noggin's posts, page 93

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NG
noggin Founding member

Eurovision 2019

UKnews posted:
Noggin will be able to correct me if I’m wrong but I believe that, in the past - less so now - the EBU would buy sports rights on behalf of their members and each would in turn buy them from the EBU, ensuring coverage from PSBs of major events. Whilst a lot of the major sports bodies now handle this themselves (or through a specialist agency) there are quite a lot of sports bodies (especially in winter sports and slightly less high profile sports) who work closely with the EBU in selling their rights. Even those who sell their own rights are often working with the EBU for distribution.

As examples - the most recent IAAF deal for the World Athletics Championships (and other events) was done with the EBU. Until 2012 the Olympic rights for Europe were sold via the EBU- my 2012 accreditation lists the organisation as “EBU - GBBBC”.


Yes - the EBU used to negotiate pan-European rights to the Olympic games on behalf of PSBs across Europe. However the IOC decided they could get more money by taking a deal with a commercial broadcaster (Discovery/Eurosport) - though some individual PSBs (the BBC, France Televisons etc. made local deals)

Not only did the EBU make rights deals, they also used to operate an on-demand portal for smaller countries who couldn't operate a comprehensive live streaming service of their own.

The EBU is incredibly good at supporting smaller public service broadcasters across Europe (as, it has to be said, is the BBC Media Action - formerly BBC World Service Trust)

Quote:

Worth adding that are certain things the BBC gets included with the membership fee, for others your being a member just gives you the option to access it.

For example the EBU have a private fibre optic network with many points of presence across Europe (FINE - Fibre Network of Eurovision), but you still have to book and pay for capacity on the service (cost depending on the type and amount of traffic you want to send). The BBC have used it for quite a few events (TV and Radio) and will again next weekend.


Yes - though AIUI FINE and the EBU/Eurovision satellite operations may be being 'spun out' of the EBU slightly to make them a more arms-length commercial arm.

FINE was partially created to service the various Olympic Summer and Winter Games venues and is a very impressive operation, used by many broadcasters globally (and not just EBU members)
NG
noggin Founding member

Eurovision 2019

gottago posted:
A My Heritage managed to slip through then on BBC4.

Gary McEwan posted:
Have the BBC switched feeds? They just cut away while they were going to the break and briefly showed the sponsored break bumper.


The My Heritage logo on that break sting also went out in other countries that have been taking a feed without sponsorship graphics.
Last edited by noggin on 17 May 2019 10:44am - 2 times in total
NG
noggin Founding member

Eurovision 2019

JKDerry posted:
sigma421 posted:
JKDerry posted:
Will the BBC continue to fund a large chunk of the EBU budget? We are hated by all of Europe, why do we bother providing millions to the EBU and then be treated like crap?

Because, as is pointed out every year, this song contest is only a small part of what the BBC gets out of Eurovision and, as three and a half hours of Saturday night prime time goes, it’s cheap telly.

What does the BBC get out of funding the large chunk of the EBU budget? Sorry, I am not that clued up on the EBU.


We get the EVN News Exchange - which is multiple daily exchanges of news footage and stories between EBU members, stand-up positions at news events across Europe etc. (Most non-BBC shot European news pictures you see on BBC News are probably from EVN, and lots of live two-ways with BBC reporters on breaking news stories will often be from EBU facilities)

Plus the EBU are one of the main global standards bodies, and the BBC is very closely involved with setting and applying those standards (along with the German ITU)

The EBU is a fantastic organisation at co-ordinating best practice and common interchange standards - plus it facilitates an environment of cross-European broadcast co-operation between public service broadcasters. There are committees and symposia on all sorts of areas of the industry - technical, kids TV production, drama production etc. that are genuinely really useful. There is also great radio sharing (like the Euradio classical overnight stuff)

The Eurovision Song Contest is just a minor part of the EBU. (We also get the Vienna New Year's Day Concert too Smile )
NG
noggin Founding member

Eurovision 2019

JetixFann450 posted:
thegeek posted:
The final few minutes are up on iPlayer now.

And of course, no acknowledgement of the break in transmission. I mean, it was the last few minutes so it wasn't like you missed anything. But that's surprising none of the producers actually told one of them that BBC Four lost the feed.


The normal rule in live TV is to carry on as if you are on-air (so you have a clean recording - and because in many cases you may still be on-air via some routes - particularly on BBC One and ITV where there are multiple Playout areas and routes) and only apologise if you definitely make it back to live transmission. As that didn't happen on BBC Four last night there was no point at which it made sense to apologise.
NG
noggin Founding member

Jeremy Kyle Axed

Aaron_2015 posted:
Not surprised at all by the announcement, although I didn’t think it would be quite so soon. This Morning shoehorned the statement in at the start of the show, presumably to avoid being criticised for not covering it.

DeMarkay posted:
Big mistake by ITV.


Not sure how you’ve reached that conclusion, if I’m honest.

I don’t think the situation is comparable to Love Island at all. The two former contestants who sadly took their own lives did so a significant amount of time after appearing on the show. In both instances, Love Island was not the sole cause or an immediate contributor. Both contestants were already well known on Instagram before appearing on the show, and other issues (eg. financial and relationship based) player a major part. The Jeremy Kyle Show, on the other hand, has directly led to, or significantly contributed to, the death of a participant just a week after appearing on the show.

There’s no hypocrisy at hand here, the situations are just not comparable.


I think the situations are different - but they are comparable when it comes to a duty of care responsibility to contributors.

Jeremy Kyle can have a massive and life changing effect on someones personal relationships with loved-ones, amplified by the publicity.

Love Island can have different, but similarly life changing effects as a result of publicity too. A short-lived window of major increases in your earning abilities may put people in the positions of trying to live a lifestyle long term that is unsustainable, and only really a very short term thing. Add on the pressures of living this life on social media, and you have another potentially toxic situation that members of the public have been put in for the entertainment of others, and the profit of shareholders.

ITV in both cases have a duty of care requirement to ensure people are properly aware and prepared for their exposure and its effects.

Personally I've never understood any justification for Jeremy Kyle's style of show. It's just never seemed to me to be in the public interest, and feels like it reduces its subjects to 'dancing bears'.
NG
noggin Founding member

Eurovision 2019

Quatorzine Neko posted:
France 4 broadcasted the semi-final without any major technical problem (only minor, and short, sound issues). And during the breaks, they didn't show anything else than what took place in Tel Aviv.

However, the commentators are still awful here in France, chatting more or less meaninglessly instead of translating the anchors' interventions and interviews, sometimes even resulting in amputating one or two seconds of songs.


Interesting that France 4 took the feed with heavier sponsorship and product placement. The UK, Norway, Denmark and Sweden I've checked and they had a sponsorship-free feed (rather than masking sponsored elements) I believe Germany, Belgium, Netherlands and Israel may also have had a sponsorship-free feed.

(Denmark took a sponsor-free feed, but ran a pre-show MyHeritage sponsor bumper, as I guess in Denmark out-of-show sponsorship is allowed, as it is in Sweden and Norway for international shows I believe. Melodifestivalen's final is 'international' as they make it available free-of-charge to the Baltic states I believe...)

*

*

France 4 also don't seem to have used the host broadcaster style for any of their additional graphics.

*

They did - however - manage to remain on-air until the contest had finished.
Last edited by noggin on 15 May 2019 12:55pm - 4 times in total
NG
noggin Founding member

The Yorkshire and Lincolnshire Thread

Technologist posted:

The DTT mux does not have Teletext subtitles in it as was required for analogue ..... but the DSAT does for Sky boxes ... hence the use of a DSAT feed .


Of course! That makes complete sense now!

Quote:

The regions are fed ST 2022-6 SDI over IP both to and from the regional opt switch and then coded and muxed and then given to Arqiva at ASI who I think use ST2022-2 IP to the transmitter


Ah - when did the 9Mbs MPEG2 BBC One network distribution become deprecated - was that when coding moved from local DSat and DTT CBR encoders to backhaul for coding and mux, or was it when the Energis/C&W/Vodafone connectivity was replaced by BT? (The 2022-6/-2 stuff makes me think the latter?)
NG
noggin Founding member

The Yorkshire and Lincolnshire Thread

Rkolsen posted:
noggin posted:
Rkolsen posted:

I was going by the opt switch being replaced by Sky DSAT receiver.


Yes - but that's not a signal provided by a third party. The BBC services received by Sky (and Freesat) receivers are not uplinked or 'provided' by Sky. They are simply receiving signals broadcast by the BBC in a format that Sky receivers can receive (i.e. the BBC and Sky/Freesat co-operate on EPG data provision so that BBC transponders, uplinked by the BBC - or companies sub-contracted by the BBC - carry Sky and Freesat EPG data, and automatically map the correct services to agreed channel numbers at the bouquet level etc.)

This is very different to the US model, where all services on DIrecTV and Dish are, I believe, uplinked by DirecTV or Dish, and broadcasters don't uplink their own services to these platforms. (The US satellite services are far more like 'cable headends in the Sky' than the UK services. Other European countries follow the US model more though.)

Okay, I guess I am surprised that they are also already taking a compressed feed in one codec to transmit in another.
Yes, DirecTV and Dish have their own headend and uplink everything at a central location. Each TV market that they uplink from (some markets aren’t uplinked at all - but most of the 210 DMAs are) they have a receive location that takes the off air signals from stations which are sent to the uplink facilities.


There is no recompression going on in this example. The DSat receiver was a short term solution to feed the analogue (i.e. uncompressed) composite PAL transmitter prior to analogue switch off (rather than re-routing the microwave circuits when the BBC moved the Cambridge operation to a new building). It was pretty much the same quality as if someone has plugged a Sky box RF modulator output directly into their TV, albeit with NICAM stereo audio (not mono - as domestic RF modulators were)

AIUI a similar approach was used to feed the BBC One Jersey transmitter when BBC Channel Islands relocated (and the opt-out chain was via Plymouth)

The DVB-T transmissions were (and are) coded and muxed in central locations to allow for stat muxing, and don't have an intermediate codec. They are fed via fibre from the coding and mux locations, I guess sending an ASI stream? (The BBC One network feed that is the 'back stop' of each opt-switch that reaches the regional centres is 9Mbs MPEG2, however the return leg to coding and mux is uncompressed SDI-rate).

I guess it was easier and cheaper to source a DVB-S off-air feed with a Sky received at Sandy Heath than install gear to decode the incoming DVB-T transport stream to feed the BBC One analogue TX from the BBC One DVB-T feed sent to the transmitter?
Last edited by noggin on 13 May 2019 9:47am
NG
noggin Founding member

Twenty Years of the Thunderclaps

That PM theme is OK - but the late 70s/early 80s one is also fab http://andywalmsley.blogspot.com/2011/08/pm-signature-tune.html has a nice interview with Paddy Kingsland about it.

Was there another one between that and the late 80s version? I listened to PM a lot in the car in the Valerie Singleton era and have a dim recollection of a more synthy-synth signature tune in the latter part of the 80s?
NG
noggin Founding member

The Yorkshire and Lincolnshire Thread

Technologist posted:
Most if the time Sandy Heath was fed by the Radio link from Norwich .
AT some time before the opt Cambridge would signal to feed the Norwich output (rather than The contribution microwave from FRV Luton Nhampton) to it .

Often only a few seconds before the opt (if the FRV was in the west of the patch and doing a live before the opt)...


Once the incoming feed from Sandy Heath had BBC One Norwich on it, you'd then hit another button, which locally triggered the BBC Cambridge SPG to Genlock to incoming BBC One Norwich (So that BBC One Norwich and local sources were synchronous on the Cambridge vision mixer)

This was to avoid adding another frame of delay I believe - which would have been the case if Cambridge had been free-running and BBC One Norwich had been synchronised incoming to Cambridge.

Quote:

Put that through the mixer and then signal to feed Sandy by the return circuit ...
and signal to feed the transmitter from Cambridge ....


Yes - the third button (which was key-locked - eventually) remotely switched the Sandy Heath transmitter between its feed of BBC One Norwich and the feed from the Cambridge gallery.

This was always a synchronous cut (no frame rolls), but the two versions of BBC One (BBC One Norwich and BBC One Norwich via Cambridge) were relatively delayed by a couple of frames.

I was told this was due to a PAL composite Tektronix synchroniser at Sandy Heath synchronising BBC Cambridge gallery incoming with the BBC One Norwich local feed at the transmitter. (PAL synchronisers could introduce more delay than component ones because of 4-field/8-field issues?)

[quote]
all that switching was in the SIS domain and I think if there had been
a Tek synchroniser it did not work well !!! So the opt switch was asynchronous..
[quote]

In 6 months of carefully watching the soft-opt point I never saw an asynchronous cut, but this was before the system was re-engineered for DTT (where a relatively complex system was installed that allowed DVB-T opts in Norwich and Cambridge and put a vision circuit from Norwich to Cambridge (which previously wasn't an option) that was available when Norwich hadn't opted out (when Norwich opted out this circuit carried Norwich's output to Cambridge and triggered an opt-out in Cambridge too I believe)...

Quote:

( and a relay in any case)
Then you could gracefully fade over from Norwich to local sources.


Yes - genlocking BBC Cambridge to BBC One incoming ensured all local sources were locked and synchronous with incoming BBC One, so you could mix, fade down and up without frame rolling etc.

[quote]
Thus having a permanent feed that never opted at Sandy was seen
to be a great improvement

As the analogue was being fed by a digital distribution
.. the Network recall was done as it is for all digital services in coding and mux ...
its sort of how buddying works after all.

Quote:

And I'm fairly certain that a sky box did 14:9 despite it being WSS not AFD.


Consumer Sky boxes were either permanent 12F12 centre cut, or switched between 12F12 and 16L12, driven by the MPEG2 header switching (Sky boxes didn't insert WSS either, though some passed on WSS (some blanked it) if it was present in the received video. ISTR that the Sky SD chains had ARCs in their chains upstream of the MPEG2 encoder - that were fed the permanent 16:9 feed (containing 12P16 or 16F16 sources) of BBC One - and then dropped in a 12F12 ARC when 12P16 was signalled, and stayed in passthrough when 16F16 was signalled. The 12F12 ARC signalled to the MPEG2 encoder downstream that the source was now 12F12, whilst in bypass it signalled 16F16.

There wasn't a 14L12 implementation on consumer Sky boxes. (Just as there isn't a 12P16 option on Sky HD boxes for 4:3 SD output in 16:9 HD...)
NG
noggin Founding member

The Yorkshire and Lincolnshire Thread

Rkolsen posted:

I was going by the opt switch being replaced by Sky DSAT receiver.


Yes - but that's not a signal provided by a third party. The BBC services received by Sky (and Freesat) receivers are not uplinked or 'provided' by Sky. They are simply receiving signals broadcast by the BBC in a format that Sky receivers can receive (i.e. the BBC and Sky/Freesat co-operate on EPG data provision so that BBC transponders, uplinked by the BBC - or companies sub-contracted by the BBC - carry Sky and Freesat EPG data, and automatically map the correct services to agreed channel numbers at the bouquet level etc.)

This is very different to the US model, where all services on DIrecTV and Dish are, I believe, uplinked by DirecTV or Dish, and broadcasters don't uplink their own services to these platforms. (The US satellite services are far more like 'cable headends in the Sky' than the UK services. Other European countries follow the US model more though.)
NG
noggin Founding member

BBC Scotland - the launch

ISTR that the opening titles (or opening sequence?) were split on BBC Four and BBC World (don't think it had rebranded to be World News by then?) with one of the presentation areas playing in the 'other' one, and joining the programme on a post-titles wide shot?

I may be misremembering.