Comedy Central to air Friends in true HD

And yet they'll show Torchwood in blur-o-vision

I'm surprised at Downton going to 24p on Blu-ray - do you know how the audio was dealt with?

David

Still don't know what went on with Torchwood. It's appallingly bad...



Think Universal saved money and went for a single 24p global release - rather than separate 50i and 60i/24p releases. Will try to compare music when series returns to ITV to see if audio is pitch shifted back up (and just runs slower) or whethe the 25p to 24p slow-down also means a lowering of pitch.

Would someone be kind enough to explain why it is that certain American TV programmes end up with a higher pitch when shown on British television? I've always wondered about this and why it affects some shows but not others. Many thanks!

It's because they're shot at 24p (the film standard). They're broadcast at 60i with a bit of a judder due to one repeated field in every 5 (AAABBCCCDD), but Americans are used to it and flatscreens have a thing called (I believe) cadence matching which will undo the judder.

PAL broadcasts are at 25 frames/50 fields per second, so the simplest way to get a film or US import on telly is just the speed up the 24 frames per second to 25 - that means the audio has to be sped up too. Usually it's left at that, so everyone's a little bit squeaky (Enterprise on Channel 4), but sometimes they'll try and shift the pitch back down - with varying results. A recent showing of The Spiderwick Chronicles on Channel 4 was shifted down, but it left horrible warbles all over the dialogue, like the actors were gargling as they spoke. The same went for Stargate SG1 on Channel 4, but it wasn't that bad.

Or, more rarely, they'll leave the audio and duration as it is, and do various horrible things to mangle the picture, which appears to be the case with Torchwood - the logic possibly being that we're all familiar with the pitch of Jack/Gwen/Rhys's voice, so a pitch shift would not go unnoticed as it might with, say, Heroes (HRG mentioned the pitch issue when he was interviewed on This Morning). Every 25th frame is fine, but the rest are differently weighted blends of the two nearest frames.

David

I wonder if the American box sets came from the master copies? The opening music over the first exterior shot is replaced with a short instrumental of the theme tune and extra lines/scenes are left in which weren't shown on TV.

Often Syndication versions are different. Fro example there is an episode of Frasier where he has an ice sculpture by a man called Nutzac delivered to a wedding and then complains as it gets warmer that "my nutzac is sweating up a storm". This is missing from the DVD versions but is always seen on the Comedy Central repeats.

Thanks for the explanation, David. I understand now. Channel 4 must have tried to correct the pitch of Friends because the sound is always lower pitch on the TV broadcasts than the DVDs. I've got used to watching the DVDs so I now think the TV episodes sound wrong!

The MacFarlane cartoons are notable victims too, with the running times of BBC3 episodes being about 1min shorter than the original US lengths due to the technique described above (could never work that one out until relatively recently, wondering what the hell they were cutting out!).

The DVDs suffer from a much higher pitch of audio also, although I guess if you've never seen the US versions you'll just presume it's standard practice over there for voice actors to inhale helium before recording.

As a younger person, I would often buy soundtracks of popular American films and TV that I liked, and would complain that the sound on them was always too slow compared to the 'proper TV versions'. It was only later i found out why of course. TV shows and converted films that I've watched for years in the UK on TV, VHS and DVD have suddenly come out on Bluray at their proper speeds, and I still have trouble watching them because for years I had watched them 4.1% faster or whatever it is. So the Blurays sound too slow!

The strange thing is no one else I know seems as bothered by this as I am. It really gets in the way of my enjoyment of the films/TV shows sometimes

Scrubs theme tune sounds really bad on UK telly too, the song is already speeded for the show as is.

Isn't it one of those things though when it's only an issue when you know it's an issue.

I'd take a guess that it's like that because they wanted a lower classification from the BBFC and had to cut that line in order to get it.