noggin's posts, page 34

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NG
noggin Founding member

The TV Question Amnesty Thread

I'm not sure vertical video will become mainstream for domestic viewing - as our living rooms are better suited to wider TV aspect ratioss not taller ones.

Netflix and Prime video commission a lot of 2:1 aspect ratio (i.e. 16:8 ) content these days I think and 21:9, which is a similar ratio to Cinemascope or similar wide cinema standards was a serious proposal pushed by Hollywood (and you could - and may still be able to - buy 21:9 or similar TVs).

However do Netflix commission 2:1 because the letterbox bars look cinematic? If TV manufacturers switched to 2:1 - 16:8 displays, would Netflix then go to 16:7...?

I think we're probably going to have 16:9 for a while yet.

(Little known fact - the BBC's 405 line service didn't start 4:3 - it was actually 5:4 initially. They switched to 5:4 sometime in the early 50s ISTR)
NG
noggin Founding member

BBC Four to become archive channel (p15)

Spencer posted:
noggin posted:
The real cost benefit for moving away from linear to a 'chose what you want to watch' VOD system is that you don't have to fill a linear schedule - and can reduce your costs by simply making or commissioning fewer programmes. That was how the BBC Three cost-saving happened - the costs of distribution and playout were a relatively minor portion of that saving. The bulk of the savings were from no longer having to attempt to fill a 7 day schedule... (BBC Three was already quite repeat heavy - but post-budget cuts it would have really struggled)


This makes me wonder if a solution could be for BBC Three and Four to timeshare the same linear stream. So, for example, BBC Four on air Monday to Thursday evenings, and Three on Friday, Saturday and Sundays. Maybe a slightly messy solution, but perhaps it could work?


Unless the BBC sell the capacity to a third party, CBBC and CBeebies still need somewhere to broadcast... CBeebies time-shares the same capacity as BBC Four, CBBC used to time share with BBC Three.

(I know CBBC has extended into the old BBC Three 1900-2100 window, but that could surely be mitigated)
Rijowhi, MarkT76 and Brekkie gave kudos
NG
noggin Founding member

Top of the Pops

davidhorman posted:
I'm perpetually slightly miffed that they won't upload SD material to iPlayer at 50fps.

Would Starlight/Numero Uno at 10:45 come with a flashing images warning these days?


All the TOTP repeats on BBC Four will have been through a compliance edit and made safe for broadcast under current rules.

A show like Top of the Pops wouldn't really be allowed to just put a warning up if it were made these days, unless there were very strong reasons to broadcast material that would fail a photosensivity test.

All recorded shows - with few exceptions are expected to deliver with no photosensitivity failures. Live shows are expected to monitor their rehearsals through a Flashing Pattern Analyser (like a Harding) and modify anything that fails in rehearsal so that it passes a second rehearsal.

There are exceptions - but these are quite rare.
NG
noggin Founding member

Top of the Pops

davidhorman posted:
VMPhil posted:

They do, but for me it only works if I watch iPlayer through the TV. If I try watching it on a computer it doesn't work. At least, this was my experience with the older Louis Theroux programmes on there.


Just tried TOTP and Dad's Army and yes, turns out they are 50fps but only on the telly.


TOTP may be treated as HD within the BBC now - as the repeats have often been taken through an edit to comply them for modern broadcast standards (particularly for photosensitivity) and this may mean the final delivered master is now HD.
NG
noggin Founding member

Top of the Pops

james-2001 posted:

I still wish more streaming services would bring in 50/60fps streaming, especially premium one. If the BBC and now ITV can do it, why can't the big players like Netflix and Amazon?.


Amazon Prime Video have 50 or 60fps streaming for their live sport output. They switched very soon after they started doing Tennis.

I can also confirm that ITV Hub on the Apple TV is 50fps.
Last edited by noggin on 18 May 2020 11:37am
NG
noggin Founding member

Eurovision 2021 - Netherlands - NPO/AVROTROS/NOS

BillyH posted:
Helsinki 2007 was the first broadcast in HD, Athens was recorded in the format for test purposes but broadcast in SD everywhere. I think had the UK won a year later than they did (hosting in 1999 instead of Israel) we’d have had the first 16:9 contest a lot earlier, as May ‘98 was just that little bit too early given digital broadcasts hadn’t started yet here and absolutely nowhere in Europe was broadcasting in 16:9 as far as I know, except the occasional letterboxed movie showing in some countries.

I’m interested to know if the spokespeople during the voting are all in HD or not yet. Certainly in the late 2000s they were all 4:3 SD even in the HD era, but this wasn’t obvious on TV as they only took up a small part of the screen. I can’t find any up to date listing of what countries broadcast in HD now, has it really reached far flung places like Belarus or Armenia yet?


The voting spokespeople format remained in SD for a long time after the shows were produced in HD. It only changed to HD relatively recently, the last 5 years or so?

Similarly in recent years the voting has moved from being 'all satellite' to a mix of satellite and IP (and in some cases a mix of satellite and fibre).
NG
noggin Founding member

BBC Four to become archive channel (p15)

Ne1L C posted:
JetixFann450 posted:
Ne1L C posted:
There will always be a place for linear channels but streaming will become more important in the future. As I stated a few posts earlier having BBC 1,2 News and Kids as a core linear service with streaming for lesser events is going to be the best way forward.

You do have to take into consideration that broadcasting online is a cheap and cost-effective future they could end up with (doesn't require satellite/cable slots, capacity for more services, etc), plus it could mean more coverage for certain events in the similar way of Red Button. You could keep BBC Four online and on for the whole day, same with BBC Three as it would allow for programming to premiere plus an incentive to watch the channel. Yes, it won't be at the choice of the viewer as that's the "future of TV" but at least the viewer will have that option if they wanted to. Internet streaming could be the future of broadcasting at the BBC.


I agree with you. Streaming is very cost effective. Yes, BBC 3 and 4's output is repeats and would be better off on streaming. What I was saying was that the linear stations need to be kept mainly for that feeling of familiarity. Switching everything to streaming would fragment the BBC's audience.



Yes - though broadcast on satellite and terrestrial (cable is different as it doesn't cost UK mainstream broadcasters money) is a fixed cost however many people watch (so the "pence per viewer minute" costs decrease the more people who watch) - whereas broadcasters have to pay (either through CDN fees, or for scaling up their own CDNs) for each separate stream on streaming services (and the "pence per viewer minute" cost remains fixed). ITV and C4 may be able to offset the potential increased costs of streaming by selling more targeted adverts (they require a login so know more about you to target adverts at you)

The real cost benefit for moving away from linear to a 'chose what you want to watch' VOD system is that you don't have to fill a linear schedule - and can reduce your costs by simply making or commissioning fewer programmes. That was how the BBC Three cost-saving happened - the costs of distribution and playout were a relatively minor portion of that saving. The bulk of the savings were from no longer having to attempt to fill a 7 day schedule... (BBC Three was already quite repeat heavy - but post-budget cuts it would have really struggled)
NG
noggin Founding member

Eurovision 2021 - Netherlands - NPO/AVROTROS/NOS

IndigoTucker posted:
Ah!
I would have thought they'd have played with a HD camera at Eurovision at some point from the 80s onward?


They may well have had separate HD cameras for testing - but not a full multicamera production rig. There's a big difference between pointing an HD camera at a stage and running a full HD production.

2006 was the year that HD really became a reality for broadcasters in Europe - with BBC HD, SVT HD etc. all launching trials in readiness for the 2006 World Cup (which was produced in HD)

AIUI they have also shot some HDR and HFR test footage at recent events (possibly during rehearsals rather than transmission)

The real question was really why it took so long for the ESC to go 16:9... 2005 was very late from a UK point of view (and Sweden had been 16:9 for almost as long). Other countries took a lot longer though - like France and Denmark.
NG
noggin Founding member

Eurovision 2021 - Netherlands - NPO/AVROTROS/NOS

IndigoTucker posted:

The 96 contest kept dropping into 16x9 letterbox for the acts, so perhaps this was PALPlus?


No - it wasn't PALPlus - there were graphics over the black bars at some points which would have defeated the PAL Plus encode and decode.

PALPlus put 'helper' information in the black letterbox bars (it was coded onto PAL subcarrier at black level - so if you turned up the brightness of your TV you could see blue - and yellow? - picture information) This helper information was used to add back some of the missing 144 vertical lines of information required to make a 576 line 16:9 picture from the 432 lines of active video in the letterbox. It worked as well as you might imagine...

PAL Plus wasn't ever a production format - only a broadcast format. It was expected that a show would be produced in 16:9 576i - either in SDI, analogue component or the BBC/Snell and Wilcox COM3 system (component compatible composite that used a clever tweak to PAL encoding and decoding to effectively remove composite artefacts) - and only the final transmission encoding was PALPlus - you wouldn't have had PALPlus encoders on every camera, nor would you have had the coder in your OB truck.
NG
noggin Founding member

Eurovision 2021 - Netherlands - NPO/AVROTROS/NOS

Sh1ruba posted:
UKnews posted:
IndigoTucker posted:
Yes the EBU now have rebuilt the archive of Eurovisions for internal use from different broadcasters off-air recordings, even fan recordings, to build as clean a copy as possible from the different sources. They even dubbed the stereo audio over from the FM simulcasts where available.

Which leads to the question, when was the contest first offered to broadcasters with Stereo audio?


How about a definitive list:

First Colour (1968 isn't it?)
First Stereo Audio
First 16:9
First HD (also first 5.1?)

etc

I did see the question raised - I think on Twitter - as to when the commentary moved from 'phone' quality, certainly as far as the BBC is concerned. There is a big jump between 1980 (Netherlands) and 1983 (Munich) - leaving out 1981 & 1982 given Dublin to London and Harrogate to London would have been much easier.

As with the other changes it varied between broadcaster, using 1984 as an example - the SVT commentary is 'phone' quality, the BBC and ARD are are 'full' bandwidth (well at least 7-8khz).

Kiev 2005 was the first in 16:9. The last ever one in 4:3 was Istanbul 2004.

And Athens 2006 was the first in HD.


Athens 2006 was the first produced in HD, but it wasn't available to licensees in HD, so was broadcast only in 16:9 SD. (It was effectively a dry-run - and that spider camera looked pretty bad in SD so goodness knows what it looked like in HD - if indeed that camera was HD). There is every possibility that the spider cam and RF cameras were still SD upconverted (as HD RF cameras were still quite tricky at that point)

Helsinki 2007 was the first produced AND broadcast in 16:9 HD.
NG
noggin Founding member

Eurovision 2021 - Netherlands - NPO/AVROTROS/NOS

IndigoTucker posted:
Yes the EBU now have rebuilt the archive of Eurovisions for internal use from different broadcasters off-air recordings, even fan recordings, to build as clean a copy as possible from the different sources.


Why would the broadcaster recordings be off-air? Most UK broadcasters recorded either the output of presentation (the BBC routinely did this for live events) or the output of the studio feeding presentation when making recordings of live shows.

Off-air recording wasn't that common (as it was significantly poorer quality than a baseband recording) - though it was used in some cases I believe.

Quote:

They even dubbed the stereo audio over from the FM simulcasts where available.


Yes - I can imagine that if the FM simulcast was stereo but the TV broadcast was mono, then the original VT recording would have been mono (and the radio archive recording stereo).
NG
noggin Founding member

Eurovision 2021 - Netherlands - NPO/AVROTROS/NOS

TIGHazard posted:
dvboy posted:
Gary McEwan posted:
Is YouTube stream got Dutch commentary? How on earth would the BBC have a copy of that?

It's not from the BBC, it's from the EBU. Presumably the BBC only have a copy with their own commentary on it.




Presumably people were confused by the video description

"We are happy to announce that broadcaster BBC has made available the Eurovision Song Contest 1974!"


Yes - understandable - but the BBC made it available by granting permission to use it, not necessarily by providing the master tape/file that is used. The rights to all of the contests up until the early 00s remain with the original broadcaster, not the EBU.

A few years ago the EBU requested that all broadcasters submit everything they have in terms of audio and video recordings from previous contests so that they could create a definitive archive of the contest within the EBU.

Most broadcasters won't have archived a clean copy of the contest - they will have recorded their own version complete with commentary.