noggin's posts, page 292

15,946 search results, most recent first

NG
noggin Founding member

US Presidential Election 2016

mark posted:
scottishtv posted:
They will be in the studio on the night itself, but an impressive backdrop for the week before the election on CNN:

*



This looks fantastic. Just watching it now and the backdrop is a beautiful sunrise over the Washington Monument.

Are they upgrading the main DC studio for election night, or are they just using the rooftop studio because they want to?


Wonder how warm it is...
NG
noggin Founding member

ITV Box Office

AxG posted:
I'm still bemused as to why some ITV HD regions aren't on Freeview, and yet are on Sky & Freesat.


Presumably the BBC / Atos / Arqiva (who own the licence for, code and mux and distribute PSB3) costs are more than ITV are prepared to pay for the additional coding and mux and distribution chains.

The way PSB3 HD DVB-T2 works, someone would need to pay for encoders for BBC One HD, BBC Two HD, ITV HD, C4HD, Five HD and Film4+1 SD in every region that carries different content on a regional channel. If ITV are the only broadcaster who wants unique content on a given transmitter - I assume there is a cost to ITV for this? ITV don't just pay for an encoder for their own content - because PSB3 is statmuxed, all channels in the mux need to be uniquely encoded for it to work. For years PSB1 - aka the BBC SD mux - carried BBC One HD at a fixed bitrate to allow BBC regions to opt-out by replacing it with another fixed bitrate service encoded in the regional centre, with only BBC Two, BBC Choice/Three/CBBC and BBC News/BBC News 24 - and at one point I think BBC Four - in a statmux excluding BBC One - but this wasn't as efficient as statmuxing everything - so now the regional feeds are sent to a central coding and mux operation to be encoded in a single stat mux.

(Stat mux = Statistical Multiplexing - where all channels in the statmux pool dynamically share a single pool of bandwith, with bitrate dynamically changed based on the complexity of each channels' content in encoder terms)
NG
noggin Founding member

The Freeview Thread

MetalGearRex posted:
http://www.a516digital.com/2016/10/bbc-uhd-internet-first-freeview-very.html?m=1

The BBC plans to offer 4K content first on the iPlayer - before launching a channel showcasing 4K material.

Yep - the first BBC UHD broadcast was via iPlayer a few years ago (though very low-key) with the Queen's Christmas message (aka The Queen's Speech) being produced in UHD and available on a small number of UHD sets via iPlayer.

Quote:

Before thinking twice about a new 4K service, BBC One and Two HD are planned to have regions and nations rolled out throughout 2017/18 - killing off any need for an SD simulcast. I'd also imagine that the switch to DVB-T2 on Freeview will influence this.


Yep - the BBC will be able to retire the SD channels once DVB-T is replaced entirely by DVB-T2. Until then they will need to simulcast.

Quote:

Expect this 4K channel on possibly PSB3, because PSB1 will be swamped with HD streams of ONE, TWO, FOUR/CBeebies, CBBC and the News channel.


Possibly - but it's important to remember that with future changes to UHF broadcast spectrum, we may lose a couple of muxes (COM7 and COM8 are potentially short-lived) so even with T2 we may not have the luxury of spectrum for UHD, even using HEVC/H265 compression.
NG
noggin Founding member

Channel 4 drops programme half way through

I don't know how C4 cope with multi part delivered shows in the brave new world of File Delivery. Could be that the parts that played were OK - but a problem became apparent with the part that was about to be played (i.e. a technical difficulty)?
NG
noggin Founding member

The 1980 ITV franchise auction

Markymark posted:

The three extra relays in Norfolk to restore Anglia, also carried BBC 1 East (but not BBC 2 or C4, so viewers still had to use Belmont for them, as the article alludes to)


Does one of those relays cover Sandringham? ISTR hearing HMQ prefered Look East to Look North...
NG
noggin Founding member

X Factor 2016

Whataday posted:

Also I don't think time-shifting is a poor excuse for lower overnights - people are consuming television in this way far more often than say, five years ago and more importantly TV companies now monetise it a lot more successfully. It's certainly not fair for the media to compare overnights in 2016 with consolidated ratings in 2008.


However I think it is fair to compare X Factor overnights with Strictly overnights...

There is an argument that if you are going to watch both shows, you'll watch Strictly live, because of the lack of adverts, and timeshift X Factor so you can skip them, but I'm not sure it justifies the near 4million difference in audience last night?
NG
noggin Founding member

X Factor 2016

peterrocket posted:
The question is, with the strange removal of the LIVE bug during performances... are they lip-syncing to the recorded tracks or sing live again?


I wouldn't assume that the LIVE bug being removed on previous weeks meant that performances were pre-recorded, or lip-synced live to pre-recorded tracks. I suspect it was more an aesthetic decision, as the LIVE graphic is not exactly subtle, and being top of frame can collide with faces...
NG
noggin Founding member

North American Affilliates/Network Set Design

Rkolsen posted:
harshy posted:

Not sure why these NBC feeds exist here, I only wished the BBC did a similar thing Sad

I imagine the unencrypted MSNBC feeds there so crews in the field working from trucks can view the program that their correspondent appears on. Frequently they'll ask about one of their correspondents about a previous segment that aired before them for their opinion.


Why would you need a satellite link for that? Surely any reporter will be listening to IFB (Clean Feed is the UK term) before their segment (either on-camera or in the truck in the warm) - there is no need for vision for a reporter to be able to follow previous segments in the show.

Of course having reverse vision is a nice thing to have - but it's far from essential and not having it doesn't prevent a reporter from being across other elements in a show.

You certainly wouldn't want the reporter listening to the audio accompanying reverse vision when on-camera (though sitting in a warm truck to watch it is obviously a different thing).
NG
noggin Founding member

STV Main Thread:

ttt posted:
I've been watching a bit of STV HD over the last week, and have noticed a strange artefact of the methods they're using for this version of their station.

The adverts, and "STV HD" ident, are shown in HD. But the rest of the continuity (break bumpers included) is provided by switching the SD channel back in. The timing of this is off, so at the end of each break the HD advert is switched to SD for the last few frames, and the picture quality (position on the screen, colour/brightness levels and even size) on the SD feed differs from the HD, resulting in a particularly horrible effect which makes my eyes go funny (the picture suddenly becoming blurred on the same image).

I've seen a few occasions where the advert goes from HD to SD, break bumper plays in SD, then they flick back to HD for the ident -- but this sometimes results in a flash of the advert (back in HD) before the ident plays.

They really need to get this sorted out -- it looks very unprofessional.


Sounds similar to the way BBC One HD used to work. Effectively BBC One HD opted out of BBC One SD upconverted to HD for HD shows. However on live HD shows the automation was such that you would get a few frames of the HD show downconverted to SD and then upconverted again at the end of the show. There was a noticable quality change - and also a size shift because one of the devices in the chain probably ignored the accurate SD standards (lots of kit does).

Boring point : 16:9 and 4:3 SD are 702x576 NOT 720x576 in 50Hz territories. There are 9 samples of space either side which make the 720x576 SD picture a little bit wider than 16:9 (or 4:3).

If you downconvert a 1920x1080 HD picture to 50Hz SD you should scale 1920x1080 to 702x576 (and have black in the 9 samples either side).

If you upconvert a 720x576 SD signal to 1080i HD you should take the central 702x576 portion and scale that to 1920x1080. If you get either of these wrong, you end up with a size bump.
NG
noggin Founding member

X Factor 2016

peterrocket posted:
If you listen to the songs on Spotify - the contestant versions, you'll find they are clean of applause or FX and all have clean outs.

So obviously those are recorded somewhere in advance if they appeared straight after last night show.


I suspect you're right - they will almost certainly record them cleanly at an earlier point if they are going to be commercially released, particularly if the tracks are on streaming/download services instantly (without time for a decent mixing session)

However I know that the X Factor sound team record clean stems as well - so there is no reason for a commercial release of the same performance to sound the same as the broadcast mix, even if it were taken from the live performance. They will cleanly record individual vocal mics (which will be surprisingly free of audience etc.) and audience effects mics etc. on multiple tracks.
NG
noggin Founding member

Chromecast Ultra

davidhorman posted:
London Lite posted:
Jake posted:
There's an official adapter available for Ethernet on the Chromecast/Chromecast 2. https://store.google.com/product/ethernet_adapter_for_chromecast


I see what they've done, the Ethernet port also doubles up to power the device.


I don't see what they've done as apparently the Google Store thinks Jersey is a completely separate country, which means we're not even allowed to have a look Rolling Eyes (we can't even install iPlayer from the Play Store, but don't get me started on that)

What images I've been able to find seem to show that the power comes from the wall, to a box which has an ethernet port, which then connects to the micro USB on the Chromecast to provide power and network - so it's not actually power-over-ethernet (which is a thing, but isn't really a consumer thing).

Is that right?


Looks like they are bundling the PSU+Ethernet OTG adaptor that is an optional extra for the Chromecast and Chromecast 2. This is presumably because UHD bitrates can be higher, and thus a cabled connection is likely to be a better solution in some congested wireless areas.

Effectively the PSU is also a USB OTG (on the go) Ethernet adaptor. (Micro USB OTG allows a Micro USB-B port to be used as both a slave - for connecting to a PC for syncing, and a Master - for connecting to peripherals like keyboards, USB flash drives, network adaptors etc. and in some cases allows power to be taken from the USB port in either case)

(USB Type-C also offers this functionality)
NG
noggin Founding member

Chromecast Ultra

London Lite posted:
Jake posted:
There's an official adapter available for Ethernet on the Chromecast/Chromecast 2. https://store.google.com/product/ethernet_adapter_for_chromecast


I see what they've done, the Ethernet port also doubles up to power the device.


I get what you are trying to say - but I think what they have actually done is ensured that the MicroUSB connector on the Chromecast and Chromecast 2 - which most people use just for power - isn't just a power input port but is instead a USB OTG port (like a lot - but not all - Android tablets and phones have).

USB OTG allows you to connect USB devices (usually keyboards and mice, but Ethernet adaptors often work as well) to a port usually used to connect a device the other way round (effectively it allows a device to be both a USB master and a USB slave device on the same connector)

In this case I suspect Google have built a power supply + USB OTG Ethernet adaptor combo.

I've read reports that the adaptor also works on some Android tablets, and other devices with OTG ports, like the Raspberry Pi Zero's Micro USB USB port (not Micro USB Power port) . In fact the Pi Zero + Chromecast Ethernet adaptor is a very neat way of powering a Pi Zero and giving it Ethernet connectivity (and costs less than a Pi B + PSU)