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.

wrote:
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!


It's better than I was expecting as well. The download stuff started off
looking and sounding seriously dodgy, but they then increased the bit rates
from about 700 kbps to 1 Mbps or so and they might have improved whatever
they do on the back-end as well such as transcoding. But given that C4
already provided 1 Mbps video I was half expecting the download side not to
be too bad.

The thing that surprised me was the streaming side, because all streams have
to run in parallel, so the bandwidth requirement is huge - I've estimated it
could be up to around 10 Gbps if you take peak demand into consideration -
so I was expecting them to use lower bit rates than the 550 kbps they are
using. Also, they're apparently using the H.263 codec for the video:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02..._flash_iphone/

So although the quality of the streams isn't good, I still thought it would
be worse than it is.

I reckon they must be getting pretty clean feeds to the encoders.

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.


--
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

"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.

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.

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.

: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

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

"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.

"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.

: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