noggin's posts, page 218

New Sky packages

Yep - most unicast streaming systems (including iPlayer - which is one of the few streaming platforms that supports 50Hz as well as 25Hz content). That means that they can drop to a lower bitrate stream if the connectivity isn't capable of sustaining their higher bit rate streams. Problem is that NowTV's highest bitrate streams are still pretty dismal.



Yep - AIUI quite a lot of it technically is HD but the quality isn't fantastic. It's not terrible on stuff that isn't took taxing, but on complex stuff it isn't great in my experience, and the lack of 50Hz native support (it only supports 25p) means sport is a real compromise.

The NowTV stuff is probably better than a lot of SD channels (apart from the 50Hz issue) - but when you compare it to Sky HD stuff it does suffer. It's cheaper though - and for many people a very good solution.



If you like it, you like it. That's the important thing at the end of the day.

New Sky packages

Yep - I guess some people are more aware of or sensitive to picture quality than others.

Some people like Blu-rays, some are happy with DVDs. If people are happy, then they are happy.

Some people switch Motion Flow / Natural Motion off, turn off all the contrast enhancement, reality creation, noise reduction etc. functionality and reduce the sharpness on their TV to zero. Other people want a more processed look to their viewing, and that's fine too.

New Sky packages

I guess the main difference will have to be picture quality. NowTV is unicast streamed at pretty low bitrates. It's 'just good enough' for smaller screens (if you don't care about the halved image rate for sport and entertainment content). You pay less, because you get an inferior product. It's fine for watching on a tablet or phone, and OK for a 24" TV I guess (if you can put up with the 25p-ness of it). Wouldn't want to watch it on a 55" UHD set...

I suspect Sky's non-dish variant of Sky Q or similar will be much more similar to BT's TV delivery system. In other words high quality, close to identical experience to that of the HD and UHD broadcast streams (i.e. proper 2160/50p or 1080/50i - possibly 720/50p - for their mainstream channels), with 5.1 Dolby or Dolby Atmos audio. Not the bitrate starved, over compressed, stereo only stuff you get at 25p on NowTV.

Above and beyond: Keeping TV and radio services on air

Yep - it's basically a kit of parts to create a national PSB1 mux (i.e. without English regional variations) and an (English?) PSB3 mux (but without ITV or C4 regional variations or BBC National variations) - i.e. both BBC licensed muxes,

London Live

In journalism terms, definitely a step up...

The Yorkshire and Lincolnshire Thread

That solution is widely used in Sweden. In their main SVT PSB SD mux you usually get two regional variations of SVT1 and SVT2 to chose from. However SVT have more regions (as they split each region into smaller regions and pre-record their local news to allow one studio centre to produce multiple bulletins which are then broadcast simultaneously)

Fran Unsworth new Director of BBC News & Current Affairs

Yep - with the less widely reported departure of David Holdsworth, who is currently head of English regions, announced there is another management space to fill...

New Sky packages

Yep - NowTV is unicast internet streaming, and significantly lower picture quality than Sky HD (particularly for sport and entertainment where NowTV is only 25Hz, whereas Sky HD is 50Hz for native interlaced content). Sky HD VoD is also significantly higher quality than NowTV (and includes 5.1 audio)

Sky currently requires a satellite feed to work - but Sky have said that they may (will?) be launching an IP-delivered Sky solution at some point (presumably offering SkyQ like functionality without a dish - but possibly by using multicast, as BT do for their IPTV solution?)

George Alagiah's time check during the BBC News at 6

That Autocue/ ENPS integration in BBC News certainly used to be quite the opposite - and a total nightmare... If you updated the ENPS version of the on-air story it updated on Autocue instantly. If the Autocue operator had done their job and tidied the script to make it more legible, all of that tidying disappeared, and the position of the script was often changed by a number of lines as a result, right as the presenter was reading it...

I can understand why other systems would inhibit changes to the on-air story for precisely this reason (it could well have been an Autocue config option that was not enabled...)

BBC iPlayer - Blue Planet II in 4K UHD

Interesting that only low-end Sony UHD HDR sets are compatible. Any of their Android TV sets - including the high-end A1 OLEDs are not able to access the content. (Basically the 7-series are OK, but any 8-series or above is not)

This appears to be a limitation on the Sony side based on some tweets from BBC people, though no major public comments from either side yet. The fact that most other manufacturers have a much wider range of supported displays than Sony suggests the issue is linked to how Sony and Android TV are working at the moment.

BBC iPlayer - Blue Planet II in 4K UHD

No issue with HDR10 for progressive download, after all it is used by Netflix and Amazon for their HDR streaming.

The issue with HDR10 is that the metadata for it - strictly - should be completed at the end of the production (as it contains information about the brightest pixel and the average brightness - neither of which are available mid-show necessarily). It's possible to fix the metadata I guess - as US cable companies have used HDR10 for their UHD HDR tests (like the Rio2016 opening ceremony)

HLG doesn't require any specific metadata - and isn't using Perceptive Quantisation and SMPTE 2084 (Which nails a pixel's absolute light level output to the video signal's level)

BBC iPlayer - Blue Planet II in 4K UHD

Do they support any flavour of HDR? HLG, HDR10, HDR10+ or DolbyVision? HLG makes the most sense for a TV box - but HDR10 is the dominant flavour for catch-up and movies (you really need the whole show to derive the correct metadata for HDR10)