noggin's posts, page 238

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NG
noggin Founding member

Early days of NICAM Stereo

Inspector Sands posted:
Markymark posted:
It was a licence requirement for the new 'Jan 1 1993' period , (by then the ITC) that all ITV companies should be stereo equipped, GMTV was the only company to struggle with that ISTR ?

Why would they have struggled? All their transmission/playout was the same as Carlton and LWT, and I wouldn't have thought they'd not have upgraded their studio facilities in preparation for going on air


Didn't GMTV use existing TLS studio facilities? I don't think they built from scratch - so it could have been they inherited a mono sound installation in the studio they were using ?
NG
noggin Founding member

Early Cable/Satellite TV thread

sbahnhof 7 posted:
I remember Eurosport and Arte having multilingual audio on Astra 1.

What about the on-screen languages? You said you watched Albertville and Barcelona 1992 in HD widescreen. Were the broadcasts like the one in the video, with pres from different countries? (Message in English/ARD title card in German/BBC footage later.) Or was there a particular language that was preferred? Was it common to show presenters too?


The article about those Olympics by Dieter Hoehler is here:

- http://www.live-production.tv/case-studies/sports/brief-review-hdtv-europe-early-90%E2%80%99s.html


http://www.live-production.tv/sites/default/files/styles/original_image_with_copyright/public/Archive_09_Artikel_HDTV_Productionunit_MCU.jpg?itok=jzbOaBYk


Simple - there was no in-vision presentation of any significance. Ignore the Des Lynam stuff on that recording - it is from a different, PAL analogue SD feed, not a 16:9 HD-MAC one.

From memory Alison Holloway (an early Sky presenter, now a Senior Producer in Entertainment shows in LA) was one of the English-language out-of-vision commentators.

I watched quite a lot of Barcelona '92 on the HD-MAC feeds (in SD on a 16:9 scan crushed RGB 4:3 CRT) and from memory when they were in a gap between live coverage they largely cut to a beauty shot of the Olympic flame with a music bed, then cut to the HD host broadcast footage as the event started. Note I wasn't watching them in HD, HD-MAC was backwards compatible with SD D-/D2-MAC so you could watch the broadcasts on an SD receiver (in my case a modified BSB box I re-programmed). HD-MAC effectively used 4:1, 2:1 and 1:1 interlace on a block-by-block basis and was able to send motion vectors in the data fields (which also carried audio) in H&V blanking to allow a receiver to do a reasonable reconstruction of an HD signal, from an SD analogue signal. However the processing artefacts in the SD signal weren't pretty...

I have dim recollections of possible seeing a studio on the Albertville coverage - but watched far less of that (and it could have been I saw a 4:3 studio on another channel on the same satellite)
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NG
noggin Founding member

Early Cable/Satellite TV thread

Yes - both PAL and MAC satellite broadcasts could carry multiple audio feeds (PAL had multiple subcarriers, MAC had enough data capacity) so that pan-European services could carry commentary in different languages.

Eurosport used to routinely carry multiple language feeds on their analogue Astra 1 service - you could chose which language you wanted by tuning to different audio carrier frequencies. The services on Astra 1 were aimed to France, Germany and the UK - so some sport channels had French, German and English language commentary. (ISTR Screensport did too?)

The BCH-1000 referred to in the test card was an early BTS 1" Eureka 1250 HDTV VTR, and would have been a source for HD-MAC broadcasts. The TV Sat and Telecom 2 satellites were both, I think, DBS satellites (like BSB's MarcoPolo, and the European Olympus test satellite).

MAC had a neat solution - similar to today's Audio Description on Freeview - that allowed a single full-bandwith stereo data feed to be used to carry programme sound, with multiple mono (either full or narrow band) commentary feeds to be broadcast, with the receiver mixing them together (to reduce the amount of data required)

Nowadays it is common for some pan-regional services to do this with both audio and subtitle streams - particularly for pan-Baltic and pan-Nordic services (though increasingly these are localised)
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NG
noggin Founding member

World's biggest TV ratings and lies

AxG posted:
In terms of audience share, this years Eurovision was watched in Iceland be 153,000 viewers, a small number, but given Iceland’s population, that’s still an incredible 97.5% share of viewers.


Ignoring the share of viewers that's an insane share of population...
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NG
noggin Founding member

Early days of NICAM Stereo

We had a retro-fitted early NICAM decoder installed in our VHS HiFi VCR (you used the Simulcast setting to record NICAM audio) and were watching and listening to Crystal Palace NICAM broadcasts from c.86 or 87.

Whilst technically they were 'test' broadcasts, the reality was that stereo production became the norm very quickly, particularly for live shows, and for recoded shows that went through a 'dub'. Shows that didn't go through a dub and were edited quickly on 1" or Beta SP were less likely to be stereo - as there are limited audio tracks on that format (and you used to have to use external digital lay-off devices ISTR)

ISTR that Yellowthread Street (set in Hong Kong with a decent budget) was the first ITV stereo drama.
NG
noggin Founding member

Fox News removed from Sky

cityprod posted:

Even at their worst, RT and Press TV do not make up material, and change facts to suit their agendas. They simply don't report stuff that doesn't fit. There's a big difference, learn it.


Err http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-34316047 is just one example of RT making stuff up...

Press TV didn't cover itself with glory here either http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-39811870
Last edited by noggin on 2 September 2017 9:54am
NG
noggin Founding member

Broadcasting House, Salford Quays & TVC

neonemesis posted:
Moz posted:
Whataday posted:
And TVC is officially open!

First show to be recorded was The Jonathan Ross Show on Wednesday night:


Are the studios owned by the BBC still?


As I understand it, the buildings are owned by Stanhope but leased to BBC Studioworks who operate them as a commercial studio business. Any production company can hire the studio space and / or production services from Studioworks.


Think the BBC actually retain the freehold to the site currently (for reputational protection reasons ISTR), so BBC are freeholders, Stanhope have bought a long term lease of the site, and BBC Studioworks are then leasing the space for the studio operation from Stanhope.

BBC Studioworks is a wholly owned commercial subsidiary of the BBC (a bit like BBC Worldwide - and presumably now BBC Studios) who operate the studios on a commercial basis, available to all. (As the deal with ITV for the long term hire of TCs 2 3 for ITV Daytime demonstrates...)
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NG
noggin Founding member

Freesports

VMPhil posted:
noggin posted:
VMPhil posted:
Yes, but the point is that it wasn't always called Freeview+ and that brand could have been used for the DVB-T2 service if they'd stuck it out a while longer.


But at that point anyone marketing DVB-T2 receivers as anything other than 'Freeview HD' would have been a fool wouldn't they?

Possibly in the short-term, but not in the long-term IMO.


I disagree - anyone marketing DVB-T2 receivers, which had the unique USP of receiving HD, without putting HD in the brand name would have been certifiable...

Sky HD vs Freeview +? Which would one would you think gave you HD?

It's kind of irrelevant now, as new mainstream DVB-T only devices are disappearing.
NG
noggin Founding member

20 years since the death of Princess Diana

Whataday posted:
Doesn't St Paul's have plug-in points for broadcast?


There may be fibre connectivity to get the final signals out from the OB truck (though I think I've seen satellite uplinks used too), and in days gone by it may (not sure) have been on the old London 'LoCo' (London Coax) which was there for use by the BBC at lots of locations.

However that's a minor detail - the bigger issue in rigging those events it routing SMPTE fibres (or in rare cases triax) between individual cameras and the OB truck. That kind of cabling is integrated into some sports venues - but is far rarer in places like St Paul's, Westminster Abbey etc. However the team rigging these locations know what they are doing and have usually done it before...

Beware confusing a 'plug in point for broadcast' (which is usually just a way of plugging a single camera and some basic sound gear in to do a stand-up live) and a fully pre-rigged venue for multi-camera production. They are very different things.
NG
noggin Founding member

Fox News removed from Sky

DarthSidious posted:
Loving the agism on here.


I don't see any ageism. There's been no discrimination against older viewers - just a statement of the viewing demographics of a channel. Channels have average viewer ages, stating them is not ageism - it's stating a fact.
NG
noggin Founding member

Freesports

VMPhil posted:
noggin posted:
VMPhil posted:
Though it was originally called Freeview Playback and could have continued to be called that.


I think "+" had become tied to Sky+ in TV terms - and people 'got' the link. I'm not sure many people are aware of DAB+ as a thing...

Yes, but the point is that it wasn't always called Freeview+ and that brand could have been used for the DVB-T2 service if they'd stuck it out a while longer.


But at that point anyone marketing DVB-T2 receivers as anything other than 'Freeview HD' would have been a fool wouldn't they?
NG
noggin Founding member

Freesports

VMPhil posted:
UKnews posted:
Markymark posted:

Freeview+ might have been a better term. There's less confusion regarding DAB+, over vanilla DAB in the radio world

Hadn't Freeview+ already been used for PVRs that met the specifications laid down by Freeview?

Though it was originally called Freeview Playback and could have continued to be called that.


I think "+" had become tied to Sky+ in TV terms - and people 'got' the link. I'm not sure many people are aware of DAB+ as a thing...