Digital TV: the picture really is horrible!
 

Zathras wrote:
On Mon, 03 Sep 2007 12:13:08 +0100, Dickie mint
wrote:

And don't forget Siemens have put in a bid to take over English Regions
Engineering, which must surely be considered as vital? :-(

Wasn't that knocked back though? I know they have Engineering in
Scotland but am unaware of the exact position elsewhere.

AIRI English Regions management took over the old "TAR" and "Comms"
Engineering departments from BBC Resources some years ago. In addition
they had mainly Technical Operator types themselves.

The Nations "owned" their own TAR, Comms and Studio staff. Glasgow
Engineering got taken over by Siemens in the move to Pacific Quay.

Digital TV: the picture really is horrible!
 

On Tue, 04 Sep 2007 10:04:56 +0100, Dickie mint
wrote:

Zathras wrote:
On Mon, 03 Sep 2007 12:13:08 +0100, Dickie mint
wrote:

And don't forget Siemens have put in a bid to take over English Regions
Engineering, which must surely be considered as vital? :-(

Wasn't that knocked back though? I know they have Engineering in
Scotland but am unaware of the exact position elsewhere.

AIRI English Regions management took over the old "TAR" and "Comms"
Engineering departments from BBC Resources some years ago. In addition
they had mainly Technical Operator types themselves.

The Nations "owned" their own TAR, Comms and Studio staff. Glasgow
Engineering got taken over by Siemens in the move to Pacific Quay.

Yes but wasn't Siemens attempt to get more work out of the BBC
recently knocked back?

--
Z

Digital TV: the picture really is horrible!
 

Zathras wrote:
On Tue, 04 Sep 2007 10:04:56 +0100, Dickie mint
wrote:

Zathras wrote:
On Mon, 03 Sep 2007 12:13:08 +0100, Dickie mint
wrote:

And don't forget Siemens have put in a bid to take over English Regions
Engineering, which must surely be considered as vital? :-(
Wasn't that knocked back though? I know they have Engineering in
Scotland but am unaware of the exact position elsewhere.

AIRI English Regions management took over the old "TAR" and "Comms"
Engineering departments from BBC Resources some years ago. In addition
they had mainly Technical Operator types themselves.

The Nations "owned" their own TAR, Comms and Studio staff. Glasgow
Engineering got taken over by Siemens in the move to Pacific Quay.

Yes but wasn't Siemens attempt to get more work out of the BBC
recently knocked back?

Yes, a little case of whoosh there on my part. Sorry!
But my 2 yr old granddaughter arrived so I was rushing!

I've haven't heard about that, I must ask those of my Brum colleagues
still lucky enough to be working.

Digital TV: the picture really is horrible!
 

On Wed, 05 Sep 2007 08:53:14 +0100, Dickie mint
wrote:

Yes, a little case of whoosh there on my part. Sorry!
But my 2 yr old granddaughter arrived so I was rushing!

LOL!

I've haven't heard about that, I must ask those of my Brum colleagues
still lucky enough to be working.

They might be off the hook now too. Is there much left in Brum?

--
Z

Digital TV: the picture really is horrible!
 

Zathras wrote:
On Wed, 05 Sep 2007 08:53:14 +0100, Dickie mint
wrote:

Yes, a little case of whoosh there on my part. Sorry!
But my 2 yr old granddaughter arrived so I was rushing!

LOL!

I've haven't heard about that, I must ask those of my Brum colleagues
still lucky enough to be working.

They might be off the hook now too. Is there much left in Brum?

Brum practically transported all of TAR, Comms, and, of course, News
engineering from Pebble Mill to the shoebox, less the statutory
redundancies - of which I was one grateful taker! Got to retire early
and still get a large lump sum. :-)

I've seen the email from ER which does indeed put off the Siemens bid in
favour of yet another re-assessment! I guess they're waiting
Centralised C & M (delayed a little, I seem to recall) and the
opportunities that will present for more redundancies.

Digital TV: the picture really is horrible!
 

On Aug 29, 11:41 pm, (Peter Hayes) wrote:
wrote:

Since it looks fine on an analogue PAL screen why should a director feel
constrained because of the defects of one segment of the transmission
chain?

"Analogue PAL screens" haven't existed in the UK for a long time - the
5 terrestrial PAL networks have been sourced from MPEG2 feeds since
1999, and Sky analogue closed down in 2001. The reason you don't see
MPEG pixellation on analogue is because the bitrates of these feeds
are higher, but all the other MPEG artefacts are still there, along
with the artefacts of aspect ratio conversion.

I can just see his reaction to being told he can't now shoot the
way he did ten years ago "because the digital transmission chain can't
cope".

That's exactly what directors *were* told in the late 90's when MPEG2
technology was first introduced. They've been bound by these
limitations ever since.


The answer isn't to impose silly restrictions on directors but to
improve the digital transmission chain. Improvements won't be made by
curtailing throughput, but by insisting that what was possible yesterday
must be made possible tomorrow.

If by improving you mean increasing bitrates, then this won't
completely solve the problem - MPEG2 has artefacts whatever the
bitrate.

The alternative eventually becomes VHS quality all round, eg ITV3/4.

Ironically, VHS could cope with fast movement just fine. :)

jamie.

Digital TV: the picture really is horrible!
 

Digital TV: the picture really is horrible!
 

On Sep 6, 1:49 pm, Dickie mint
wrote:
wrote:
"Analogue PAL screens" haven't existed in the UK for a long time - the
5 terrestrial PAL networks have been sourced from MPEG2 feeds since
1999, and Sky analogue closed down in 2001. The reason you don't see
MPEG pixellation on analogue is because the bitrates of these feeds
are higher, but all the other MPEG artefacts are still there, along
with the artefacts of aspect ratio conversion.

Pardon? The BBC may well use Video Servers as source, but no way are
they the "MPEG" that everyone associates with crap quality!

The analogue pictures from Winter Hill have all the artefacts of an
MPEG2 feed, except for the extreme pixellation which DTH digital
viewers are used to. Movement is not tracked accurately/naturally,
objects blur while they are moving, twitter ('flickering' around sharp
objects) is very noticible and surface textures of objects are not
clearly defined.

Some of this can also be attributed to the aspect ratio conversion -
specifically the conversion of widescreen material into 14:9
letterbox, which requires a lot of processing; At best, the video
would have to be deinterlaced and converted to 50fps progressive scan
using motion estimation software. This would then have to be rescaled
- the 576-line image being converted into a 504(?)-line image, and
finally the newly-rescaled video would have to be reinterlaced before
being placed inside the letterboxed 14:9 frame.... Obviously this
procedure causes loss of information and has a bad effect on motion
tracking, which is probably why 14:9 is never used for sports
programming.

Conversion to 16:9 letterbox is much simpler - it's simply a matter of
discarding every 4th line. This is why 16:9 was originally chosen as
the aspect ratio for widescreen TV (most countries do not use 14:9
ARCing at all).

If by any chance you still have access to a Sky Analogue satellite
system, take a look at some of the German transmissions which can
still be seen on Astra 19.2E - most of these are 'proper' analogue
broadcasts and you'll see the difference straight away.


And since 1999?

Yep.

Digital TV: the picture really is horrible!
 

Digital TV: the picture really is horrible!