BBC Digital Widescreen Test Transmission

Windmills!

The Beeb abandoned the idea of PALPlus, because many of their transmitters could not cope
with the 'below black' signals that PalPlus would generate.

It was my understanding that the test transmissions were simulcast overnight on both BBC and C4, so the BBC and IBA engineers could conduct A/B comparisons with the various transmitter kit.

You're almost right, the only ITV company to transmit Pal Plus was Granada. I think much of the ITV Tx network, suffered the same ill effects as the Beeb's, though they couldn't have tested it easily as ITV went 24hr from the late 80s !

Certainly is!

Yep - Channel Four had upgraded to digital component playout and distribution around that time hadn't they - with D5 VTs used for playout (because they were worried about DigiBeta's compression. Oh how times change...) and digital compressed circuits used for distribution (hence the worries about upstream compression)

This meant that the PALplus encoding happened at the transmitter - not the playout centre, so distribution was less of an issue (but you did need more encoders)

All the PALplus test broadcasts I saw on PALplus receivers (mainly at trade shows) looked horrible. 16:9 MAC stuff looked a whole lot nicer - and at the start so did MPEG2 at decent bitrates (The first stuff I saw was around 7-9Mbs)...

MPEG-2 on feeds still use 7-9 mbs it looks pretty good it has to be said, broadcast mpeg-2 seems to be half that but I've seen it as low 2.3 mbps on some channels

Yes, in fact because of that, the roll out of PALplus on C4's network, wasn't instantaneous, it took a few weeks
to cover the whole country, and I'm not sure S4C were ever able to work in PALplus or not ?



I had a 16:9 PALplus TV in 1997, I bought it not really for PALplus, but in anticipation for 16:9 broadcasts with Sky Digital and OnDigital around the corner. There wasn't a great deal of PP programming on C4, it was mostly
movies. There was more PALplus available on Astra 19.2 from the Germans, in fact I'd never considered there
would be, to it was a total surprise when my telly jumped into PP mode as I idly surfed through the Astra channels one evening. A lot of studio based stuff, and it looked pretty good to be honest.

Thanks!

I seem to remember that 15-1 and Brookside were both in PALplus. Anyone else remember that?

Out of interest, and perhaps slightly off topic, I was watching the pilot episode of 'The Day Today' not so long ago which was made around 1993 I think? There were widescreen televisions on the set (they looked to be normal domestic TVs rather than studio monitors). Just how long have 16:9 TVs been around? I'm guessing widescreen TVs were made for the VHS movie market at that point?

Anything that was transmitted in PALplus, had to be transmitted in 16:9 'deep' letterbox, and would have appeared
like that for everyone

I'm pretty sure Brookside was never shown that like, there'd have been an outcry, 15 to 1, possibly though.

What C4 did do though (which the Beeb also did a couple of Saturday nights) was crop a few programmes (C4 Racing in particular) to 14:9 letterbox. The Beeb's motive was to test reaction to what was required once 16:9 broadcasting did start on digital platforms, namely the presentation of native 16:9 footage, letterboxed and cropped to 14:9 for analogue consumption. I imagine C4 were doing it for the same reason ?

As for 16:9 TVs, well I saw the first demos of PALplus at IBC 1992, so I think 92/93 for 16:9 sets to appear on
the domestic market is probably about right.

Widescreen TVs were available from the very early 90s. I think the first model I saw on sale was a Ferguson (probably a rebranded Thomson) There were quite a few available before 16:9 "anamorphic" digital broadcasts started.

I think they were mainly sold for watching 16:9 letterboxed Laserdiscs and VHS recordings, as well as for watching the 16:9 anamorphic MAC broadcasts that were beginning to crop up around that time. The HD-MAC broadcasts of the 1992 Summer and Winter Olympics were broadcast in a manner that 16:9 SD displays could have used (I watched on a scan-crushed 4:3 display...)

Interesting. The main legacy of PALplus is line 23 WSS really isn't it? Even though PALplus didn't take off - the widescreen signalling (which was also used to indicate progressive/interlace source to change PAL decoding techniques based on whether there was motion between frame fields) did!