noggin's posts, page 242

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NG
noggin Founding member

Sky's Branding

Hatton Cross posted:
noggin posted:


That is until the BBC start putting HD variants of BBC One in England on satellite...

I wouldn't even wait. Move BBC One HD on Sky to 101. Then list the SD region numbers on the regional opt out barker screen - and you'll have no problem.

I'd wager that the vast majority of people who are watching BBC One HD on 115 are already used to clicking away from that channel to 101 to find the regional news when prompted.


It's not a decision the BBC or Sky can take AIUI - Ofcom mandate that the 'proper' regional version should be on the most prominent EPG position. If this is available in HD and SD then the HD one can take the slot, if the 'proper' regional variant is SD-only, then the SD version has to be there.

There would - or should - be no reason to list multiple channel numbers on the barker - as there would still only need to be one channel number allocated for the 'right' BBC One SD region (as now with the mapping to 101) ?

If there isn't an SD variant that precisely matches - I suspect the 'nearest' (who decides?) takes its place.
Stuart and London Lite gave kudos
NG
noggin Founding member

BBC FIDO app

elmarko posted:
For an organisation like the BBC I personally think it's pretty shoddy to make use of open source stuff and then not at least let us download it and use it. Not saying we need to see *their* code per se.

Then again what closed commercial software DOESN'T use open source stuff somewhere in it.

I'm just jealous because I'd love to have a play and see if it's useful.


The BBC are quite careful about releasing stuff that could be seen to 'distort the marketplace through public subsidy'... There are commercial companies who would accuse the BBC of that if they released some in-house developed products as open source (or commercially)

The BBC DID pay for some development to be done in ffmbc (the broadcast fork of ffmpeg) that was Open Sourced - so it has ploughed stuff back into the community. BBC developers have also added additional functionality to ffmbc (some of which has found its way into ffmpeg) - adding BBC intellectual property that is now out of patent (Weston 3-field deinterlacing and some frame rate conversion based on BBC 80s standards conversion research)

SVT in Sweden has had potential litigation issues with both Viz and ChyronHego accusing them of the same with CasparCG - though SVT seem quite confident in their position.

As for it being previously 'publicly available' - I'm not sure it ever was officially. The BBC Editing Site may have been available to anyone who found it - but the content on it may not have been free for them to use. (The equivalent of leaving your front door open not meaning people can come into your house)
NG
noggin Founding member

The journey towards Channels 1, 2 3 etc

RJG posted:
noggin posted:
Markymark posted:
As said 405 lines had very few viewers by 1985. 405 line only sets were not made or sold after the mid 60s, so the chance of a 20 year TV still working by 1985 was slim (but there were of course some)


It slowed in the early 90s, but didn't stop. The final UHF (analogue) relay to open was Portbury, near Bristol in summer 1998, two months before DTT roll out started.


Presumably if you were in one of the few VHF 405-only areas which didn't have UHF coverage (at least of BBC One/ITV) you had a strong incentive to keep your VHF 405-compatible set (which may also have been 625-compatible) running though.


Indeed. Dual standard sets, with both VHF and UHF tuners, were available from the early sixties to around the mid 70s. There were even dual standard colour sets which allowed viewers to watch the VHF channels (in black and white) as well as BBC 2 colour programmes. Interestingly the Scottish Borders had a strange anomaly....Border TV was available in colour from Selkirk from March 1972. It wasn't until May 1973 that BBC 1 and BBC 2 colour transmissions began.


Can you imagine the dual-standard nightmare we'd have had if ITV had been allowed to stay 405 VHF and introduce NTSC or PAL colour on that standard, whilst 625 BBC Two went with conventional PAL 4.43?
NG
noggin Founding member

Sky's Branding

gottago posted:
I don't understand why the HD swap on ITV and C4 didn't already take place for people with a corresponding HD region given that BBC1 has been doing it outside of England and BBC2 has been doing it within England for a while now.


I think it is probably because until now Sky haven't offered it as an option with that level of granularity, and only in nations terms? (Unless Ofcom have a view?)

It could be that C4 and ITV were considered a single 'service' but BBC One and Two national variations were deemed separate services? (Particularly C4)
NG
noggin Founding member

The journey towards Channels 1, 2 3 etc

Markymark posted:
RJG posted:
JAS84 posted:
Then someone messed up there. The VHF switch off should have been scheduled for after the UHF service launched. I bet the residents there were furious.


As said 405 lines had very few viewers by 1985. 405 line only sets were not made or sold after the mid 60s, so the chance of a 20 year TV still working by 1985 was slim (but there were of course some)

RJG posted:

The UHF network of transmitters continued to be expanded into the early 90s.


It slowed in the early 90s, but didn't stop. The final UHF (analogue) relay to open was Portbury, near Bristol in summer 1998, two months before DTT roll out started.


Presumably if you were in one of the few VHF 405-only areas which didn't have UHF coverage (at least of BBC One/ITV) you had a strong incentive to keep your VHF 405-compatible set (which may also have been 625-compatible) running though.
NG
noggin Founding member

Sky's Branding

AIUI the most significant change is that it gets away from the 'all or nothing' SD or HD EPG decisions.

At the moment, in the UK (don't know about STV), ITV SD is on 103 with ITV HD on 178. This is because even though some viewers have their correct regional version of ITV HD available, because not all versions are in HD, ITV SD is mapped to 103.

In the proposed changes, if your version of ITV is available in HD, the HD version will be mapped to 103, and the SD version shunted elsewhere. This is a significant improvement.

It won't improve things for BBC One in England, but will for large numbers of ITV viewers, and I guess C4 viewers in London.

After these changes people in England will have :

101 BBC One SD
102 BBC Two HD
103 ITV HD or SD depending on postcode
104 C4 HD or SD depending on postcode
105 C5 HD

That is until the BBC start putting HD variants of BBC One in England on satellite...
NG
noggin Founding member

International News Presentation: Past and Present

Mr Q posted:
noggin posted:
JAS84 posted:
German version of Newsround, eh? Do any other countries do something similar?


Yes. Sweden has Lilla Aktuellt. https://www.svt.se/barnkanalen/barnplay/lilla-aktuellt

It broadcasts from the main SVT Nyheter news studio - where their main bulletins like Rapport, and I think Aktuellt, come from.

Denmark's DR has "Ultra Nyt", also from the main studio for TV Avisen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiEgHzxDyRE

I think TV 2 has also done a kids/schools news service - though I don't know if they still do.


Basically - if the BBC do something, you can pretty much guarantee that NRK, SVT and/or DR will do something similar - and probably ARD/ZDF too. The public service sensibilities of British, Scandinavian and German broadcasters are pretty close.

(SVT even use very similar page numbers to CEEFAX on their teletext service)
London Lite, ADmanamDA and Quatorzine Neko gave kudos
NG
noggin Founding member

The journey towards Channels 1, 2 3 etc

Si-Co posted:
DVB Cornwall posted:
Sadly you're incorrect LWT ran from 1900 on Fridays from the 1968 franchise change, as mentioned previously here.


Did the London weekday and London weekend stations share the same VHF channel number, or did viewers actually have to change channels at 7pm on a Friday to continue watching ITV?


They were broadcast on the same frequency from the same transmitter - which was operated by the ITA/IBA. The switch happened between the outputs of the two franchises playout operations.

There was also a daily switch for TVam when that started in every ITV franchise area - though by then it was UHF. (Or did TVam also go out for the last little bit of the ITV 405 VHF simulcasts? I guess it might / must have?)
NG
noggin Founding member

International News Presentation: Past and Present

JAS84 posted:
WW Update posted:
The SNT Three posted:
There are a number of joint ARD-ZDF ventures: 3sat, KI.KA (children's) and Phoenix (politics and documentaries). ARD and ZDF also collaborate with France Télévisions in the production of Franco-German cultural channel Arte.


Speaking of KI.KA, here's Logo!, their newscast for kids, produced in ZDF's news studio:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gm7fJUHVvQI

A German version of Newsround, eh? Do any other countries do something similar?


Yes. Sweden has Lilla Aktuellt. https://www.svt.se/barnkanalen/barnplay/lilla-aktuellt

It broadcasts from the main SVT Nyheter news studio - where their main bulletins like Rapport, and I think Aktuellt, come from.
NG
noggin Founding member

The journey towards Channels 1, 2 3 etc

Inspector Sands posted:
noggin posted:

The US is now in a slightly bizarre situation that their on-screen channel numbers (and PSIP LCN-equivalent) often indicate the legacy analogue channel number they used to broadcast on, and don't reflect their current RF channel (though some managed to find a way of staying I think).

Yes as I understand it a lot did. I do quite like the way they organise their 'sub-channels' with the main channel on 9 and the sub channels on 9.2, 9.3 etc. It would be a nice way to organise our EPGs, though I imagine the decisions about whether to have a channel like More4 or BBC2 is a channel or a sub channel would be quite tricky
Quote:
This is further complicated by a repack process and the move to ATSC 3.0 which may finally see the US move to a more European model of multiple main stations on a single RF mux.

So if that happens they're going to be forced to share transmission facilities between stations in a market? A lot more efficient but I imagine not too popular with the engineers working at the stations, I assume there'll be a lot of redundant masts etc too


Windows Media Center in Windows 7 allows you to manually edit the EPG (or third party apps do - I can't remember now) - and allocate channels to .1, .2 etc. variants.

I did this with the FTA satellite stuff at one point : BBC One HD on 1, BBC One SD London on 1.1 etc. but I didn't really get on with it. You get so used to surfing up and down in a certain order that changing that order gets a bit odd.
NG
noggin Founding member

The journey towards Channels 1, 2 3 etc

Inspector Sands posted:
It's also because we (in Europe) have national or regional networks that consist of multiple transmitters so using actual channel numbers would be extremely complicated - BBC1 was on ch 21, 22, 23, 24 etc depending on where you lived.

In contrast in the US where each TV station is one VHF/UHF channel (with sometimes a few low powered relays) so they do quote their actual channel number. The same in the early days of ITV when Tyne Tees would be on a single channel - 8 so could quote it


Yep - the US is a different world in TV terms. The network-based structure of European TV definitely favours LCN-style presets rather than RF channels.

The US is now in a slightly bizarre situation that their on-screen channel numbers (and PSIP LCN-equivalent) often indicate the legacy analogue channel number they used to broadcast on, and don't reflect their current RF channel (though some managed to find a way of staying I think). This is further complicated by a repack process and the move to ATSC 3.0 which may finally see the US move to a more European model of multiple main stations on a single RF mux.
NG
noggin Founding member

International News Presentation: Past and Present

Hazimworks posted:
Rkolsen posted:
Hazimworks posted:
Still in the topic of German TV news, SRF cancelled its edition of 10 vor 10 (SRF's late night news) last week due to a server crash, instead airing a repeat of Tagesschau which was aired earlier in the evening.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7I7MZNa__g4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yvQe-jF_Sg


That's pretty bad. To preempt one show but two days in a row? Any word on what type of server went kaput? It looks like they were able get on air, with a simple choma key (or is that screen), and have the ability to playout an earlier episode (unless* the network played it out again).

*Maybe I got it wrong but wasn't mentioned that they set up an affiliate style system? If so they count retransmits while the others are local.

These two news articles that I found are saying that the cancellation was because of a "fault in the video interface".

https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/kultur/fernsehen/10-vor-10-faellt-wegen-technischer-probleme-aus/story/30529863
https://www.aargauerzeitung.ch/panorama/vermischtes/10-vor-10-wegen-technischer-probleme-ausgefallen-131600019


That sounds like a Google Translate translation. If you read technical German I think the issue is the video editing or vision cutting system.

Quote:
"«10 vor 10» sei wegen einer Störung am Video-Schnittsystem ausgefallen. «Daraus werden Beiträge in die Sendung eingespielt. Das war leider nicht möglich», heisst es auf Twitter."


My rough schoolboy German translates that as there was a problem with the video editing - or possibly video cutting (could be automated vision mixing) - which meant that recorded content couldn't be played out?