noggin's posts, page 208

I think I remember the PSU's, a long pcb about 3 inches wide with outsourced (ie bought in) convertor modules?

What I do remember is that it had two operational 'What to do if the input signal fails or is crappy'. One was to permanently freeze the output signal to be the last known good frame, but wasn't up to much as the freeze was like you had picked the picture up with a cloth and were lightly polishing it - not a good description! I think of it as the frozen picture gently oscillating in a gentle circular fashion like the motion you would get if you were polishing a window plane. The other mode as I recall was to 'go to black' for the duration of the crappy signal, but I think it was oversensitive and was not used. I think I may not be remembering that too correctly?

Edit: Yes - noisy fans and likely to fail over time with attendant problems - one for 'routine maintenance". I recall now there were some 9 bit Marconi 1U syncs - there were excellent, really good. Perhaps they benefitted from being a bit late on the scene.

I sort of presumed they were being shot on PetoScott cameras which again I also sort of presumed fed into the Philips range of cameras - any thoughts?

Not a camera I ever worked on, But I have to say those Philips cameras always seemed to produce 'lovely' pictures to my eye.

LWT used a couple of syncs. Questech something or others and Quantel DFS 1751's. The ITN would have had a local Quantel in circuit given the era.

Someone was out in the Europe somewhere covering football match with a 1751 which was pretty reliable apart from one of the input (or output) locking loops that used a particular diode that would fail due to heat eventually. When this chap went abroad with one he took a diode with him.

Out at the broadcast centre there were some Swiss chaps looking glumly at a 1751 synchroniser that was not working - unlocked pictures. The chap casually produced the diode from his trouser pocket, gave it to the Swiss chaps and said - you need one of these. The Swiss chaps changed the diode and of course it cured the fault. Great engineer, I would have loved to have been there!

This isn't uncommon - quite a lot of short-turnaround sport reversions are played from EVS to TX because the file wouldn't make it to server on time.

Well of course, extra channels for Virgin Media - the old Liberty Global mothership working well, there.

Suppose us plebs with Sky will just have to do with Eurosport 1 & 2 and the BBC?

Yes. I remember TVS were using them 1983ish, I complained to the IBA about the impairment they were introducing. Funnily enough a year later I ended up working for a company where my boss was the bloke
that had been called into TVS to sort out his frame syncs because of the impairments. (You could see a faint 'grid' of 'blacker than black' dots )

Tell that freenet TV... https://www.freenet.tv/programme

But then HD+, the satellite counterpart, pretends its a provider of free TV channels... http://www.freetva.tv/about/hdplus/

I was hoping there was some simple hardware that could do this?

Thank you

Richard

What they call qHD channels are carried by freenet (Media Broadcast), but aren't part of the freenet subscription package. As you can see from this press release, they get still marketed under the HD umbrella, https://www.infosat.de/digital-tv/dvb-t2-hd-zwei-privatsender-neu-im-portfolio , with some outlets acknowledging they're not Full HD but qHD in their reporting. You will note from Digital Bitrate that the channels have HD in their name.

The announced that "The interactive Eurosport Player will be the only place fans can watch every minute, every athlete and every sport... ". https://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2017/11/20/key-olympics-role-for-premium-eurosport-player/
So I'd say yes they will put the OBS feeds on the Eurosport player, as they are not going to do coverage for every single event. But I'm also surprised that they don't seem to utilise the Eurosport 360 Red Button service they have on soem pay-TV services in Europe (like Sky in Germany and Canalsat in France).



That, and in the UK they had to sell the 2022 and 2024 rights to a terestrial channel because of the Ofcom Crown Jewel rules, anyway.

Germany's Crown Jewel rules on the other hand only say that the channel broadcasting has to be available to two thirds of all households, which Eurosport 1, DMAX and TLC easily manage (all three are FTA on satellite and cable, which already gives them 85% availability).
So they acually could have done it exclusivly and even anounced coverage plans back in 2016 for them broadcating it alone, without ARD/ZDF (which also incorperated DMAX as a third channel). https://twitter.com/Eurosport_DE/status/864424951805358082/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.eurosport.de%2Folympia%2Folympia-bei-eurosport-die-umfangreichste-berichterstattung-aller-zeiten_sto6168122%2Fstory.shtml

I personally think Germany actually profits from Eurosport having some exclusice rights, as the ARD/ZDF coverage has acutally gone more NBC-like in the last years sadly, with tons of human interest stories, tape delay, to much studio chit-chat and simply far too little actual live sport (if you for example compare it to the BBC coverage). I just hope Discovery won't overdo it with the commercials and will do coverage as great as the one they did in 2012 (where they had the rights for the las time here and actually won the German TV Awards for the best sports coverage of the year).
Also pressure from the VPRT (the lobby organisation of the German commercial channels) forced ARD/ZDF to move the extra coverage, which happens outside the main channels, to online only since 2012. And even there it was limited to 6 streams tops.
Now you have 2 chanels (sometimes 3) broadcasting on regular TV and for every body who want'S more there is Eurosport PLayer which only costs 7€ for a month.