noggin's posts, page 10

Reception issues is it my aerial?

If you bought your TV in the UK, it's from a known brand, and it's connected to an aerial and receiving any stations at all, then it's going to be a Freeview TV.

DVB-T/T2 are the two over-the-air digital TV standards that fully replaced analogue TV in the UK - when analogue was switched off in 2012 finally. DVB-T launched in 1998 and only carries SD services. DVB-T2 launched in 2009 and carries all the HD services, and a few additional SD services. The way DVB-T works all the BBC SD services are carried on one frequency (so if you get BBC One SD, you also get BBC Two SD, CBBC SD, CBeebies and BBC Four SD, BBC News SD, BBC Parliament SD and the BBC Radio services), ditto the main ITV and C4 services are carried on the same frequency (though not all the sub-variants may be) etc.

Unless your TV is from a no-name Chinese manufacturer bought via eBay or Amazon, then it's also likely to be a 'Freeview' TV (not all DVB-T/T2 TVs are - but almost all of them sold in the UK are). Freeview is the licensing used by all mainstream TV manufacturers (Sony, Philips, Panasonic, JVC, Hitachi, Sharp, Samsung, LG etc.) show sell TVs in the UK - and the reality is that most TVs sold in Europe are Freeview licensed (they may also be licensed for TNT in France, NorDig across the Nordic nations and Ireland etc. - selecting between the standards when you start up your TV for the first time and select your country)

Most TVs sold here also have DVB-C cable tuners - but they won't work on VirginMedia here. Some TVs have Freesat (and some Sony's have non-Freesat) satellite tuners - but if you don't have a dish then you won't be using that.

For a DVB-T/T2 Freeview TV :

1. You need an aerial - and it needs to be pointed at the right transmitter and be the right aerial for that transmitter (and be mounted the right way round). Some transmitters changed their frequency bands when they migrated from analogue to digital, or more recently when they cleared frequency bands to make way for 4G etc. If you have an old analogue aerial it may not be suitable for your current digital TV frequencies.

2. Your cable between the aerial and your TV needs to be in good order. It's common for water to get into these downloads on old installations, which can cause major issues.

3. If you have a marginal signal and poor cabling then you can get interference from sources like HDMI cables. (DECT phones can interfere with satellite LNB signals too ISTR)

Digitising Collection

Every DVD Recorder I saw on the market had a SCART and/or composite and/or S-video inputs (some also had DV) - I don't think I ever saw any that were RF-only, as the requirement to record from DVB set-top boxes (as well as to copy VHSs) had become a thing by the time they arrived on the market.

I'd second that if you have a DVD recorder - then using that as a way of digitising VHS tapes is a neat and low cost solution (you can then rip the DVDs to a PC hard drive - and if you use RW discs then re-use the disc if you don't want to keep a physical copy)

Alternatively you can get a number of low cost Composite/S-Video USB capture solutions that use the same compression system as DVD (MPEG2) or a newer compression system (h.264) - though often the software is a bit rubbish. I've used both routes for backing up VHS tapes (and they can be better routes to capturing VHS content than some broadcast quality capture cards that really don't like the 'wobbliness' of VHS VCR output...)

Internet on your TV

The advantage of the Bush STBs were that they ran RISC OS - and it was possible to get them to an OS prompt and then into BASIC. If you had a Parallel Port Zip drive you could load additional RISC OS modules via that route and get a full RISC OS desktop ISTR.

You could reprogram the ISP number too - I remember I had Freeserve (0845 local call rate) as an ISP for a while and persuaded a Bush box to switch to that from whatever they wanted you to use.

One of the big advantages of the Bush RISC OS based approach was that RISC OS handled nice anti-aliased font rendering (long before other OSs did) and was also interlace aware - so you got quite a nice flicker-free high-res display - better than you'd expect an SD 576i display to render)

4K 3D televisions

Projectors are really only a good idea for secondary displays when you want to watch movies. Most people I know use them alongside large flat panel OLED, LCD or Plasma displays, only using the projector for movie nights etc.

Basic rule of thumb is that the bigger the projected image size the brighter the projector needs to be, and in all cases your black levels are set by your ambient light levels (you can't project black light...) so you need similar ambient light levels to the cinema to get similar results (i.e. near total black out). Good quality screens can improve the brightness of the bright bits, but they won't do much for the dark bits - that needs good quality viewing conditions. There are a reason many people put their home cinema rooms in windowless basements

BBC Regional Redundancies

There was a major piece of audience research work done in the 00s by BBC audience research for the English regions and for BBC News around the 1800-1900 news hours, that reported a major preference for double headed bulletins, as they were seen as warmer (presenters bouncing off each other allows for more character to be shown etc.) That drove a number of regions that were single-headed at the time to introduce a co-presenter I believe. This may also have been around the time that the Six was also double-headed - possibly for the same reason.

We don't live in an ideal world, and times change, but there was a reason for the double heading I believe.

UKTV Channels in Europe

Yes - it's a contractual agreement that has been running for decades. Many BBC artists and rights contracts include a 'cable supplement' which is a small additional fee to cover non-UK/Republic of Ireland viewing (which the basic BBC contract already covers)

BBC One and Two are also on many Swiss cable networks - but I think this may be via their 'retransmission' rules that allow any FTA service that can be received in Switzerland to be redistributed. (I may be wrong. I know Brits working at the EBU in Geneva are very grateful that they can watch BBC One and Two!)

The Brexit Effect

Interesting - I wonder how long EU pay-TV providers who haven't geoblocked UK viewing of their pay-TV services (because of EU portability) will leave it before they start geoblocking the UK...

Doctor Who - Revolution Of The Daleks

Though sadly it won't be 5.1 on iPlayer

4K 3D televisions

Our last 3D capable TV was a Sony UHD/4K SDR display with passive 3D (which gave Full HD 3D resolution - unlike the passive 3D Full HD sets that drop to 540p). When we upgraded to a newer Sony UHD HDR display, that no longer offered 3D functionality.

As others have said - 3D is no longer a thing (and 3D Blu-ray releases seem to be becoming less frequent now too) - your only real hope is to get one of the last generation LG OLEDs with Passive 3D I'd have thought if you want a reasonably decent UHD HDR display with 3D. Chances are this will be second hand unless you can find a new-old-stock model somewhere.

These days the only domestic 3D UHD/4K viewing solutions are projectors I think.

BBC One Christmas idents 2020

One issue that needs to be considered in channel branding terms is that the channel idents, symbols whatever have a really practical purpose. They are used to inform audiences about the content of the following programme - both in marketing terms (to make sure you stay watching), and content terms (to warn you of stuff that you might not want to watch for language, violence, flashing images etc. reasons).

If we were to ditch those kinds of idents, we'd need to move to a US/Norwegian style of on-screen warning/rating system on linear channels I guess (NRK permanently burn in the rating of their show on-screen, US broadcasters seem to burn in a graphic at the beginning for a brief period - not sure if they do it after returning from breaks).

Incidentally - this is why Sky, Freesat and Freeview accurate recording triggered by the BBC starts programme recordings on the idents (so the replay starts with any content warning) and finishes on the junction after the junction at the end of the show (so any ActionLine or similar pointers at the end of a show are also recorded)

BBC One Christmas idents 2020

To be fair - "Symbol" was a widely used term for the BBC One and Two animating channel idents well into the 90s. When I started working in TV the BBC One globe, previously generated from COW hardware, and at the time coming from a Sony CRV optical disk player, was pretty much universally known as 'SYMBOL' by both NC1 and by the buttons on the desk that cut it to air.

On nations and regions talkback during junction rundowns you'd never hear the NC1 director say "On the ident for 10 seconds" it was always "On the symbol for 10 seconds".

New Meridian, BBC South & South East Thread

I think some TVs may give that information as secondary in the programme/channel info page where stuff like video codec, resolution and format, and audio codec, HbbTV vs MHEG5 etc. are listed alongside the channel name, LCN and EPG data.