noggin's posts, page 103

The TV Question Amnesty Thread

The UK and US OTA systems are based on two totally different concepts.

In the US each station has a 6MHz channel of its own - which it then carves up between channels. Each 6MHz ATSC 8VSB mux can carry 19.2Mbs of video and audio - and MPEG2 is the dominant codec for SD and HD. The system was originally designed to allow one 1080i or 720p HD service, to mirror the existing 6MHz NTSC-M SD analogue service a station was allocated, though the system allowed for a reduction of bitrate to allow for additional SD sub-channels (and as encoders have improved, more/HD subchannels became an option)

In the UK the BBC were given one 8MHz DVB-T mux (later a second was gifted), iTV and C4 shared a DVB-T mux etc. - so there isn't a direct mapping from analogue channels to digital muxes.

The 24MHz BBCA mux (aka PSB1) carries BBC One, BBC Two, CBBC, CBeebies/BBC Four, BBC News Channel, BBC Parliament, BBC Red Button video and BBC Radio services (plus BBC Alba and BBC Scotland in Scotland) These are all 16:9 SD MPEG2 services.

ITV/C4's mux (D3/4 aka PSB2) is similar.

The second BBC mux, (PSB3 aka BBCB) switched to DVB-T2 at 40.25Mbs and carries BBC One HD, BBC Two HD, CBBC HD, ITV HD, C4 HD, C5 HD - all 1080i h.264 (which is a lot more efficient than MPEG2). The BBC handles coding and mux for this mux - with ITV, C4 and C5 paying for carriage (but the BBC don't use this to make money)

Everything is statmuxed - with a pretty equitable system of everyone averaging roughly the same bitrate of 4.5Mbs with a peak of 16.5Mbs

http://en.digitalbitrate.com/dtv.php?liste=1&live=9&lang=en&mux=BBCB-PSB3 is useful to see how European DVB services operate.

You'll see Germany is using DVB-T2 but with h.265/HEVC and 1080p50 (not 1080i25) and with even lower average bitrates. The US system is using a 20+ year old codec - until ATSC 3.0 hits that is (if it does)



Transmitted - i.e. what is sent from the transmitters to people at home? On BBC One and ITV SD you get your local regional news. On BBC One HD you will get a slate telling you to switch to BBC One, followed by a BBC promotional barker reel. ITV HD carries some regions (but I think you may not get the correct region on ITV HD and have to switch to SD to guarantee this)

If you mean distributed to each station (rather than transmitted) - then the BBC these days usually carry the News Channel on their network feed for the longer opts on the feed send to each regional centre - which they opt away from. This is known as 'Network sustaining' and is designed to be passed on to the transmitters should a region fail to opt-out.

ITV don't run an opt-out system - so they don't have to send ITV to each local studio, instead the local studio output is fed to ITV Playout North and South, and they cut them into the correct transmitter feed at the correct time. As coding and mux is now centralised for transmitters this makes sense.


US stations run with a central network feed sent to affiliates for local modification. UK commercial broadcasters no longer really do that as they are all played out centrally (though STV in Scotland hang off an ITV feed I guess)



Either 'I saw it on BBC One' or 'I saw it on THE BBC'

Unlike US three-letter broadcasters (ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS), the BBC takes a definite article, but ITV and Channel Four don't...

"I saw it on THE BBC" "I saw it on ITV"...


(Yep - doesn't make sense...)

Kodi Filmic Effect

There are two places this can happen.

1. Handbrake will usually convert 50Hz motion to 25Hz motion as it deinterlaces to frame rate not field rate (fine for movies and 25Hz TV but terrible for anything shot using 50Hz interlaced video)

2. Some Kodi platforms have lousy deinterlacing. The Pi isn't one of them though - it does a very good job of deinterlacing.

Personally I don't recommend ripping DVDs using Handbrake for Kodi use - I'd always just rip to ISO or VIDEO_TS folder losslessly, and only use Handbrake to do a second encode for mobile devices that won't cope with the original (or where you need a smaller file)

If you play the .ISO or VIDEO_TS in Kodi on a Pi you should get nice 50Hz video (ensure that adjust refresh on start/stop is enabled and that you have 50Hz modes whitelisted)

If you have a Pi 3B or 3B+ you won't need to buy the MPEG2 licence for the Pi, but if you are running something less powerful then the MPEG2 licence (£2.40) will avoid software decoding, allowing the higher quality deinterlace.

(Amazon Fire TV sticks aren't a great Kodi platform for decent interlaced video)

I run quite a few Pi 3Bs and 3B+s running LibreElec and they handle DVDs, Blu-rays, HDTV and SDTV with proper deinterlacing to 1080p50 with decent MMAL Advanced deinterlacing (similar quality to YADIF 2x)

How did they make the 2001 BBC World Breakfillers?

ISTR Channel 5's original inter-commercial animation was generated by a solid-state box designed specifically for the purpose. News 24 played them from a server separately to the trails either side...

BBC World News | 30th October 2017 Onwards

You might shoot at 1080p if you have cameras capable of it.

However the NBH studios have first-gen triax HSC300s which only shoot at 1080i or 720p and don't have a 1080p option (1080p was an additional cost option on the later versions of the HSC300 range like the R and RF, but the original model doesn't have that option, and the BBC wouldn't have a business need to purchase it even if they did have the later models)

Film companies will do a decent deinterlace in post.

BBC World News | 30th October 2017 Onwards

Normally you'd shoot using the studio cameras so that it looks as authentic as possible (3 chip 2/3" CCD studio cameras have a very different 'look' to large single-sensor CMOS 'movie' cameras), and also to ensure it is recorded as quickly as possible (Movie-style shooting would usually take too much time). It also allows you to use on-camera prompts easily.

I'm not saying this is definitely the case for the Jurassic World 2 clip - but it has been for other similar shoots AIUI.

If there are elements of 'behind the scenes' 'off camera' filming, those would be shot on movie cameras usually.

I can't comment on whether there are any rules about use of graphics, studios, presenters these days. In the old days the rule of thumb was that you could use an actor on a real set (so it didn't look real), or a real newsreader on a fake set (so it didn't look real).

However ISTR that one series of Spooks used Sky News rather than BBC News throughout (as Sky would allow the use of real newsreaders on a real set for added realism) and then the BBC's approach for subsequent shoots seem to change...

Red Nose Day

I think it was less that they didn't care, more that Elstree offered an option for larger shows to be 'set standing' shows, that simply wasn't an option for TV Centre.

Remember that Elstree had, for a lot of the time in the BBC era, more studio floors than control rooms (before EastEnders needed all the studio floor space other than D) - so you could leave a set standing for a show, without also taking the gallery out of action (as it could work to a second studio floor) (It was also used by BBC Training)

Elstree was (and is) a better fit for shows that shot in blocks, as its studios weren't (and D still isn't) as flexible as the TV Centre studios for fast turnaround shows, so it made sense for game shows and sit coms to be shot at Elstree, whereas it wouldn't make as much sense for occasional one-offs, or weekly shows to be made there (with the exception of TOTP as that could be 'set standing' at Elstree but would have had to have been 'set strike' at TV Centre)

Red Nose Day

I think the seating was covered for Big Break - though I may be wrong.

Sky's Branding

Sky Arts was, a bit like Sky News, a great Murdoch 'fig leaf' - a channel he could always point to when people accused Sky of being just about movies and sport and adding nothing to the cultural life of the nation (and it has commissioned some pretty good shows)

Comcast may feel that they don't need it in the same way, and I think we are moving to a point where the number of linear channels will reduce. It's a pity - as the only Sky Arts content I watch is stuff I've found whilst surfing through (and then possibly doing a 'watch from the beginning') I don't ever look specifically for its content via an on demand portal.

Red Nose Day

I think deejay was talking about the seats being disused, not the studios. ISTR that CBBC used Elstree D quite a lot in the early 00s to shoot shows like Bamzooki.

Poor technical quality of TV ads

Most European broadcasters who run 720p50 DVB transmissions to viewers at home still run 1080i25 internally and convert to 720p50 on Playout (or just before) - there is very little 720p50 origination in Europe.

Eurovision 2019

I'd say the latter is pretty important. There are entire channels in Sweden that just carry US or British shows, and broadcasting English language commercials is not at all unusual.

Swedish people have few problems learning English grammar and vocabulary, but Norwegians are usually better at mastering accent.

Eurovision 2019

All that is true, and Swedish kids learn English at a really young age (both formally, from watching TV and from exposure through all the other outlets that use it) (Finnish kids are learning English in their first year at school now - from age 7)

However Swedish, Norwegian and Dutch are all pretty close to English in lots of ways - word order, "past words" ending in d or t, possessives adding an s etc.

In my experience Norwegian and Danes often have the easier time mastering an 'English' accent, Swedes really struggle to lose the sing-song.