iPlayer HD comparison

I've uploaded some screen grabs from the various iPlayer formats here,
including the new HD service:

http://s633.photobucket.com/albums/u...cided/iPlayer/

It's a frame from "Wainwright Walks - Coast to Coast - The Heart of
the Lakes". This frame is just after a cross fade, hence the lousy
quality of the 500kbps version.


The HD version may not be as pin-sharp as broadcast HD (what do you
expect at 3.2Mbps - actually 2.9Mbps for this programme), but it's
better than what was previously available.


You need a modern machine to play HD, and a fast connection to stream
it.

The embedded player on the BBC website, and the player in the Adobe
Air downloader, are both quite inefficient. They stutter badly on my
old machine, whereas VLC plays comparable files perfectly.

Cheers,
David.

wrote in message
...
I've uploaded some screen grabs from the various iPlayer formats here,
including the new HD service:

http://s633.photobucket.com/albums/u...cided/iPlayer/

It's a frame from "Wainwright Walks - Coast to Coast - The Heart of
the Lakes". This frame is just after a cross fade, hence the lousy
quality of the 500kbps version.


The HD version may not be as pin-sharp as broadcast HD (what do you
expect at 3.2Mbps - actually 2.9Mbps for this programme), but it's
better than what was previously available.


You need a modern machine to play HD, and a fast connection to stream
it.

The embedded player on the BBC website, and the player in the Adobe
Air downloader, are both quite inefficient. They stutter badly on my
old machine, whereas VLC plays comparable files perfectly.

Cheers,
David.



I call any image with the symbol [b][b][C] floating mid air like some
manifestation of a deity, deeply flawed.

Is it too much for them to deliver the picture without cocking about with
the image?


PS. A clever analysis on your part Mr R.

On 21 Apr, 17:15, "Light of Aria"
wrote:
wrote in message

...


I've uploaded some screen grabs from the various iPlayer formats here,
including the new HD service:

[snip]

I call any image with the symbol [b][b][C] floating mid air like some
manifestation of a deity, deeply flawed.

Is it too much for them to deliver the picture without cocking about with
the image?

Oh, how could you? They clearly spent a lot of time picking a new
place to put the DOG for iPlayer HD!

(It's placed for optimum viewing at 16x10 (!!!), in case you were
wondering.).

On the SD versions at least, if you feed them into a normal TV, the
iPlayer DOG is lost in the overscan. Don't tell them that though -
they'll only go and move it!


I've got a _very_ simple AVIsynth script which removes the DOG except
where the content itself is very bright. My machine isn't fast enough
to run the script on HD content though.


The strange thing is that my immediate subjective opinion is that the
"HD" on my PC looks about as good as the "SD" from Freeview (via my
CRT SDTV) (25p stuttery motion not withstanding). So, it's a step
forward to get back to where we were.

Cheers,
David.

"2Bdecided" wrote in message
...

On the SD versions at least, if you feed them into a normal TV, the
iPlayer DOG is lost in the overscan. Don't tell them that though -
they'll only go and move it!

iPlayer content is all pre-cropped to 'compensate' for lack of overscan on
computer screens. The DOG is placed roughly where it'd end up on a TV screen
displaying "normal" transmissions with overscan.

On 21 Apr, 17:56, "jamie powell" wrote:
"2Bdecided" wrote in message

...

On the SD versions at least, if you feed them into a normal TV, the
iPlayer DOG is lost in the overscan. Don't tell them that though -
they'll only go and move it!

iPlayer content is all pre-cropped to 'compensate' for lack of overscan on
computer screens.

It is cropped for SD: 16 pixels top+bottom, and 24 pixels left+right
from the 720x576 master.

It's not cropped for HD. They're keeping every pixel (downscaled!) for
iPlayer HD.


The DOG is placed roughly where it'd end up on a TV screen
displaying "normal" transmissions with overscan.

It's not - it would be barely on screen, never mind "roughly where
it'd end up on a TV screen displaying 'normal' transmissions with
overscan".

Anyway, the "normal" broadcast DOGs are 4x3 safe, while the SD iPlayer
DOG is placed for 16x9, and the HD iPlayer DOG is placed for 16x10.
Therefore the iPlayer DOGs are no where _near_ the "broadcast" DOGs
horizontally, and slightly above the broadcast DOGs vertically.

Cheers,
David.

"2Bdecided" wrote in message
...

They're keeping every pixel (downscaled!) for
iPlayer HD.

Correct.



The DOG is placed roughly where it'd end up on a TV screen
displaying "normal" transmissions with overscan.

It's not - it would be barely on screen, never mind "roughly where
it'd end up on a TV screen displaying 'normal' transmissions with
overscan".

Nope - if the iPlayer "SD" video hadn't been cropped, and the DOG was in the
same place relative to the rest of the image, it'd appear roughly in the
same place from the viewer's perspective on correctly-adjusted TVs.


Anyway, the "normal" broadcast DOGs are 4x3 safe, while the SD iPlayer
DOG is placed for 16x9

irrelevant.

wrote:
I've uploaded some screen grabs from the various iPlayer formats here,
including the new HD service:

Grief their website is C**p. I spent an hour or so the other day
searching torrents for an HD version of that - why doesn't it say on the
BBC4 page that HD is available?

Andy

On 21 Apr, 20:47, Andy Champ wrote:
wrote:
I've uploaded some screen grabs from the various iPlayer formats here,
including the new HD service:

Grief their website is C**p. *I spent an hour or so the other day
searching torrents for an HD version of that - why doesn't it say on the
BBC4 page that HD is available?

It's possible you looked just before the service went live.

On the BBC Four page of _iPlayer_ you could hardly miss the "watch in
BBC HD" link next to the programme.

On the BBC Four section of the BBC website, the embedded version isn't
HD, but there's a link the iPlayer programme page, a link to BBC HD
(proving that it's available in HD, even if it could be a little more
obvious).


Now that BBC HD has its own "channel" section in iPlayer, it's really
obvious how little new content is on the channel compared to all the
others! Getting better though...

Cheers,
David.

On 21 Apr, 19:54, "jamie powell" wrote:
"2Bdecided" wrote in message

...

It's not - it would be barely on screen, never mind "roughly where
it'd end up on a TV screen displaying 'normal' transmissions with
overscan".

Nope - if the iPlayer "SD" video hadn't been cropped, and the DOG was in the
same place relative to the rest of the image, it'd appear roughly in the
same place from the viewer's perspective on correctly-adjusted TVs.

I see what you're saying.

I think the cropping is slightly less than typical SD overscan
(there's a BBC R&D white paper on this), so the iPlayer SD DOG really
would be partly off screen - but no doubt you'll argue that a TV that
does this is not "correctly adjusted".

FWIW IIRC officially "correctly adjusted" is 5%-10% overscan, with 7%
being common. Modern TVs do less via some inputs, but not via others.

Cheers,
David.

2Bdecided wrote:

It's possible you looked just before the service went live.

On the BBC Four page of _iPlayer_ you could hardly miss the "watch in
BBC HD" link next to the programme.

On the BBC Four section of the BBC website, the embedded version isn't
HD, but there's a link the iPlayer programme page, a link to BBC HD
(proving that it's available in HD, even if it could be a little more
obvious).


I'll talk you through it. We'll take Ms Bradbury's "Wainwright Coast to
Coast" which is what I was looking for. It's on BBC4, so...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/tv

click on BBC 4. *Not* cheat and use the shortcut on the page, or the
most popular - it won't be there by the time you read it. Instead go to
Thursday schedule. And find NOW it says "Watch in BBC HD...". OK,
ignore that and click on the programme. Hey look, an HD logo there too.
I think it was *half* up when I looked! (last night if I went to the
HD channel it was there in HD, but not HD on BBC4)

Andy