Not exactly new, but hasn't been on the screen for a while. Alex Hill is his name, and he was the first ever presenter of the ITV National weather forecast, back in the late 1980s. Before that, he was the regular weather forecaster on Scotland Today.
STV really doesn't care what is puts out on that paid adverts slots, just now its an american promo saying expensive hospital treatments etc utter crap.
Not exactly new, but hasn't been on the screen for a while. Alex Hill is his name, and he was the first ever presenter of the ITV National weather forecast, back in the late 1980s. Before that, he was the regular weather forecaster on Scotland Today.
It seem Alex hill now living in Edinburgh area? until late was the Met office Chief Government Adviser, Scotland and Northern Ireland. He now freelance and I dare say will get plenty of work from STV.
Last edited by A former member on 18 October 2016 12:25am
:-(
A former member
STV has fixed the ident, but alas the awful black bar at the time has come back.
TT
ttt
I've been watching a bit of STV HD over the last week, and have noticed a strange artefact of the methods they're using for this version of their station.
The adverts, and "STV HD" ident, are shown in HD. But the rest of the continuity (break bumpers included) is provided by switching the SD channel back in. The timing of this is off, so at the end of each break the HD advert is switched to SD for the last few frames, and the picture quality (position on the screen, colour/brightness levels and even size) on the SD feed differs from the HD, resulting in a particularly horrible effect which makes my eyes go funny (the picture suddenly becoming blurred on the same image).
I've seen a few occasions where the advert goes from HD to SD, break bumper plays in SD, then they flick back to HD for the ident -- but this sometimes results in a flash of the advert (back in HD) before the ident plays.
They really need to get this sorted out -- it looks very unprofessional.
I've been watching a bit of STV HD over the last week, and have noticed a strange artefact of the methods they're using for this version of their station.
The adverts, and "STV HD" ident, are shown in HD. But the rest of the continuity (break bumpers included) is provided by switching the SD channel back in. The timing of this is off, so at the end of each break the HD advert is switched to SD for the last few frames, and the picture quality (position on the screen, colour/brightness levels and even size) on the SD feed differs from the HD, resulting in a particularly horrible effect which makes my eyes go funny (the picture suddenly becoming blurred on the same image).
I've seen a few occasions where the advert goes from HD to SD, break bumper plays in SD, then they flick back to HD for the ident -- but this sometimes results in a flash of the advert (back in HD) before the ident plays.
They really need to get this sorted out -- it looks very unprofessional.
Sounds similar to the way BBC One HD used to work. Effectively BBC One HD opted out of BBC One SD upconverted to HD for HD shows. However on live HD shows the automation was such that you would get a few frames of the HD show downconverted to SD and then upconverted again at the end of the show. There was a noticable quality change - and also a size shift because one of the devices in the chain probably ignored the accurate SD standards (lots of kit does).
Boring point : 16:9 and 4:3 SD are 702x576 NOT 720x576 in 50Hz territories. There are 9 samples of space either side which make the 720x576 SD picture a little bit wider than 16:9 (or 4:3).
If you downconvert a 1920x1080 HD picture to 50Hz SD you should scale 1920x1080 to 702x576 (and have black in the 9 samples either side).
If you upconvert a 720x576 SD signal to 1080i HD you should take the central 702x576 portion and scale that to 1920x1080. If you get either of these wrong, you end up with a size bump.
I've been watching a bit of STV HD over the last week, and have noticed a strange artefact of the methods they're using for this version of their station.
The adverts, and "STV HD" ident, are shown in HD. But the rest of the continuity (break bumpers included) is provided by switching the SD channel back in. The timing of this is off, so at the end of each break the HD advert is switched to SD for the last few frames, and the picture quality (position on the screen, colour/brightness levels and even size) on the SD feed differs from the HD, resulting in a particularly horrible effect which makes my eyes go funny (the picture suddenly becoming blurred on the same image).
I've seen a few occasions where the advert goes from HD to SD, break bumper plays in SD, then they flick back to HD for the ident -- but this sometimes results in a flash of the advert (back in HD) before the ident plays.
They really need to get this sorted out -- it looks very unprofessional.
I haven't noticed that, but I notice the HD ident sometimes switches to SD as the "HD" disappears from the ident.
I've also noticed the announcer is sometimes so faint when they're talking. It's the only channel that has this problem.
They are working on a new playout system that is to take 12 months, so hopefully that will fix these issues.