PALplus

I would have posted this in the thread about PALplus I made a couple of years ago, but it's been archived, and this doesn't really count as YouTube Gold so I thought I'd make its own thread.

BBC Archive have uploaded this archive news report from - who else - Nick Higham, from this day in 1994. It's about the future of TV, with the copyrighted content now pixellated, which to me makes it look like "the future of all television" is continuous adult programming.

#OTD 1994: One day, all TV will look like this. No, not pixelated - that's for copyright reasons! We mean widescreenhttps://t.co/bln9aUi9Sn

— BBC Archive (@BBCArchive) August 2, 2016

Some points from the video:

-As discussed previously Channel 4 were at the forefront of this, with "500 hours of widescreen programmes over the next 18 months"

-Nokia representative - manufacturers of the first widescreen TV sold to the general public - says that they "full expect other broadcasters to come on stream very very quickly"

-I think mentioned previously also: the EU subsidised this project, the cost being £1.5 million

-Channel 4 says "most viewers with ordinary sets prefer to see a wider picture and don't object to black spaces at top and bottom of the screen" - Hmm. The example the Channel 4 spokesman mentions is movies - but that's not really the same as something like Fifteen to One or Brookside (the two main examples of PALplus programming from the time)

-An accurate prediction at the end: "Other broadcasters may prefer to wait for the arrival of new digital television channels before they consider windscreen services"

-"Channel 4 and Nokia say digital television is still some years away. Why wait when consumers can have widescreen pictures now…" - well, it doesn't seem there were many widescreen broadcasts with this system anyway - because 4:3 set owners didn't like being forced to watch letterboxed programmes

How long was the PALplus name used?

As long as the system was in use, I think. They discontinued it after a few years but kept the widescreen switching signal part for programmes in 16:9 letterbox, however this wasn't full Pal+ as it didn't contain extra picture information in the "black" bars.

It's important not to confuse widescreen production (and 16:9 deep letterbox broadcast on 4:3 outlets) with PALPlus. It wasn't just a name for letterboxed content - it had more to it than that.

PAL Plus was a modified broadcast system that 'hid' extra picture detail in the black bars above and below the letterboxed picture that regular viewers saw, to allow the vertical resolution of the 432 lines of the letterbox picture to be improved a bit. (The black bars contained additional picture information encoded by modulating a chroma subcarrier, but at black level. These weren't visible on a properly lined up set, but if you had the brightness turned up you could see a faint blue pattern in the black bars ISTR)

The PAL Plus system also included some improvements to the PAL decoder, that were assisted by the broadcaster flagging whether the content was originally 25p (no motion between the two fields in a frame) or 50i (motion between the two fields) - which were called FILM and VIDEO I think - as the PAL decoder in the PAL Plus TV could alter modes based on this information (to improve the chroma decoding on films). This data was flagged in the Line 23 WSS signal - which ISTR Channel Four continued to use for 16:9/4:3 signalling even after they stopped using PALPlus encoding for the actual video content.

Line 23 WSS continued to be used by STBs (not Sky's though) to signal aspect ratio of SD outputs ISTR. (The early Tivos sold in the UK also handled Line 23 WSS well)

The BBC couldn't easily use PAL plus because of the way their network was distributed - which may have been one reason it never really took off here. Sony also sold sets with PAL Plus decoders - one of their very high end 16:9 CRT sets that had 1250 line DRC processing included it. (This was effectively an HDTV without any means of getting an HD signal into it - without modification - which was a real shame)

What's also interesting is that of some of the first 16:9 CRTs I first remember seeing - two were made by companies now unheard of in the TV marketplace (Thomson/Ferguson and Nokia). The reality was that most 16:9 sets in the UK were really sold for people to watch Laserdisc and VHS tapes of letterboxed movies (though ISTR that some full resolution anamorphic 16:9 laserdiscs were also released)

If BSB had taken off there would have been full resolution anamorphic TV to watch far earlier than this as their DMAC system allowed for 16:9 anamorphic broadcast - and in Scandinavia TV1000 were showing 16:9 anamorphic movie transfers around this time (they used BSkyB's 16:9 telecine they inherited from BSB ISTR, or was it Channel Four's?) as they were using D2MAC which allowed for 16:9 full resolution broadcasts.

First full resolution 16:9 stuff I watched at home was the 1992 Albertville Olympics HDTV broadcasts, which were broadcast on TDF1 and TV Sat using HD-MAC, which a modified BSB receiver and Squariel could receive. I scan crushed a 14" 4:3 CRT to get them to letterbox though...