noggin's posts, page 214

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NG
noggin Founding member

Presfax closes

Rkolsen posted:
noggin posted:
Inspector Sands posted:
Not sure what you mean by an analogue version except for sending schedules through the post


I suspect rkolsen means the first-generation version that was only ever distributed in the analogue network VBI, unlike the current version which is digital WST packets (as there is no VBI left to insert it in!) - though it may also have been distributed in the analogue network (itself carried as 140Mbs digital signals in most areas) VBI at one point.

The current 'CEEFAX-like' version (i.e. the one that uses a teletext packet distribution and teletext-style display) is definitely a newer version than the one in use in the mid-90s which was entirely monochrome and could display much larger numbers for the junction count-downs (don't think they were Teletext chunky bitmaps but they could have been). (It didn't look to use a teletext character generator for output)

And to answer the question - YES! It wasn't unusual for it not to be updated (or not to be received) and to be totally incorrect...

That and could a region reliably know when to opt based on PresFax data and time stamp if lines of communication such as talk back failed?


Sort of. To be honest you usually 'felt' the opts anyway...
NG
noggin Founding member

Above and beyond: Keeping TV and radio services on air

harshy posted:
Markymark posted:
Steve in Pudsey posted:

That's interesting. Does that mean that there is multiplexing kit on site to reassemble a mux?


There is. I've seen it at a Tx site, some DVB-S receivers with BISS decoders, and a crate to mux it all up.
The static SI tables and associated stuff is generated at the Tx site anyway, the code and mux for the primary feeds is
done remotely at the various CCM sites, and the muxes sent ready assembled to each Tx. So, you've only (he says !) got to replace the A and V components, and EPG/EIT data. I presume the Red Button stuff is replaced with null packets, or a holding page. I'd love to see what a mux running on this RBS system looks like and behaves as far as receivers are concerned.

There must be using dvb-s2 now I need to check if it is. The bitrate is the same as 28.2e and some channels are running on funny resolutions like 704x576 I think there’s one at 544x576.


704x576 isn't a funny resolution - it's the nearest MPEG multiple to 702x576 which is the 4:3 or 16:9 picture area (the extra 9 samples each side to generate 720x576 are to avoid clipping overshoots and undershoots on an analogue round-trip, and because it means we can have the same line widths in 525 and 625)
Last edited by noggin on 13 January 2018 8:54pm
NG
noggin Founding member

Channel 4

Inspector Sands posted:
Blake Connolly posted:
Yeah, there's lots of things schedulers have to take into account when it comes to the start time of a programme, as well as fitting together programmes with different durations, occasionally commercial minutage in the clock hour is another consideration. You do sometimes get things fixed to dead on the hour like the news. I don't know if they still so, but BBC Two always liked to start Eggheads at exactly 6pm, you'll also see it a lot at 6am when many channels start their new schedule.

Of anything, it must have been worse in the past if the wildly fluctuating durations from week to week of programmes like Fawlty Towers and TOTP are anything to go by.

That's more to do with the odd way BBC1 was scheduled in the 70s and early 80s. The evening started at 6:55 and there were American imports, so the programmes were made to fit odd slots, especially those like TOTP and Tomorrow's World which could just fill to accommodate whatever was after it. They'd still have gone out at the billed time, its just the billed time was something odd like 6:55 or 8:25.


Yes - when the BBC broadcast US imports in prime-time in the 80s we had all sorts of odd scheduling issues to handle US 'hours' being less than 50 minutes on the BBC. Points of View was used a lot to fill the 'Dallas' gap ISTR...

In the 60s and 70s they used not to round to the nearest 5 minutes for billings in the Radio or TV Times, and you'd see all sorts of odd minutes in the start times for shows.
NG
noggin Founding member

BBC iPlayer - Blue Planet II in 4K UHD

Stuart posted:
Thanks for all the tips, guys. However, I seem to have ended up on a Beta version of BBC iPlayer. There are no episodes of BPII listed at the bottom of the home page, and under settings I can't see any trial. Sad

I tried searching for "BLUE PLANET II UHD" (I get as far as the U, and run out of space).

I am signed in to my BBC ID.

EDIT: I've come out of the Beta version. Still no different.


What TV or media player are you using? Is it on the BBC's compatible list?

On my Roku Streaming Stick+ (the only media player that is part of the trial) I do a search for 'BLU' and get hits for both 'Blue Planet II' (which is the regular 720p SDR version) and 'Blue Planet II in UHD' (which is the up-to 2160p HDR HLG version)
NG
noggin Founding member

Presfax closes

Run_Telecine posted:
On another note, sort of related to the Presfax/Playout changes - the Trails on BBC1 still seem to be in SD, except the Oneness bumpers and a QT trail a bit earlier. Are they not making Trails in HD yet?


Trails made by the BBC Creative team (who replaced Red Bee for trail production I think) are still being played out (not sure about production) in SD.

Bumpers made by the shows themselves and delivered to playout close to transmission (or played out by the teams themselves) will be in HD. (Question Time, The One Show, Watchdog, Springwatch etc. all make their own 'on-the-day' bumpers and deliver them in HD, and they are usually played out in HD)
NG
noggin Founding member

Presfax closes

Inspector Sands posted:
Rkolsen posted:
Was there a delay of any sort on the analog Presfax?

Not sure what you mean by an analogue version except for sending schedules through the post


I suspect rkolsen means the first-generation version that was only ever distributed in the analogue network VBI, unlike the current version which is digital WST packets (as there is no VBI left to insert it in!) - though it may also have been distributed in the analogue network (itself carried as 140Mbs digital signals in most areas) VBI at one point.

The current 'CEEFAX-like' version (i.e. the one that uses a teletext packet distribution and teletext-style display) is definitely a newer version than the one in use in the mid-90s which was entirely monochrome and could display much larger numbers for the junction count-downs (don't think they were Teletext chunky bitmaps but they could have been). (It didn't look to use a teletext character generator for output)

And to answer the question - YES! It wasn't unusual for it not to be updated (or not to be received) and to be totally incorrect...
NG
noggin Founding member

Presfax closes

davidhorman posted:
I'm actually a little bit emotional.

Are CRTs still used for much else there?


Lots of English regions still have all-CRT monitor stacks and CRTs in edits. They were standard when the SD facilities were installed - and the only reason to replace them with LCDs will have been if they fail.

(You still find CRTs in a few HD OB trucks too...)
NG
noggin Founding member

BBC programme promotional graphics

Yep - those are sent out by the production teams of shows to flag up that they are about to TX. Particularly useful for contributors who may have been filmed months previously and would like to know when their appearance will be.
NG
noggin Founding member

TalkRADIO to close tomorrow

p_c_u_k posted:
Looks like an Iain Lee prank to me, especially given the person who has been @-ed in.


Yep - definitely sounds like a prank given the @-ed person. (Who has gone from being an entertaining and engaging commentator with a right-of-centre point of view to a Katie Hopkins-wannabe...)
elmarko, London Lite and buster gave kudos
NG
noggin Founding member

The new NEW Central West and BBC Midlands thread

Mike W posted:
Whoops, couldn't see it amongst the CNS chat!

Something required a new motherboard to be fitted from reading some of the tweets from the crew:




Suspect that is someone not understanding what was going on. Some broadcast kit takes almost that long just to boot up fully when powered down... (I was involved with a test where a gallery was catastrophically de-powered to test this. The last bit of kit came on line 4'00" after power was restored...)

Either - as others have said - it was a case of swapping over to an installed hot-spare (which is not unusual in some broadcast kit) or it was a card swap rather than a motherboard swap. (Cards can - in some equipment - be hot-swapped)

The BBC usually spec a reasonable number of on-site spares for mission critical equipment - though not everything has an on-site replacement on-hand.
Inspector Sands and Mike W gave kudos
NG
noggin Founding member

BT Tower

Rkolsen posted:
Hatton Cross posted:
Well, after the 'anorak heartbeat raising surge' moment of actually seeing something of interest during the studio 1B downtime, instead of watching some bored scene shifters wandering around the place, I noticed watching both the under camera monitor feed from NBC London and the autocue, that Brian was in complete sync with it.

I believe it's how they ran the Today show during the Olympic games from Stratford, with autocue and directing/VM'ing from New York with everything being firbered under the Atlantic - despite galleries in the IBC about 2 minutes walk away from the temporary studio.


One Today Show staffer told me that during Rio every single camera was backhauled via fiber to New York where the show was vision mixed. What was also impressive was during the political conventions about 20 cameras were uplinked via satellite to NYC where it was mixed and everything was in perfect sync. I am not sure how the other networks were handled but NBC’s feed was usually ahead of the others.


I believe that was also the case in Beijing in 2008. All cameras fibred back to the US where the show was cut as normal. Doing it over fibre is non-trivial, but avoids most latency issues.

A number of broadcasters did their main Olympic presentation this way in 2012 - with control rooms cutting between remote camera feeds in control rooms back home. Some also did remote camera control (i.e. black level, exposure, colour balance shading etc.) at base. Over fibre you can get full tallies, data etc. and if you want to use prompt (though Olympic sport shows probably don't need or use it) you can do that remotely. Latency is just a couple of frames at most if you do it right.

Doing the same via satellite is trickier - as you will inevitably have higher latencies - and that can give you issues with delayed talkback, implementing tallies (if that is done) etc. It's impressive to get all cameras in sync perfectly - I guess you have to run the same encoders and decoders at both ends, probably in low latency mode.
Last edited by noggin on 9 January 2018 10:17am
ukpetey, Hatton Cross and UKnews gave kudos
NG
noggin Founding member

Carrie Gracie resignation

Brekkie posted:
Cando posted:
She is permanent staff, they have to put her somewhere.

Not when she's resigned and bought her employers into disrepute in doing so.


Carrie Gracie hasn't resigned from the BBC.