noggin's posts, page 237

That's interesting. I have DVB-T2 and DVB-S2 TV cards and use SmartDVB and, sometimes, DVBDream and DVBViewer. I've never known it work reliably with that. My experience in the past (2015 and earlier) of Sky+ was unreliable too in terms of recordings being cut off if a programme overran, even if the EPG was updated.

I've always found it a rather strange and awkward arrangement (on a typical weekend) for one of the Breakfast presenters to have to make an apology to leave the programme ten minutes before the end 'to go and read the news for Andrew Marr'.

Could they not just cut back to the Breakfast studio for the first Marr bulletin to avoid this, maybe with the background on the plasma screen changed to a newsroom image?

Despite its flaws, I don't think anything exists in this day and age that even comes close to being a simple and reliable way to making sure a programme is recorded in full. Even Freeview/Freesat PVRs seem to struggle if a programme is running late as, in my exeperience anyway, the EPG isn't always updated and/or the recorder doesn't pay attention to any late changes.

Real Lives is more associated with Pick and Challenge, of course, but they can’t convert the channel to FTA whilst they have the archaic three channel limit that Ofcom imposed on them when Freeview launched - their share of the capacity has not proportionally grown compared to the likes of UKTV, Sony and CBS.

Love videos like these, fascinating, NDR cutting it very fine, BR opting out of the national weather to do their own weather, then most of the rest opting out before the end of the show.

This is a TOTP performance from May 1988 in stereo. The Radio 1 FM simulcast didn't start until September, so it appears they were producing the show in stereo long before then. I wonder when stereo TOTP broadcasts started from Crystal Palace.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pe4_3EazskA

Other way round. The IBA DSIS was NICAM 728 based, so no transcode required between studio and receiver. The BBC used the same format as their national radio distribution, NICAM 3 ? 656kHz based, so transcoding required at the tx sites. The Beeb opted for that to make spares interchangeable between the radio and TV networks. The IBA were dealing with 'green field' so made perfect sense to go with 728.

Their gallery set up is pretty much the same as most other regional centres built or refurbished between 2000 and 2007 (Nottingham, Southampton, Newcastle, Birmingham and Bristol), only without a pres gallery. They're all overdue a refurb but there's a change in the way English Regions will be delivering their TV content, moving to a more ITV style system (changes in the Coding and Mux setup similar to ViLOR for TV)

Just some memories. Going from mono to stereo operation was quite a big deal for the ITV companies. Where I worked we moved over from analogue audio distribution to dual channel sound in syncs (DCSIS) for inter company programme distribution via postie. The DCSIS signal was somewhat prone to not working if it was in way distorted. It was imperative to ensure the signals incoming to 'your' building were properly equalised at the very front end (as they 'hit the building' in the PO bays) or the DCSIS decoders would simply object and you'd either get nothing or highly distorted and glitchy audio.

Internally of course everything had to change over from mono to stereo, perhaps one of the most overlooked areas is the question of stereo distribution and switching around the various sources and destinations around the TV complex. Internally, signals were still analogue (SDI was maybe a tiny dream somewhere) but at our company our 'old' analogue Probel audio matrix in CAR had to be replaced and it was with a Probel TDM matrix (Time Division Multiplex) - in essence the analogue audio feeds were presented to the matrix input ports, which then converted them to digital, which then switched that digital signal to the required output port, which then decoded it back to analogue audio to send to the correct destination. This new matrix also replaced the old analogue VTR matrix which was originally manufactured by Utah Scientific. Interesting times as ever.

The studio production floor (St5) was of course already in existence, all the other facilities and production suites were specifically built for GMTV as they simply did not exist and had to be ready for GMTV's rehearsals in Oct 1992. I think the first audio desk was an Amek, I'd be very surprised if it wasn't stereo capable. Long time ago.

I seem to recall the lay off device would have been a 'Bel box'? - pretty standard bit of kit throughout the industry during that period.