SD Picture Quality

Here's the BBC Two HD Slide I was talking about. And yes, I actually did take that photograph of the BBC Two HD slide during the weeks running up the 2015 UK General Election.

No one broadcasts in 5.1 on SD platforms. Out the 'legacy analogue' broadcasters, only the Beeb and C4 bother with it.

Channel 5 too, last I checked. ITV don't do it on any of their channels, HD or otherwise.

Do C5 HD do 5.1 ? I've only had access since they appeared on Freesat and Freeview, but I've not stumbled across any 5.1 yet.

Well at least they should do Dolby 5.1 in HD.

Does your Amp go up to 11 BTW ?

It was 5.1 on Virgin Media, I remember Neighbours going out in the format, this was only less than 12 months ago or so.

They had a nasty habit of upscaling, if that's the right word, stereo content to surround sound. They'd cancel out the left and right channels, similar to 'removing vocals' in a piece of software like Audacity, so that all content that was in both channels was removed. They'd then broadcast this on the rear channels. The result was that speech was mostly muted, but you could sometimes hear DAB-style bubbling where speech/vocals are trying to get through. It was pretty unpleasant.

That's why you get the phenomenon "I CAN'T HEAR THE BLOODY DIALOGUE - WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON!".

Advice to all the UK broadcasters, not just Channel 5 - When it comes to broadcasting sound Dolby 5.1, either do or don't. Simple.

There is a word for it - it's upmixing.

The upmixing is why the dialogue is often difficult to hear - and it's not Channel 5 who are the worst offenders.
I have a way to get around the problem and that is to go to my menu settings, and then go to sound and set it to clear voice.

I don't have a loudness meter, but my remote can obviously control the volume.

*whoosh*