BBC News report: extra second of time
 

On Wed, 31 Dec 2008 13:01:45 -0000, "Jay"
wrote:


"Phil Cook" wrote in message
.. .
Jay wrote:

I see the BBC..........................On Christmas Day 2008 the 'BBC
One'
schedule ran 7 minutes 21 seconds late, which resulted in almost every
programme being recorded that night, missing the last 5 or 6 minutes.
Pathetic when you consider the technology they have at their disposal to
time programmes these days!

Luckily I pad my recordings off Freeview with -1 +10 on my PVR so I
didn't miss anything. But I was wondering, how on earth did they get
that late? Was there some massive news breaking on Christmas Day that
I was and remain unaware of, or did they suffer some hicup in playout
of an "unmissable" programme?
--
Phil Cook looking north over the park to the "Westminster Gasworks"

The general consensus is that Strictly Come Dancing Christmas Special overan
its allocated time slot. Thus leaving everything else after it running by
about seven minutes late.

The system does sometimes work well.

Following John Sergeant's withdrawal from Strictly Come Dancing there was an
extended edition of It Takes Two on BBC2. ITT started half an hour early and
lasted an hour instead of a half. It was correctly recorded in full by my
Humax Freeview PVR.

BBC News report: extra second of time
 

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember "Jay"
saying something like:

I see the BBC has got hold of the fact that to bring UK time in line with
global timing, we are to have an extra second added to the end of the year
tonight (New Years Eve). What a pity the BBC cannot seem to get its own
ship in order when it comes to timing?.

I must admit my ears perked up when I heard the Sky News bimbo announce
that "... the Earth has been turning slower than usual this year."

Followed at this end by gales of laughter.

BBC News report: extra second of time
 

"Jay" wrote in message
...
I see the BBC has got hold of the fact that to bring UK time in line with
global timing, we are to have an extra second added to the end of the year
tonight (New Years Eve). What a pity the BBC cannot seem to get its own
ship in order when it comes to timing?. On Christmas Day 2008 the 'BBC
One'
schedule ran 7 minutes 21 seconds late, which resulted in almost every
programme being recorded that night, missing the last 5 or 6 minutes.
Pathetic when you consider the technology they have at their disposal to
time programmes these days!

Strange. I managed to record 'Doctor Who' on my PC (with a manual tuner
setting - no EPG auto-updating) and didn't miss the end. I added two minutes
of padding and this was more than enough.

BBC News report: extra second of time
 

On Wed, 31 Dec 2008 13:20:48 +0000, Grimly Curmudgeon
wrote:

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember "Jay"
saying something like:

I see the BBC has got hold of the fact that to bring UK time in line with
global timing, we are to have an extra second added to the end of the year
tonight (New Years Eve). What a pity the BBC cannot seem to get its own
ship in order when it comes to timing?.

I must admit my ears perked up when I heard the Sky News bimbo announce
that "... the Earth has been turning slower than usual this year."

Followed at this end by gales of laughter.

Yes! As the Wikipedia article says:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leap_second

the rotation of Earth slows down continually, though at a slightly
variable rate.

Whether or not 2008 was a particularly slow (or less slow) year that is not
the reason for the leap second.

BBC News report: extra second of time
 

Jay wrote:
"Woody" wrote in message
...
"Mike O'Sullivan" wrote in message
...
Jay wrote:
I see the BBC has got hold of the fact that to bring UK time in
line with
global timing, we are to have an extra second added to the end of
the year
tonight (New Years Eve). What a pity the BBC cannot seem to get
its own
ship in order when it comes to timing?. On Christmas Day 2008 the
'BBC One'
schedule ran 7 minutes 21 seconds late, which resulted in almost
every
programme being recorded that night, missing the last 5 or 6
minutes. Pathetic when you consider the technology they have at
their disposal to
time programmes these days!

Absolutely agree. There is nothing that infuriates me more about the
BBC.



Actually it is nothing to do with the BBC.

Nobody said it was anything to do with the BBC. I just said that the
BBC had reported the story on BBC News. Who said anything about it
being anything to do with the BBC?

What is the BBC's fault is the lack of time keeping on its TV
channels.

You said it was to bring the UK in line with global timing, which is wrong.

BBC News report: extra second of time
 

I didn't think PDC was supported on DTT, only legacy analogue?

On Wed, 31 Dec 2008 09:35:02 -0000, "Bill Ridgeway"
wrote:

There is a piece of technology called Programme Delivery Control (PDC)
which, with appropriate recorders, start and stop recording on transmission
of the programme. This is available on BBC1, BBC2 (and others?) and Channel
5 but not ITV1 or Channel 4 (This is not definitive!).

BBC News report: extra second of time
 

Whilst we're on this topic peoples, watch you digital off-air clock at
midnight tonight. For one second you will see 23:59:60 - which we all
know cannot exist.


Where is The Doctor when he's needed?



--
Woody

harrogate three at ntlworld dot com

BBC News report: extra second of time
 

Some years ago, whilst still working for the BBC, I asked a Presentation
contact why a certain trail (The Cliffhanger one) hadn't been pulled.

He said they weren't allowed to overrule marketing decisions, and that
they had to follow what ads - sorry trails - had been listed.

Also, this particular trail had been queried by Pres with marketing who
said it should go out. I think it resulted in something like 288
complaints.

marketing still rule though.

Richard



One imagines these sorts as the SS/Gestapo of the BBC regime, going around
in distinctive black uniforms with peaked caps and red BBC swastika logos on
their arms.

Your loyalty to the BBC Reich is in doubt: Your name vil go on ze list.

BBC News report: extra second of time
 

The message
from Java Jive contains these words:

I didn't think PDC was supported on DTT, only legacy analogue?

On Wed, 31 Dec 2008 09:35:02 -0000, "Bill Ridgeway"
wrote:

There is a piece of technology called Programme Delivery Control (PDC)
which, with appropriate recorders, start and stop recording on
transmission
of the programme. This is available on BBC1, BBC2 (and others?) and
Channel
5 but not ITV1 or Channel 4 (This is not definitive!).

I too get all 'vexed' by the scheduling tw*ts at the Beeb when they
pull such stunning c*nts with the scheduling (and it isn't only due to
program over-runs, they also have a knack of playing 'shuffle the deck'
with regular weekly programs - as noted by various viewers who wrote in
to complain to the Beeb's PoV program a few weeks back).

However, such shenanagins will soon become rather academic once hard
disk space gets even cheaper and the whole day's worth of programming
gets dumped to disk as a matter of routine. After all, it's no more work
to 'top and tail' individual program segments from a 16 hour or so's
worth of capture than it is, currently, to do from a 4 or 5 hour
capture.

The BBC don't seem to realise that such c*ntinuity behaviour and playing
fast and loose with the scheduling is eroding their esteem in the eyes
of the TV viewing public. Eventually, the 'Bean Counters' will reduce
the BBC to being _only_ a playout centre with no added value whatsover
to mark them above the level of a cable TV shopping channel.

With the way the broadcasters are behaving right now and for the
forseeable future, there's definitely a market for an intelligent "PVR"
whereby, with a bit of AI and a 6 (or even 24) hour disk buffer per
channel of interest, it will become possible to make such 'dirty tricks'
by both the BBC and commercial broadcasters totally irreleveant to the
viewer's endpoint experience.

Year on year, it gets cheaper and cheaper to build a PC based PVR using
Open Source Software, such as Myth TV (Linux based). Although it would
seem the government and commercial entities are having it all their own
way regarding the use of technology to control and restrict what the
'governed' can and cannot do, such open source projects offer the
possibility to turn the tables and allow us to keep track of whatever
government promises have been made (readily accessable News program
archiving) and filter the 'Spam' out of both public and commercial
broadcasting.

Considering the above paragraph, this sort of application may well be
"_The_ Killer App" that 'buries microsoft' and lets loose, upon the
world's consciousness, the opensource operating system known as Linux.
;-)

Never mind the "Solution Looking For A Problem" type of software
application, here is a superlative example of a (worldwide) problem
demanding a solution to drive the development of such an open source
software project (and then some). Forget the TiVo, that was a mere
harbinger of what is to come.

If you're a broadcasting company, be worried, be very worried
(especially if you're a commercial broadcaster - be _very_ _very_
worried). The very technology that helps you diseminate your 'wares' on
the cheap is going to make you reconsider the viability of your very
existence.

For the rest us, remember, "Revenge Is A Dish, Best Served Cold". Next
time such broadcast nonsense starts raising your blood pressure, relax
and keep in mind that your next open source based "Myth TV on steroids"
PVR is going to render such irritation a thing of the past (and probably
free up some precious bandwidth in the process ;-).

--
Regards, John.

Please remove the "ohggcyht" before replying.
The address has been munged to reject Spam-bots.

BBC News report: extra second of time
 

On Wed, 31 Dec 2008 17:33:00 +0000, Johnny B Good wrote:

Eventually, the 'Bean Counters' will reduce the BBC to being _only_ a
playout centre

That is done for them by Red Bee is it not?

(Except for playout of regional programs in Northern Ireland, Scotland,
and Wales I think.)