number 8, but on the chart countdown it was number 13.

Also today was the first ever broadcast of the last few minutes of the 26/10/89 edition, faded out early originally because of Nigel Lawson's resignation.
SW
Steve Williams
Also today was the first ever broadcast of the last few minutes of the 26/10/89 edition, faded out early originally because of Nigel Lawson's resignation.


Indeed, was spitting feathers about that at the time, might have been less annoyed if I'd known it was only Milli Vanilli.

I was initially baffled as to why Milli Vanilli were on two weeks running, before realising nobody would have seen them on the first show. The 'Nilli joining Bucks Fizz and All About Eve as appearing on two consecutive shows for various reasons, ironic given the last band to do that were All About Eve due to a miming cock-up.

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