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BBC iPlayer - really rather good!
The BBC iPlayer service is much better than I expected it to be.
The download versions are nearly "broadcast quality" (whatever that phrase has been *******ised to mean these days!), at least for progressive (25p) content. (I did see some strange field blending on some interlaced content, and there's no accommodation of 50 images per second - it's all 25fps progressive). It's full resolution, but with 16 pixels cropped from each side - presumably to compensate for PCs not having overscan to hide the nasties that are sometimes found at the edge of TV pictures. The compression artefacts are comparable to Freeview, but the image is maybe a little softer. The DOG is there on all content, but if it's BBC Three content, the small transparent "BBC" in the very top left corner of the iPlayer version is vastly preferable to the broadcast BBC Three logo. (Dare I mention that if you feed the iPlayer output to a real TV, the logo is almost lost in the overscan anyway? I should keep quiet - I don't want them to move it to force me to see it!). I'm not quite sure why they feel the need to brand the content itself - the whole service is heavily branded already. All in all, it's great. Whether it's worth the total "cost" (whatever that turns out to be, and whoever ends up paying for it) remains to be seen. I'll enjoy it while I can, and hope for some HD content to turn up at some point! Cheers, David. |
BBC iPlayer - really rather good!
"DAB sounds worse than FM" [email protected] wrote in message ... snip What a ridiculously biased organisation the BBC is. Not really, if you want to hear full quality then listen to an off air source (that goes for both TV or radio) and not what has always been either a 'last resort' catch-up service or a complimentary service to 'listen-again', in short these are not core BBC services - in fact I can just hear the scream of 'unfairness' from the commercial internet sector should the BBC offer HQ steaming of such services. The BBC are dammed if they do and dammed if they don't... Perhaps if 'Stevie-(no-degrees)-boy' was to take his nose out of his text books and started to consider all factors that govern how things get implemented he would start to learn about the real world and not the world of perfect theory only ever found in the text-book or research test bench. |
BBC iPlayer - really rather good!
DAB sounds worse than FM wrote:
It's just a shame that the radio live and on-demand streams are only using 64 kbps ATRAC3 and they're butchered prior to encoding by being received off-air via digital satellite then transcoded from e.g. 192 kbps MP2 for R1-4 to 64 kbps ATRAC3, hence why they sound so diabolical. I searched articles on my website yesterday to see what they were using in the past, and in September 2006 they were using just 32 kbps for the R1-4 streams! What a ridiculously biased organisation the BBC is. As I believe I've commented befo it's not ATRAC3, but the RealAudio G2 codec. This was introduced with RealAudio 6. Atrac3 didn't come about until RealAudio 8. There are also Windows Media Audio streams, although the only one I can get to play is rather tinny and mono. |
BBC iPlayer - really rather good!
On 21 Feb, 13:45, ":Jerry:" wrote:
"DAB sounds worse than FM" [email protected] wrote in ... snip What a ridiculously biased organisation the BBC is. Not really, if you want to hear full quality then listen to an off air source (that goes for both TV or radio) and not what has always been either a 'last resort' catch-up service or a complimentary service to 'listen-again', in short these are not core BBC services - in fact I can just hear the scream of 'unfairness' from the commercial internet sector should the BBC offer HQ steaming of such services. The BBC are dammed if they do and dammed if they don't... I know that understanding the issue would prevent you from trolling about it, but the point is that the iPlayer downloads are near-as-damn- it as good as the broadcasts in some cases - better in others (smaller DOG, no credit crunching, no voiceover), worse in others (blended interlacing). The audio on demand is pitiful in comparison, and as we all know, some of the digital audio broadcasts themselves are nothing to write home about! Certainly not "full quality". So the criticism from Steve stands: the iPlayer is good; please get the audio on demand up to that standard! As for being "not core" - it's a fair argument, but at least _one_ outlet for radio stations must count as "core", yet not one is "full quality" for all BBC national stations. As Steve hints, despite being justifiably cheaper in virtually every respect, radio remains the _disproportionately_ poor cousin of TV when it comes to technical standards. I think the time is approaching when people will laugh at the idea that the BBC website and on-demand TV service is "not core". It's a discussion the BBC is no doubt having internally. Cheers, David. |
BBC iPlayer - really rather good!
:Jerry: wrote:
"DAB sounds worse than FM" [email protected] wrote in message ... snip What a ridiculously biased organisation the BBC is. Not really, if you want to hear full quality then listen to an off air source (that goes for both TV or radio) and not what has always been either a 'last resort' catch-up service or a complimentary service to 'listen-again', in short these are not core BBC services - in fact I can just hear the scream of 'unfairness' from the commercial internet sector should the BBC offer HQ steaming of such services. The BBC are dammed if they do and dammed if they don't... GCap, the UK's largest commercial radio group, provides 128 kbps WMA Internet streams for virtually all of the stations it owns, and these are at far higher quality than the stations are at on DAB. The BBC on the other hand is providing 64 kbps ATRAC3 streams, at very poor audio quality, and towards the end of 2006 they were using just 32 kbps ATRAC3 for the streams. There are around 5,700 Internet radio streams on shoutcast.com that are using bit rates of 128 kbps or higher with the MP3 codec, therefore so long as they don't bugger up the quality prior to the encoder they will sound vastly superior to the audio quaity provided on DAB, and most don't seem to bugger up the quality. You're talking out of your arse again. The BBC should be providing audio quality on its Internet radio streams that is fit-for-purpose in the 21st century. It's using 550 kbps for its BBC iPlayer TV streams, and yet it only sees fit to use 64 kbps using ATRAC3 which shouldn't be used at such a low bit rate. Perhaps if 'Stevie-(no-degrees)-boy' Degreeless Jerry, wot you on abaat? was to take his nose out of his text books and started to consider all factors that govern how things get implemented he would start to learn about the real world and not the world of perfect theory only ever found in the text-book or research test bench. What, like the BBC first receiving the radio stations off-air via digital satellite then transcoding from MP2 to ATRAC3 prior to distributing the streams via the Internet, thus committing one of the most cardinal sins in the "engineering" of compressed audio? The BBC's Internet radio streams are incompetently engineered and incompetently implemented as a whole, so if that's real-world then I think I'll stick with my textbooks, thanks. -- Steve - www.digitalradiotech.co.uk - Digital Radio News & Info The adoption of DAB was the most incompetent technical decision ever made in the history of UK broadcasting: http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/da...ion_of_dab.htm |
BBC iPlayer - really rather good!
wrote:
DAB sounds worse than FM wrote: It's just a shame that the radio live and on-demand streams are only using 64 kbps ATRAC3 and they're butchered prior to encoding by being received off-air via digital satellite then transcoded from e.g. 192 kbps MP2 for R1-4 to 64 kbps ATRAC3, hence why they sound so diabolical. I searched articles on my website yesterday to see what they were using in the past, and in September 2006 they were using just 32 kbps for the R1-4 streams! What a ridiculously biased organisation the BBC is. As I believe I've commented befo it's not ATRAC3, but the RealAudio G2 codec. This was introduced with RealAudio 6. Atrac3 didn't come about until RealAudio 8. That's even worse then. There are also Windows Media Audio streams, although the only one I can get to play is rather tinny and mono. Yep, the ones I've heard sound worse as well, and only R1-4 are using 64 kbps, with the others mostly using 40 kbps and the World Service using just 20 kbps on both WMA and Real. Any comments on my assertion that the BBC's audio engineering of the streams prior to them being encoded to the Real codec is grossly incompetent? I've been told that they're received off-air via digital satellite, then transcoded to an even lower bit rate. "Butchery" is the word I think I'm looking for. I was also told by someone that the streams used to be at 64 kbps and they were then reduced to 32 kbps, which is the bit rate they stayed at until 2007. Do you know which year it was they were reduced from 64 kbps? -- Steve - www.digitalradiotech.co.uk - Digital Radio News & Info The adoption of DAB was the most incompetent technical decision ever made in the history of UK broadcasting: http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/da...ion_of_dab.htm |
BBC iPlayer - really rather good!
"Stevie-(no-degree)-boy" [email protected] wrote in message ... snip You're talking out of your arse again. The BBC should be providing audio quality on its Internet radio streams that is fit-for-purpose in the 21st century. It's using 550 kbps for its BBC iPlayer TV streams, and yet it only sees fit to use 64 kbps using ATRAC3 which shouldn't be used at such a low bit rate. No, you are talking out of your arse, there is NO requirement for the BBC to provide ANY internet radio (or TV) streams, be thankful for what they do offer! As I said, internet streaming is not their core business and if they did offer the sort of HQ streaming that you seem to be asking for there would be complaints about unfair competition from the commercial sector. |
BBC iPlayer - really rather good!
"Stevie-(no-degree)-boy" [email protected] wrote in message ... snip You're talking out of your arse again. The BBC should be providing audio quality on its Internet radio streams that is fit-for-purpose in the 21st century. It's using 550 kbps for its BBC iPlayer TV streams, and yet it only sees fit to use 64 kbps using ATRAC3 which shouldn't be used at such a low bit rate. No, you are talking out of your arse, there is NO requirement for the BBC to provide ANY internet radio (or TV) streams, be thankful for what they do offer! As I said, internet streaming is not their core business and if they did offer the sort of HQ streaming that you seem to be asking for there would be complaints about unfair competition from the commercial sector. |
BBC iPlayer - really rather good!
:Jerry: wrote:
"Stevie-(no-degree)-boy" [email protected] wrote in message ... snip You're talking out of your arse again. The BBC should be providing audio quality on its Internet radio streams that is fit-for-purpose in the 21st century. It's using 550 kbps for its BBC iPlayer TV streams, and yet it only sees fit to use 64 kbps using ATRAC3 which shouldn't be used at such a low bit rate. No, you are talking out of your arse, there is NO requirement for the BBC to provide ANY internet radio (or TV) streams, be thankful for what they do offer! As I said, internet streaming is not their core business Would you define DAB as being "core"? What about bbc.co.uk? What about the BBC's radio stations on digital TV? The radio stations streamed to 3G mobiles? The iPlayer? The TV and radio landscape has changed, Jerry, so concepts such as "core" I would say are outdated now. How do you define "core" anyway? Is it limited to FM for the radio? If DAB is included, why can't the Internet streams be included as well?? AFAIAC the Internet radio streams are permanent fixtures and have been for years and years, not to mention that Internet radio is growing to grow in a big, big way following the launch of the iPlayer - and GCap wanting to pull out of DAB and concentrate on broadband instead... and if they did offer the sort of HQ streaming that you seem to be asking for there would be complaints about unfair competition from the commercial sector. What are you on about? GCap already provides high quality 128 kbps WMA streams: http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/br...rnet_radio.htm and it's the biggest commercial radio group in the country, and the big commercial radio groups have been trialing their biggest stations on the BBC's Internet multicast trial: http://www.bbc.co.uk/multicast/radio/channels.shtml Those streams using 128 - 192 kbps WMA will wipe the floor with the quality on DAB so long as they audio is well engineered prior to the WMA encoding. -- Steve - www.digitalradiotech.co.uk - Digital Radio News & Info The adoption of DAB was the most incompetent technical decision ever made in the history of UK broadcasting: http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/da...ion_of_dab.htm |
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