BBC One HD's "dead time" during regional news

Not sure what thread to put this in, and perhaps it has been discussed, but the launch of BBC Two HD - being another step in the slow journey towards the inevitable future where HD is the norm - has got me thinking again about BBC One HD's "dead time" during regional news.

I suppose it's true that showing anything at all would only take viewers away from their regional news on the SD channel, or showing e.g. London news would be unfair to other regions. (However, why then is it deemed appropriate for BBC London News segments to go out on the national BBC News channel during Breakfast? Wouldn't those be better filled with some trailers and/or News Channel break filler type thing?)

Will there really be no other solution for BBC One HD in England for some years to come? It makes it feel a bit like a second-class citizen sometimes, when it should be the flagship channel.

If they had thought about this originally, they could have come up with some sort of automatic switching system which flipped over to the SD version during regional programmes. This could even have been implemented on DSAT.

I do think that the BBC should ditch the policy of having parity across its platforms. This would allow it to have regional BBC One (and Two) programming on Freeview and cable whilst having other content on DSat which isn't available elsewhere.

Already thought of and deemed impractical. Switching gap would be too long.

Kev over on DS explains:


Technologist went into more depth:

Logically with the 1830 problem now simply in England, the end of News announcement should read it's time for your news from the Nations and Regions. BBC ONE HD NI, Scotland and Wales going regional and BBC ONE HD England going over to a News Channel back half hour starting with the main England centric news stories of the day. Introduce an England centred Weather at 1843 too, SD in England would opt as now to the regions (and Nations). Sportsday on the News Channel and BBC ONE HD England starting later at 1845, fitting in with the new 2245 and 2345 slots.

To go a little deeper, when tuning into an MPEG stream the decoder has to - or at least, should - wait for the I frame at the start of a GOP (group of pictures, usually every 12-15 frames (more on HD) or on a scene change) before it can start correctly displaying pictures. Channel 5 have, or at least used to have, longer GOPs which is why it always took longer to switch to Channel 5.

When BBC One HD shows a random region during Inside Out or Late Kick Off, is this played out from Red Bee or locally? If from London, surely the same system for the pre-recorded regional shows could be implements, so on a Monday you get London, then South Today and so on.

See that in tonight's brief '1830' bank holiday break on BBC ONE HD a new loop was featured made up exclusively of clips used previously as junction fillers on the BBC HD Channel, a single small font line text announcement overlay directing viewers to the SD alternative for the Regional News.

Yep - though I suspect the bigger issue would be that you'd have a 576i/1080i format change.

AIUI both SVT and NRK do PID switching on their regional opts on DSat in SD - and the switching isn't too horrific - though neither is it as clean as the BBC's baseband system. However they don't do a format switch.

I wonder if SVT and NRK encode centrally and/or can GOP align the encoders and PID switch on a GOP boundary?

AIUI all of the regional SVT Sweden variants have their own services which appear as separate channels, but during network programming they map to common shared audio and video PIDs. However during regional content, they switch away to alternative video and audio PIDs that carry the regional content. It also allow, I believe, allows SVT1 OR SVT2 to have regional opts on them using the same regional streams (as either channel can remap to them) - as long as they don't overlap.

However I think they only do this for SD services as you need all the variants to squeeze onto a single transponder at a reasonable bitrate? (Canal Digital/C-More are running the SVT1/2 transponder at 40Mbs - which carries 2 network streams and 13 regional streams (i.e. 15 streams in total - which is a squeeze, but presumably statmuxing means that the network content gets a very good bitrate when the regional streams are not carrying content?)

http://en.kingofsat.net/tp.php?tp=552 Seems to confirm it - with that snapshot suggesting SVT2 has regional content on it (as all the SVT2 regional variations have different audio and video PIDs) and SVT1 is networked (as all the SVT1 regional variations have the same audio and video PIDs). However SVT2 Gavleborg also appears to be mapped to the SVT1 audio and video PIDs - so I suspect something is amiss.

From what I see on YouTube, BBC One HD England takes the News Channel's opt during the TOTH and :15 headlines for 1/6/10 - wonder why they can't do the same for the regional news time slot? (Hope I'm not repeating other people's questions, apologies in advance)

I don't think it's a case of them not being able to; it's that they don't want to. Either viewers would get confused* and complain that they weren't getting their regional news; or they'd be too lazy to turn over and the viewing figures would drop.

* the same subset of viewers who complain that the clock is wrong when they're watching Daybreak on ITV+1.

I think there's some statistical thing that makes it practical to encode as late as possible, taking into account the data on all the other channels on the same, umm, <thing> (mux?). And I think for a related reason all the regions are slightly offset from each other in time deliberately. You couldn't guarantee every decoder would get the switch right anyway.

David

Isn't there a trail between the end of the Six and the start of Sportsday on the NC? Could BBC 1 pres do a "switch to 1/101" message during that then take Sportsday, perhaps replacing the ticker with a scrolling "switch to 1/101"?