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BBC One HD This Autumn

Split from the generic thread (May 2010)

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DE
derek500
noggin posted:

Wonder if Sky have wound the noise reduction settings up on their H264 encoders a bit more than the BBC. Sky often appear to ask their resource providers to wind in a bit more 'detail' (artificial sharpening/crispening in-camera) into their cameras than some other broadcasters. This superficially makes a picture look sharper, but in fact masks high frequency detail.


I would say the opposite, the high detail on Sky is there and it's very clean and noiseless.

Have a look at Sarah-Jane Mee's jacket on Sky News this afternoon. Even on a very finely woven garment, all the detail can be seen, without any noise.
HA
harshy Founding member
derek500 posted:
harshy posted:
and I still don't understand why 6945 is broadcasting BBC HD, it's a waste of bandwidth which actually could be used for BBC One HD and broadcast at 1920x1080


6945 is not another channel, it's just PIDs that are linked to BBC HD, it's been like it for years.


so its actually the same thing is it, weird BBC One HD does not have one it was channel 6941 then got renamed.
NG
noggin Founding member
derek500 posted:
noggin posted:

Wonder if Sky have wound the noise reduction settings up on their H264 encoders a bit more than the BBC. Sky often appear to ask their resource providers to wind in a bit more 'detail' (artificial sharpening/crispening in-camera) into their cameras than some other broadcasters. This superficially makes a picture look sharper, but in fact masks high frequency detail.


I would say the opposite, the high detail on Sky is there and it's very clean and noiseless.

Have a look at Sarah-Jane Mee's jacket on Sky News this afternoon. Even on a very finely woven garment, all the detail can be seen, without any noise.


Sky News is probably the one exception to my rule! It's probably the one channel that REALLY exposes the benefit of 1920x1080 transmission as a live studio camera is likely to be end-to-end HD with no compression apart from the final H264 encoder I suspect, and with controlled lighting there should be no major video noise issues to need noise-reduction wound in to aid compression. However, watching Sky News HD at the moment, the facial close-ups on the studio shots are not great in compression artefact terms. (Lack of detail, blockiness etc.)

Sky News HD does seem to be a bit more compressed than some other Sky HD channels (or their pre-recorded and SNG HD content is a bit more marginal in bitrate terms) - but their live studio cameras do usually look very good. (Not surprising as news studio shots are about as compression-friendly as you can find)

Sky News HD does seem to be a bit 'edgey' in location HD terms in general. The Cenotaph stuff running is a case in point.
HA
harshy Founding member
looking at Sky News HD, that's how BBC HD and BBC One's HD should look, the edge definition on BBC HD and One HD seems to be a lot less and studio coverage in an OB seems to not be great either, the 4:2:2 HDTV feeds that I've seen are very good indeed, so it's a problem with the channel(s) itself.
DO
dosxuk
One problem is that Sky have done a very good job at convincing people to upgrade to HD by promising bright, colourful, detailed, perfectly focused across the entire screen, noise free images, when in reality the world doesn't look like that.
DE
derek500
dosxuk posted:
One problem is that Sky have done a very good job at convincing people to upgrade to HD by promising bright, colourful, detailed, perfectly focused across the entire screen, noise free images, when in reality the world doesn't look like that.


When I look at someone in the flesh, their clothes don't oscillate. Watching Sky News is how I see people.

Dermot Murnaghan's jackets don't have any noise on Sky News, but when they appear on Eggheads, they have a life of their own!!
MW
Mike W
Why are HD adverts always slow motion?
NG
noggin Founding member
harshy posted:
looking at Sky News HD, that's how BBC HD and BBC One's HD should look, the edge definition on BBC HD and One HD seems to be a lot less and studio coverage in an OB seems to not be great either,


Hmm - as someone who sees the outputs of uncompressed HD cameras day-to-day I don't completely agree. Sky wind in too much detail on some of their shows - particularly sport. It gives the picture a misleading 'pop'.

Quote:

the 4:2:2 HDTV feeds that I've seen are very good indeed, so it's a problem with the channel(s) itself.


Don't forget concatenation. Even stunning feeds can be too low bitrate to compress well - you don't see the stuff that causes issues with the naked eye all the time (MPEG2 is designed to exploit the eye/brain to do this) I think one issue the BBC have sometimes is that they don't use high-enough bitrate contribution circuits. You must run at 60Mbs MPEG2 4:2:2 ideally to get a decent backhaul (anyone who watches Eurovision each year can see what lower bitrate circuits do - you are suddenly able to see the radio camera artefacts concatenating beautifully by the time they reach home)
NG
noggin Founding member
derek500 posted:
dosxuk posted:
One problem is that Sky have done a very good job at convincing people to upgrade to HD by promising bright, colourful, detailed, perfectly focused across the entire screen, noise free images, when in reality the world doesn't look like that.


When I look at someone in the flesh, their clothes don't oscillate. Watching Sky News is how I see people.

Dermot Murnaghan's jackets don't have any noise on Sky News, but when they appear on Eggheads, they have a life of their own!!


Ah - fine detail moire-ing is almost certainly a Sony vs Philips thing. Philips may well have harsher low-pass filters in their optical paths to avoid aliasing on the CCD and so effectively oversample hugely vertically (and they have a 4320line sensor to allow them to use their DPMS 4320->1080/720/576/480 techniques rather than the 1080line sensors that Sony use)
DA
Dave Founding member
Well that's a shame....

After the News at Six rather than go to the holding slide telling me to change channel it went to BBC News but has just cut out and is now showing holding slide once again.

Would it not be far more useful to show the News channel for 30 mins.
WE
Westy2
Did BBC One HD show any 'Inside Out' from a random region, as was rumoured?

I did a flick over to One HD on Sunday during the regional Politics Show bit & that showed the red caption.

Why has no one flagged it up on the likes of 'Points Of View' or 'Newswatch'?

(We know the reason why they are showing the caption, but you would've thought some random person would've sent a comment in?)

Is everyone still watching 101, aware of the situation & not bothering to flick over specially?

(The Beeb wouldn't stiffle debate would they?)
NW
nwtv2003
Westy2 posted:
Did BBC One HD show any 'Inside Out' from a random region, as was rumoured?


From what I remember they showed Inside Out South, which was surprising as I was expecting IO London or the red caption for half an hour.

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