BBC Television Centre vs ITV London Studios

Ooh do tell more?

There is not currently a huge demand for HD in terms of television channels. Most people still cannot recieve HD in there homes and take up is not currently moving at a fast rate. Its similar to widescreen, it will gradually become more common but there is no rush as many home users are yet to buy tv's capable of displaying it. Until we see a freeview style distribution of HD Broadcasts then i dont think TLS need worry too much other than to future proof there recordings.

I can tell you that over 95% of OB trucks that are being built, or refurbished currently are HD.

If the Beeb make HD production mandatory on all delivered programming (which I'd have thought is likely ?), then TLS and the other facility houses will not want to lose any business from them.

Though Sky HD take-up has been much higher than predicted - I believe it is being adopted at a much faster rate than the original Sky +.

Now that it is difficult to buy a non-HD set over the 26-28" size, more and more people are watching SD on an HD set - and seeing how poor it really is. Sky HD is certainly taking advantage of this.

That said - I've recently had to set up an LCD 1920x1080 Sony Bravia 40" set - and the default settings mangled SD horribly and didn't do HD any favours either. They are obviously set up to look very bright and shiny and colourful in a brightly lit shop... After about 30 mins of tweaking the picture is an order of magnitude better on both SD and HD.

That said - SD channels on a Sky HD receiver connected HDMI look a LOT better than SD channels fed via RGB SCART from a standard Sky box.

Once people see proper HD they will want it. The problem is that proper HD in shops often looks less than great - but SD looks even worse.

Certainly broadcast OB units this is close to being the case. It is quite difficult to buy high-end SD broadcast cameras now - if you want the best you have to buy HD.



Yep - though the Beeb aren't likely to make HD mandatory in the short term as they won't be able to afford the budget increases this will require. They ARE aiming for most productions to be HD by 2010 - though they've revised this from the previous ALL recently.

They have also now announced that 100Mbs DVCProHD (in 1440x1080 format mainly) is to be the standard documentary and factual production format, replacing 25Mbs 720x576 DVCam/DVCPro/DV, which itself replaced the superior (but more expensive) Digital Betacam format effectively.

Except that there is HD and HD. There aren't many 1920x1080 displays on the market, and even fewer at a reasonable price. There are a lot of people buying 720 displays assuming they're getting "full" HD...

Noggin, could you just clarify something for me please? 1440x1080 is obviously a 4:3 format. Does this mean that it's HD anamorphic? And would I be right in thinking that 'standard' (whatever that means) 1920x1080 HD is natively 16:9 - in other words it is not an anamorphic format unlike SD widescreen?

No - it isn't obviously a 4:3 format. It is only a 4:3 format if you are "square pixel" based - which is the case with many from the PC world.

TV isn't based around pixels, but instead around samples, and samples don't have to be square (you can argue about gaussian distribution amongst yourselves...)

720x576 in both 4:3(ish) and 16:9(ish) formats are based around non-square samples as well. (768x576 would be be the square pixel resolution of a 576 line 4:3 image and 1024x576 would be the square pixel resolution of a 576 line 16:9 image) (The ish is because 720x576 is slightly wider - 702x576 is the actual 4:3 and 16:9 width image)



You can use the anamorphic term - though most people prefer "non-square" as there is nothing inherently anamorphic in lens terms or optically. It is just the samples are not based around a square aspect ratio.



16:9 1920x1080 and 1280x720 are based on square samples. However a lot of HD video doesn't use these numbers internally.

HDCam uses 1440x1080 3:1:1 sub-sampling internally. DVCProHD uses 1280x1080 in 60Hz, 1440x1080 in 50Hz and 960x720 in both 50 and 60Hz flavours.

A lot of HD broadcasts are 1280x1080, 1440x1080 as well as 1920x1080.

1440x1080 is a nice simple doubling of the resolution of the equivalent 720x576/720x480 16:9 SD format - so keeps the improvement the same in both directions, whereas 1920x1080 favours horizontal resolution massively over vertical, especially when you take interlacing into account - where 1080i gives about 700-800p equivalent resolution, droppign to 540p equivalent on fast motion.

Anamorphic is a dodgy term to use in video - though FHA was and is used in some areas. SD video based on digital sampling is non-square pixel based in both 4:3 and 16:9 variants - so are both aspect ratios "anamorphic"?

Hmm thats interesting i thought 1440x1080 is Widescreen. My computers monitor resolution is 1440x900 pixels and the box said the screen format was 16:10 (not 16:9) unless tv's resolution is measured differently to a monitor's?

1440x810 would be a 16:9 square pixel resolution. 1440x900 square pixels is thus 90 lines taller than 16:9 - which gives 16:10.

Yep it is, because my screen is 1280 x 768 and whenever I play 16:9 video on full screen I have to force the media player to 15:9 to fill the screen because of the black bars at the bottom and top.

Yep - though 1920x1080 displays are now increasingly available. You can buy a 40" LCD 1920x1080 Sony Bravia for roughly the same amount of money as a 1024x768 42" Panasonic/Pioneer Plasma.

That said - SD as broadcast looks pretty bad on a 1024x720 37" Panasonic plasma - and HD looks a whole lot better...

Interestingly the BBC HD 1440x1080 stuff often looks better than other stuff broadcast at 1920x1080 on other Sky HD channels. I get the feeling the Sky bitrate is lower than the BBC - and ISTR that the BBC are using MBAFF whilst Sky are using PAFF extensions.