Last Weekend's 'Click'

wrote in message
...


Did you see "Swarm" the other weekend on BBC One? Some of the most
complex scenes produced the worst artefacts I've ever seen on DTT - it
was really just a screen full of blocks. This was on a 50Hz 16x9 28"
CRT, so goodness knows what it looked like on a 40" LCD with the
sharpening turned up!

It would be interesting to have access to the master tape, or even
just a few seconds from the most complex parts - it would make great
video encoder test material.

btw, it was a really good programme.






should have watched it on BBC HD.





--
Gareth.

that fly...... is your magic wand....

On Wed, 21 Jan 2009 17:18:20 +0100, J G Miller
wrote:

On Wed, 21 Jan 2009 05:58:31 -0800, wrote:
It probably wouldn't significantly change the _number_ of different
channels watched by most people.

So true -- even in Freeview homes, most viewing is still predominantly
BBC-1 and ITV-1, plus some BBC-2, C4, and five thrown in for when there
is "nothing of interest" on BBC-1 or ITV-1 (and just maybe possibly
some BBC-4).

I generally only watch the four main PSB channels. Rarely watch Five
or any other digital channels. My most watched digital only channels
are BBC 3 & BBC 4. Most other channels just show american trash or
old BBC/ITV stuff.

Marky P.

Java Jive wrote:
Yet discussions are in the are about HD over DTT, when already we only
receive 1-3% of the original SD signal. Would it not be better to
stop putting the cart before the horse and solve the bandwidth problem
first?

Until we have an infinite bandwidth delivery system to the home, that just
ain't going to happen. The nearest we've got to that is satellite delivery.
If HMG had empowered BT back in 1984 to start the process of running a fibre
to *every* UK home, things today might be different.

Also this message wouldn't be coming to you for the first (and possibly last)
miles of its journey on a 21st century bodge, to make 19th century technology
able to transport it.

--
Mark
Please replace invalid and invalid with gmx and net to reply.

Mark Carver wrote:

Java Jive wrote:
Yet discussions are in the are about HD over DTT, when already we only
receive 1-3% of the original SD signal. Would it not be better to
stop putting the cart before the horse and solve the bandwidth problem
first?

Until we have an infinite bandwidth delivery system to the home, that just ain't going to happen. The nearest we've got to that is satellite delivery.
If HMG had empowered BT back in 1984 to start the process of running a fibre to every UK home, things today might be different.

Also this message wouldn't be coming to you for the first (and possibly last) miles of its journey on a 21st century bodge, to make 19th century technology able to transport it.


They said this invention of Marconi's wouldn't work.

"Mark Carver" wrote in message
...
Also this message wouldn't be coming to you for the first (and possibly
last) miles of its journey on a 21st century bodge, to make 19th century
technology able to transport it.

I still don't believe broadband works. It just can't. I must have drempt it.

Bill

"Mark Carver" wrote in message
...
Java Jive wrote:
Yet discussions are in the are about HD over DTT, when already we
only
receive 1-3% of the original SD signal. Would it not be better to
stop putting the cart before the horse and solve the bandwidth
problem
first?

Until we have an infinite bandwidth delivery system to the home, that
just ain't going to happen. The nearest we've got to that is satellite
delivery.
If HMG had empowered BT back in 1984 to start the process of running a
fibre to *every* UK home, things today might be different.

Also this message wouldn't be coming to you for the first (and
possibly last) miles of its journey on a 21st century bodge, to make
19th century technology able to transport it.

--

Two reasons why not then Mark.

Firstly we had nothing like the computing power on the desktop and pro
rata that we have now, and even then fibre was not that fast and was
still expensive. In 1984 the BBC computer was still king(ish.) Oh how
short memories are......!

Second, and the main point of fibre to the home, is that the 999 service
is sacrosanct - it must NEVER fail - as far is the powers that be are
concerned. If you run fibre to the home you must put in some sort of
battery backup to keep the fibre kit powered in the case of mains
failure, and that would mean some sort of monitoring system with all of
the attendant kit in the exchange. We were then still in the age of
crossbar and TXE4 - System X, what's that? Getting info from the
home-end would have likely been by slow-speed serial data - we're
talking possibly only 1200 baud here using FSK tones.

Now if BT and HMG had got off their collective backsides in the early
90's and started doing something about it (like wot the then nascent
cable industry did) we might have something at least a bit better than
we have now. But I forgot, in the early 90's we were in recession
(remember that?) and no-one had any money to buy such things, especially
as most of the kit came from across the pond.

If you are in a Virgin cable area (like me :-}} ) you can now have 50Mb
to your home on fibre. The catch is that almost everyone overlooks the
fact that we are only talking local loop here - it's no good having
lightning fast feeds if the infrastructure behind it cannot support it.
I'm not being critical of VM - pretty well all ISPs suffer from the same
bottleneck - contention ratio. Despite the increase in network speeds
and everything else that goes with it, CR has stuck resolutely at 50:1,
so at the peak times your 50Mb feed could potentially supply only 1Mb.
Not a very good deal is it?

Anyone who has ever had the joy to work on an uncontended feed will know
what I mean. A few years ago I was working on a 2Mb uncontended feed and
it was pure magic. Agreed, downloading a big file like a film would have
been slow by modern standards, but for 'normal' use it was pure delight.
You can have uncontended feeds today, but at a price. I wonder if VM
would even consider giving someone a 50Mb uncontended feed? It would
make a (potentially) massive hole in their feed rate to contended users!


--
Woody

harrogate three at ntlworld dot com

On 21 Jan, 17:40, "The dog from that film you saw"
wrote:
wrote in message

...

Did you see "Swarm" the other weekend on BBC One? Some of the most
complex scenes produced the worst artefacts I've ever seen on DTT - it
was really just a screen full of blocks. This was on a 50Hz 16x9 28"
CRT, so goodness knows what it looked like on a 40" LCD with the
sharpening turned up!

It would be interesting to have access to the master tape, or even
just a few seconds from the most complex parts - it would make great
video encoder test material.

btw, it was a really good programme.

should have watched it on BBC HD.

I'm sure they'll still be repeating it by the time I actually _get_
HD!

I'd guess the same issues that make it difficult to encode at 4.5MBps
CBR MPEG-2 SD would also cause some trouble at 16Mbps CBR MPEG-4 HD,
though less so - roughly equivalent bits-per-pixel, better encoding
scheme, and lower per-pixel sharpness would make it easier to encode,
but still not easy to encode.

Cheers,
David.

On 22 Jan, 16:36, wrote:

Yes, between schoool chuck out time and bedtime, it slows to treacle, as *do
all the other providers.

As someone late to the broadband party, partly out of cynicism, I am
stunned by the 8Mbps (actually 8.6Mbps measured) I can get from
Plusnet - even at 6pm!

Cheers,
David.

In article , Woody wrote:
If you are in a Virgin cable area (like me :-}} ) you can now have 50Mb
to your home on fibre. The catch is that almost everyone overlooks the
fact that we are only talking local loop here - it's no good having
lightning fast feeds if the infrastructure behind it cannot support it.

True, but it can only be a matter of time before it improves as bits of
the net are gradually upgraded in response to demand. In the mid 1990s I
was involved with a cybercafe which we linked by ISDN to a service
provider in Warrington whose sole link to the net, we discovered, was a
64kb/s line to Canterbury. Only a decade and a half later that sort of
speed would be considered a bit meagre for a single user, but at that time
it was serving most of the north west of England.

The VM system can provide 50Mb/s broadband *and* radio and television
services all on the same cable. So far it's only fibre to street boxes and
co-ax to each house, but if some as yet unimagined service needed fibre to
each house, it would be quite feasible to upgrade as required because the
ducting is all there. It looks like the most future-proof system we have.

Rod.
--
Virtual Access V6.3 free usenet/email software from
http://sourceforge.net/projects/virtual-access/

On 21 Jan, 04:46, Java Jive wrote:
Until there's flames, or a seascape, or a flock of birds taking off,
or a shoal of fish, or a waterfall, or river rapids, or any one of
many situations where the bandwidth can't maintain the bitrate, then
analogue, assuming it hasn't itself gone through any digital stages
involving compression before being broadcast as analogue, is better.


Perhaps, but only for that one channel. The problem is that analogue
is greedy and requires an entire UHF number solely for one broadcast,
whereas with DTT, it is possible to fit in multiple broadcasts in the
same bandwidth.

John