noggin's posts, page 156

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NG
noggin Founding member

UKTV channels set to leave Virgin Media on Sunday

DJ Dave posted:
JamesM0984 posted:
bilky asko posted:

Why not just switch the lot?


Because I'm happy with the Broadband, and I've heard horror stories about Sky's Broadband.


Brother in-law has sky broadband round the corner from me and it's rubbish, even his kids say it is. Hardly had any issues with virgin for broadband and been with them for years.


Whenever anyone says broadband is rubbish I have to instantly ask if they are basing this on WiFi quality or the actual exchange connectivity and speeds further upstream.

I've had Sky broadband for a while now and it always delivers download speeds close to the maximum I'd expect. I don't, of course, use the built in WiFi access point for WiFi connectivity (I run Ubiquiti access points these days), and all devices that can be connected by Ethernet cables are. Sky's VDSL connectivity between homes and the exchange is pretty much identical to anyone else's (apart from large exchanges all the kit is BT OpenReach provisioned anyway I believe) However post-exchange Sky take over and their backbone quality and arrangements for interconnectivity with 'the internet' seem to be very good.

A lot of complaints I hear about broadband quality often turn out to be based on WiFi quality (which is a totally different kettle of fish)

Sky have a very decent backbone and peering arrangement (Sky News use Sky broadband connectivity increasingly for broadcast use - as do the BBC)

Virgin appear to have a far patchier connectivity record. You may get faster sync speeds - but their wider connectivity to the public internet seems to be less than perfect in some situations.
NG
noggin Founding member

New BBC corporate font: BBC Reith

bilky asko posted:



An interesting tweet - seemingly BBC Reith is making it to the regions (going by the responses).


My guess is that getting it into some regional Astons might be tricky, particularly the older ones which may only have 3.5" floppies and 44/88MB Syquests.
NG
noggin Founding member

BBC World News | 30th October 2017 Onwards

SuperSajuuk posted:
When i first saw the low quality hardtalk broadcasts, i thought they were older repeats from 2011, the quality is terrible and they shouldn’t be broadcasting from that studio. Surely they can just decamp World News from C to do the hardtalk broadcast if needed?


Decamp to where?

I would imagine that they are using the Arabic/Persian SD facilities because there isn't an HD studio available at the time the guest is.

I can't imagine Hardtalk guest availability would be a reason strong enough to move BBC World News from their normal studio to a VR studio, even if it were available.
NG
noggin Founding member

Interactive services memories

I remember ordering pizzas from Dominos via my Sky box back in the day... ISTR that the modems in them weren't the fastest.
NG
noggin Founding member

CBSN LOCAL - New York channel has launched

Charles posted:

There are also the group live shots, which are free for all stations and pretty much what you describe: stations are told that the correspondent will start at, say, 6:01:00 on a common satellite path. But these are typically only done when there's a major national story or during election campaigns.


When the BBC and ABC were newsgathering partners it wasn't unusual for the BBC News Channel/BBC News 24 to also use these clock-start live hits on US stories (usually bad weather ones...).

You'd normally add a second or two to the start time to counteract link delays. Always a massive 'finger cross' moment when you cut to them at hopefully the right time. Some of them were great and would say to all stations what time they were expecting to start and give helpful time checks.
NG
noggin Founding member

This Morning

CraigWills posted:
steddenm posted:
This is a bit of a car crash today with Nigel and Lisa. Talking over each other and a very literal autocue read.


Must admit I agree. Only watched a few minutes and I don’t think Lisa was too bad but Nigel was literally just reading words, not presenting a show. I’m not sure who thought Nigel Havers was a good fit really. Lisa with Rylan or Gok I’m thinking will work much better as a pairing.


Lisa has a history as a radio and TV presenter. Nigel's profession requires him to be skilled in learning lines and delivering them repeatedly...
NG
noggin Founding member

UKTV channels set to leave Virgin Media on Sunday

james-2001 posted:
Probably because despite everything else, Virgin have better broadband.


They have faster local connection speeds - but AIUI they don't have a massively uprated peering and backbone arrangement to match, so although you get fast connection speeds to your local Virgin site, the speeds you achieve on the wider internet may not be as high as you'd hope as a result.
NG
noggin Founding member

Childrens TV

Riaz posted:
It's easy enough reminiscing about the past but exactly what sort of children's programmes does OFCOM want to see on ITV1 / C4 / C5, and why?

Are there even enough kids in Britain to support a children's TV production industry in the future or is the market too small?


The Ofcom report isn't necessarily about creating more TV shows - it's about finding new ways of getting shows to kids' eyeballs isn't it? No point being forced to commission and broadcast hours of content on linear DVB TV when all the kids are watching on tablets or other IP devices...
NG
noggin Founding member

Freeview channels thread

james-2001 posted:
It's a shame generic FTA boxes aren't widely available here like they are in most of Europe. Would make it less of an issue for channels to tie to a platform.


Yes - though without a generic EIT EPG they'd be pretty useless - you'd be stuck with timer recording or an online solution. Selling a non-Freest box with a Freesat EPG would be legally dubious as the Huffman tables used for the proprietary compression are protected by copyright I believe. (Ditto Freeview HD)

I think, for many consumers, the benefits of the Freesat platform (decent PVR and metadata support, proper interactive and iPlayer etc.) outweigh the slight reduction in channel provision due to 'cost of entry'.

I think most countries - where FTA is far less popular for mainstream services - look at Freesat with envy. (Even in Germany the commercial 'terrestrial' HD services are behind a paywall on satellite - and in Scandinavia you are tied into a Sky-like STB to get SD FTV services. France and Italy similarly have restrictions based on FTV not FTA broadcasts)
NG
noggin Founding member

Top of the Pops

james-2001 posted:
There had been HD stuff for a while, I know Monty Python At The Hollywood Bowl was made on a 1000-line 24fps analouge HD format circa 1982, though it was telerecorded to film for the cinema releases, and all the TV & video showings came from those film transfers. Though a few years ago they went back to the original video for new DVD and Blu-Ray releases.


The 'they went back to the original video' may be a red herring written by people who should have known better. (I hear the reality is that they remastered from the film telerecording NOT the 2" Quad edit masters or 1" B Format rushes 655/24 tapes... I don't think they used the other 655/24 system based around bumped up 2" IVC Helical)

The Python and similar systems were modified PAL gear with a bumped up bandwidth - but weren't in the same league as HiVision - which was potentially useable for tests at the 1980 for the Moscow Olympics (but export restrictions meant that wasn't possible). HiVision WAS used at the 1984 LA Olympics. I remember seeing Sony demos including footage of it at IBC in the late 80s and/or early 90s.

The Mick Jagger video was directed by the same director who directed a Pet Shop Boys video shot using HiVision for high quality keying here

The nasty sparklies are likely to be an SD VT artefact.


The same director did these 'video jingles' for VH1 also using HD HiVision gear too I believe


1987 is early enough that they used analogue component 1" HiVision VTRs - unless the DVTRs were available by then. They were in use by 1989 as the BBC used 1" digital HD VTRs for The Ginger Tree - which was shot in HiVision and edited in TC1's gallery Smile
Last edited by noggin on 31 July 2018 5:00pm
Dai Jestive, UKnews and sbahnhof 7 gave kudos
NG
noggin Founding member

Analogue TV memories

OF992 posted:
Was 16:9 widescreen ever used/attempted on analogue?


Yes - D/D2-MAC (which are analogue systems) had both 4:3 and 16:9 functionality (with 4:3 centre-cut for compatibility - with panning vectors) HD-MAC which carried 1250/50 HD used D/D2-MAC compatible analogue 16:9 with digital 'helper' data in blanking.

Composite Laserdiscs with 16:9 anamorphic squeeze were also released.

PAL Plus took a 16:9 source and letterboxed it to 16:9, encoding additional picture information on subcarrier at black level which allowed an improved 16:9 signal to be delivered (Higher than the 432 lines of vertical resolution you'd get with just letterbox).

The Japanese HD-MUSE compression system used in the 90s was also based around analogue video carriage on satellite.
NG
noggin Founding member

Cutting the Cord

Brekkie posted:

The second and biggest issue for me is there is still a significant delay when it comes to live streaming online. I always thought it was bad enough that digital TV was a couple of seconds behind analogue, but internet streaming, specifically via Now TV, can be a minute or two behind broadcast. Twenty years ago, even ten years ago, it wouldn't have mattered, but with social media and for sport in play betting the delay just needs to be significantly reduced.


For this - as ever - multicast is a solution, but it will need ISP buy-in as they have to peer the multicast sources. (So it won't be a solution for 'hooky' sources)

Unicast OTT is a pretty terrible solution for low-latency live streaming as multiple elements of the protocols used require buffering.

A multicast-peered DVB transport stream carried over IP is far lower-latency (not much more than the encoder delay - which is the same as other DVB platforms etc. - and your routing delay (not hugely dissimilar to your 'ping' time to the source).

I'd imagine that BT Sport UHD via BT Vision multicast is reasonably undelayed, compared to BBC UHD iPlayer?