BBC Parliament

The interesting thing watching Election 87 is that the technical quality of the electronic graphics used is, if anything, higher than those used today.

The full frame results and the lower third straps are incredibly clean and nicely filtered/anti-aliased, and much higher quality than a lot of the "PC" generated stuff that devices like Viz and Tog generate these days.

(The top left locations are different and a bit all over the place in typeface and quality terms)

Also interesting to see how nicely lit and racked some of the outside contributions are - many of them look hugely better than the pictures we get these days. (Even if they are from tubed cameras... I think the difference is in the lighting - and no doubt the staffing levels.)

I was going to disagree but I think you're right. They can do far more with the graphics now but some of the BBC's virtual reality looked very jumpy and cheap, especially compared to the smoothness of ITN's graphics.

MY GOD DOESN'T TONY KING LOOK YOUNG!!

Yes - ITVs VR system, and Sky's, was smoother and technically higher quality in rendering terms. However I think in production terms - in the application of the technology to tell the story - the BBCs system was the best.

The 1987 graphics are incredibly clean and flicker/jaggy free - the quality is really excellent. I know that at that time BBC R&D had been investigating high quality text rendering for broadcast use (some of the filtering technology was picked up by Aston for Aston4/Caption and improved on for Motif) and it looks like this is being used here.

PC solutions usually don't have broadcast quality anti-aliasing and vertical interlace-flicker filtering of the same quality - though they are a lot cheaper, and these days a lot more powerful in being able to render complex graphic scenes quickly.

(The 1987 animation isn't in the same league as the systems in use these days - but the static captions are excellent. Even the photos look cleaner and clearer)

BTW - has anyone else spotted the single and double dots top-right on the Peter Snow full-frame graphics. A single dot seems to appear at the end of each animation sequence, and a double dot at the end of the full presentation.

(In 1997 the top line of the graphics changed from red to green when the results graphics were available - indicating to the director/vision mixer they were safe to DVE back to the graphics computer!)

The Peter Snow projected graphics look excellent - this really was the first election that really used the techniques we use to this day wasn't it?

(I also notice seat predictions/forecasts being made - something I don't think the BBC do as much these days?)

YEP THERE'S THE MARS BAR!!!

Absolutely superb bit of TV with Robin Day on at the moment.

''You may think we just drag in any old politician... but this time we've managed to get together three of the most significant people in the House. Douglas Hurd, who's often thought of as a potential future leader of the Tory party; John Smith, who's often thought of as a potential future leader of the Labour Party; and Paddy Ashdown, who's often thought of as a potential future leader of the Alliance''.

He was right on two counts at least!

It's great to watch them. Bit of a chill down the spine when it came up that one Tony Blair had been elected to Parliament.

1.037 GB so far and going well (I hope ) downloading the whole thing - from the online stream - to my PC to watch on a better date.

I forgot all about the sniping between Dimbleby and Day in this election broadcast. And I think this was Peter Snows first Election at the computer desk. Not sure though and I'm sure somebody here will know for certain.

Does anyone have an good quality caps of the 87 election??

I watched a bit of it at around 4.50pm this afternoon, and it was interesting to see NBC's Tom Browkaw being interviewed by David Dimbleby and he was explaining how the US TV was covering it and the American style campaign of then Kinnock lead Labour party.

Recording Complete!

1.17 GB (1,263,874,048 bytes)

What did you do, was it just a 'save target as' moment?

Nah used a software recorder. Set it to record from 0855 > 2110 today left the PC on all day with Broadband (2M) connected.