noggin's posts, page 199

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NG
noggin Founding member

Top of the Pops

Inspector Sands posted:
Quote:

However as many broadcasters internally pillarbox 4:3 within a 16:9 frame upstream of the playout area (to allow the Playout area to run in a single aspect ratio) the Sky stuff is ARCed from 12P16 to 12F12 on many channels - and could still have a resolution reduction (depends on workflow)...

And that has been the case on the BBC's channels since the start of digital. Their D3 tape machines (from which all 4:3 programmes were played) had an ARC on their output which pillarboxed the video before it hit the router


Though presumably the DigiBeta and LTO uncompressed versions of the D3 shows that have been archived now (through the rather spiffing Transform PAL decoder) are 702x576 in a 720x576 frame, so any broadcasts now should be from full-width SD masters.
NG
noggin Founding member

Top of the Pops

TVEngineer posted:
Inspector Sands posted:
4:3 programmes should be pillar boxed on SD wide-screen channels. If you're watching on a 4:3 set then it'll be via a set tip box which you can set to centre cut out mode


No no no! 4:3 programmes should be broadcast on a 4:3 SD channel in their original resolution. There is no such thing as an SD widescreen channel, all you're doing is sending a data flag to the receiver that the 4:3 pixels should be stretched horizontally for correct aspect ratio.

If you're transmitting 4:3 SD in a pillar box along with a 16:9 flag you are reducing the quality of the picture unnecessarily and then wasting the rest of the pixels with black. To then zoom in on that reduced quality picture as you suggest is even worse. Terrible practice!

But a practice that has been universal pretty much since Freeview began on many channels.


On Freeview many channels have used permanent 16:9 aspect ratio rasters with 4:3 content pillarboxed within them and AFDs to signal whether the material within the 16:9 frame is 4:3 or 16:9. The main reason for this is that you can't do frame accurate 4:3/16:9 MPEG2 header switching if you switch the MPEG2 aspect ratio on-the-fly (you can only do it at the GOP level, as you have to signal at an I-frame boundary), whereas with AFDs you can do it frame accurately.

Sky doesn't support AFDs and has to use MPEG2 header switching, hence the flash of 'wrong shape' pictures you often see on transitions between 4:3 and 16:9 SD content on Sky that you don't see on many Freeview outlets.

However as many broadcasters internally pillarbox 4:3 within a 16:9 frame upstream of the playout area (to allow the Playout area to run in a single aspect ratio) the Sky stuff is ARCed from 12P16 to 12F12 on many channels - and could still have a resolution reduction (depends on workflow)...

What would be interesting to know is if the ingest workflow for 4:3 content is now :

1. 12F12 576i -> 12P16 576i -> 12P16 1080i
2. 12F12 576i -> 12P16 1080i

1. Will mean 4:3 content is ~544x576 resolution scaled to 1440x1080 active.
2. Will mean 4:3 content is ~702x576 scaled to 1440x1080 active.

Both will be ~544x576 on 576i outlets as the 1080i 1440x1080 will be scaled to ~544x576
Last edited by noggin on 24 February 2018 12:30pm - 2 times in total
bilky asko and London Lite gave kudos
NG
noggin Founding member

Sky News: Presenters & Rotas

Gibsy posted:
Missed that..is he definitely leaving?


Yes. Robert is leaving broadcast news.
NG
noggin Founding member

London Live

SuperDave posted:
Listings in The Standard for tonight's London Go describe it as 'Live from a queue near you'. It hasn't been 'live' since the original format was axed in November 2014.


CTRL+C
CTRL+V
NG
noggin Founding member

Eurovision 2018

ManicPumpkin posted:


Some things are best left in 1992...
NG
noggin Founding member

Eurovision 2018

AxG posted:
tightrope78 posted:
Christer Bjorkman

Who?

I trust you are joking ? Christer has been the Exec for Melodifestivalen since the reboot in the early 00s, and was involved with both Malmö and Stockholm contests in 2013 and 2016 respectively.

Quote:

In better news, Ola Melzig will once again provide a behind the scenes blog all about the technical aspects of the contest. https://www.facebook.com/groups/120379077975026/?ref=br_rs


Great news. Top bloke.
NG
noggin Founding member

Sky News | General Discussion

Rkolsen posted:
Woodpecker posted:
VMPhil posted:
BBC News 24 was widescreen (in the studio) from the start, though as posted above you couldn't see it that way until digital launched, and OBs were still 4:3 for a long time I believe.

The national bulletins on BBC One and BBC Two didn't go widescreen until 2 October 2000 (alongside the launch of BBC Breakfast).


Cheers for that. Am I right in thinking that the BBC were the first broadcasters in Europe, if not the world, to produce/transmit the news in widescreen? I know VRT in Belgium went widescreen in 2002, with commercial rivals VTM following suit two years later, but most European broadcasters didn't seem to switch until around 2007. (I realise I've probably answered my own question here, to be fair...)


Very true. But a more amazing feat is that a few days after the BBC went widescreen WRAL in Raleigh converted to an HD newscast (and thus widescreen) on October 13, 2000 and in January of 2001 all newsgahering went HD.


Yes - the US (and Aus) went HD a LOT earlier than Europe. However as a result both are saddled with an ancient, inefficient codec and modulation system for HD broadcasting.

We all have NHK in Japan to thank for HDTV though - their original HiVision standard developed in the 70s (and used - for example - at the 1984 LA Olympics) is effectively the baseband 1080i standard we use today (it was 1035i and 1050i before it settled on 1080i - and it shifted from 60.00Hz to 59.94Hz - but the overall 1125 line standard is pretty near identical).

It's important to remember Japan was broadcasting in HD from the late 80s using their analogue MUSE standard fed with HiVision production gear. (They had 1" open-reel digital VTRs in the late 80s... The BBC shot a drama with NHK using that gear. There was a MUSE-based laserdisc standard for HD movies too - a precursor to Blu-ray, before DVD existed...)
NG
noggin Founding member

Sky News | General Discussion

Woodpecker posted:
noggin posted:
Rkolsen posted:

Wasn’t BBC News before ITV Digital/Freview/FreeSat launched carried on cable? I know there’s only one or two providers now. According to this article it was only available in two million homes.


Yes - BBC News 24 was only available to consumers on analogue cable and overnight on BBC One for the first year of broadcast (Nov '97 until Nov '9Cool It was thus only available in 14:9 letterbox (as both analogue cable and BBC One overnight were still 4:3 analogue outlets)

It was almost certainly being carried on the various DVB-T test broadcasts that were happening, as was BBC Choice when it soft-launched (it wasn't on cable AFAIK)

The hard launch of DTT (and BBC services on DSat) was the same day that BBC News 24 moved from N9 to N8 in Nov '98 I think, and that was also the day that UK Today started covering the regional opt-out slots for BBC One digital (DTT and DSat were England-wide for BBC One). That was the first day that BBC 16:9 full-height broadcasts were available to consumers in the UK I think (so in theory nobody should have been able to have seen BBC News 24 from N9 in full-height 16:9 at home, only NCool


When exactly did BBC News become 16:9?


BBC News 24 was 16:9 production from launch in Nov 1997, but only initially available to viewers at home in 14:9 letterbox until November 1998 when digital TV outlets (Sky Digital, OnDigital etc.) launched. (Although the BBC wasn't part of ONDigital, initially ONDigital receivers and IDTVs were the only digital terrestrial receivers)

BBC World News went 16:9 in production when they moved into N9 (sometime in 1999) - but I think were initially only available 14:9 letterbox (not sure when 16:9 transmission started)
** EDIT - corrected typo in studio name - it was N9 that World moved into in 1999 **

BBC One/Two News went 16:9 full-time sometime in Autumn 2000 - but this wasn't the first time that they had produced 16:9 News. They had switched briefly to 16:9 for '2000 Today' where they were news inserts into the main BBC One show. They switched the N6 gallery to 16:9 for that show - with cameras in TC1 fed back to N6, and then TC1 cutting up N6's output, for the news bulletin, and then reverted to 4:3 once the news bulletins moved back into N6's studio.
Last edited by noggin on 23 February 2018 12:03pm - 2 times in total
NG
noggin Founding member

The Sport Thread

Steve Williams posted:
mccanmat posted:
I’m
Confused... why would the bbc need permission to broadcast a sports event?


Presumably because, as a listed event, they need to inform Ofcom so they can rule whether their planned coverage fulfils their criteria of availability. Which it clearly does, but they need to rubber-stamp it.


Yes - that would be my reading of it. I suspect all Crown Jewel event coverage needs to be run by Ofcom (that may be how the Crown Jewels legislation is enforced ?)
NG
noggin Founding member

Channel 4

Markymark posted:
It seems that C4HD vanished from the Freesat EPG shortly after 13:00hrs today ?


It's still FTA on a non-Freesat receiver.

(I guess I'll have to switch TV Headend to the Sky EPG for C4HD now...)
NG
noggin Founding member

Sky News | General Discussion

Rkolsen posted:
skyQhater posted:
Inspector Sands posted:
That is true, but it does happen with every system, both on new and established operations.


Normally a few weeks or months in when everyone's getting confident or complacent about it, it'll fall over spectacularly. But when it does happen everyone learns from it and either things are put into place to prevent it or they know what to do to fix it next time.

Um, I didn't post that, VMPhil did. Quoting error perhaps?


Wasn’t BBC News before ITV Digital/Freview/FreeSat launched carried on cable? I know there’s only one or two providers now. According to this article it was only available in two million homes.


Yes - BBC News 24 was only available to consumers on analogue cable and overnight on BBC One for the first year of broadcast (Nov '97 until Nov '9Cool It was thus only available in 14:9 letterbox (as both analogue cable and BBC One overnight were still 4:3 analogue outlets)

It was almost certainly being carried on the various DVB-T test broadcasts that were happening, as was BBC Choice when it soft-launched (it wasn't on cable AFAIK)

The hard launch of DTT (and BBC services on DSat) was the same day that BBC News 24 moved from N9 to N8 in Nov '98 I think, and that was also the day that UK Today started covering the regional opt-out slots for BBC One digital (DTT and DSat were England-wide for BBC One). That was the first day that BBC 16:9 full-height broadcasts were available to consumers in the UK I think (so in theory nobody should have been able to have seen BBC News 24 from N9 in full-height 16:9 at home, only NCool
NG
noggin Founding member

NOW TV

London Lite posted:
harshy posted:
DVB Cornwall posted:
Sports Price increases for
Day Pass £7.99
Weekly £12.99

What’s the picture quality like?


720p/25fps, but will be upgraded to 1080p in the summer.


I wonder if the lack of 50p is to ensure Sky HD still looks better?