BBC NQHD (Not Quite HD) and likely to remain so.

On Thu, 16 Sep 2010 10:24:13 +0100, Zathras
wrote:

Your old lot got sold to Siemens..which kind of implies that the BBC
didn't want them!

Well, you're quite right. During Burt, the bean counters identified
Engineering as an unwanted overhead which was draining money from the
programme makers so bits of it were sold off to Siemens. One of the
consequences of Burt was that the post of Director of Engineering was
abolished. Director of Engineering was a member of the BBC Board of
Management, had international status and was in a position to ensure
that the highest technical standards were maintained and those standards
were internationally recognised and respected. He had real clout. A
direct outcome of the abolition of the post is the technical mess that
the BBC's in today.

--
Alan White
Mozilla Firefox and Forte Agent.
Twenty-eight miles NW of Glasgow, overlooking Lochs Long and Goil in Argyll, Scotland.
Webcam and weather:- http://windycroft.co.uk/weather

On Thu, 16 Sep 2010 10:43:50 +0100
Alan wrote:
Well, you're quite right. During Burt, the bean counters identified
Engineering as an unwanted overhead which was draining money from the
programme makers so bits of it were sold off to Siemens. One of the

Unwanted overhead? How do these suits think the programmes get to the audience,
magic pixie vision? It beggears belief.

B2003

On Wed, 15 Sep 2010 07:10:17 -0700 (PDT), Richard Russell
wrote:

BBC engineers (I used to be one) understand the science as well as anyone
- and probably better than most.

There has been a huge shift in the power base away from Engineering in
the last 30 or so years.

Interestingly, 'technology' itself has recently fought back and is now
so complicated, all encompassing and pervasive that it massively
impacts in ways that didn't happen in the good old days. Technology
isn't just hidden in technical areas..it's everywhere.

Engineers don't have the obvious political power they once wielded
but, when the big digital centres stubbornly dictate how programmes
are to be made and then start bleeding money for their technical
refreshes every few years (rather than the 10 to 20 in the old days)
those vast sums are coming out of programme budgets. Who's the daddy?

Broadcasters are running to jump onto the Moore's Law bandwagon
(though they may not have realised it yet) and the downside is cost.
Anyone who keeps a PC reasonably up to date will have a handle on
this..just multiply several million times.

The BBC must be operating the way it is purely for cost reasons and
that's an insurmountable barrier for the people on the opposite side
who want better quality pictures.

Today the BBC Trust has *offered* to freeze the license fee for two
years! (Sounds like somebody is getting worried about the next charter
renewal). I'm glad I don't work for them..I'm minded of the Titanic.

--
Z

On Thu, 16 Sep 2010 09:46:06 +0000 (UTC), d wrote:

On Thu, 16 Sep 2010 10:43:50 +0100
Alan wrote:
Well, you're quite right. During Burt, the bean counters identified
Engineering as an unwanted overhead which was draining money from the
programme makers so bits of it were sold off to Siemens. One of the

Unwanted overhead? How do these suits think the programmes get to the audience,
magic pixie vision? It beggears belief.

That is probably not far from the truth.


--
Peter Duncanson
(in uk.tech.digital-tv)

On 15 Sep, 20:56, Mark Carver wrote:
wrote:
P.S. I enjoyed the NHK raw uncompressed 8k * 4k TV pictures screened
at IBC.

So did I, though there were rather a lot of stuck pixels on their projector,
at least at the showing I attended, 12:35hrs Sept 14th.

I went same day (first showing) and it was quite bad in that respect -
apparently same the previous day too.

But it didn't detract from the spectacle of seeing Japanese people
ride a tree trunk down a hill ;-) I went from thinking "this picture
is even bigger than it needs to be, but very impressive" to thinking
"these people are mad - why are they all running to get crushed by the
tree?!"

I also thought how "filmic" it looked - in a good way - in the sense
that it had no video artefacts at all, was projected, and looked
really nice - but it was running at 60fps rather than 24fps so wasn't
what people normally think of "filmic" at all.

The 4k downscale demos outside didn't look like film or video in any
way (though the display panels themselves added some unwanted motion
blur - it wasn't in the content itself) - it was near as damn it
faultless with no "signature" from the medium itself at all as far as
I could see.

Their bitrate targets were 70Mbps terrestrial, 100Mbps satellite. They
assumed various transmission and encoding efficiencies would kick in
before the planned 2020 start date to make this practical - but their
220Mbps 8*HD H.264 encoded version looked fine to me (though that's a
clunky way of doing it).

Cheers,
David.

On 15 Sep, 20:02, tony sayer wrote:

Sad thing is that the BBC trust has put the stance in black and white:
it's not the BBC's job to be the best in terms of technical quality.

It used to be once upon a time. I once worked for Pye TVT , Rupert Neve
and Audix, it was a given in those days that if you supplied to the BBC
then your equipment was good enough for any other broadcaster in the
world if it was good enough for them..

I think that's still generally true. Lots of the raw content is still
top notch*. Some of the soundscapes in Radio 4 dramas are still
breathtaking (and yet almost always perfectly mono compatible). There
are lots of very clever people working very hard.

In terms of technical quality, it's usually the final broadcast
encoding that wrecks it. Even then, on _some_ platforms, on a sensible
sized display at a reasonable viewing distance, some content hangs
together fairly well. Sadly some content is visibly pixelated when
when viewed on a 14" display!

Cheers,
David.

* - except for the shaky camera work, horrible fake filmic effect, and
excessive dynamic range compression.

tony sayer wrote:

Sad thing is that the BBC trust has put the stance in black and white:
it's not the BBC's job to be the best in terms of technical quality.


It used to be once upon a time. I once worked for Pye TVT , Rupert Neve
and Audix, it was a given in those days that if you supplied to the BBC
then your equipment was good enough for any other broadcaster in the
world if it was good enough for them..

.. . .once you'd put the faders the other way round ;-)

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

www.paras.org.uk

On Fri, 17 Sep 2010 07:04:46 +0100, Mark Carver
wrote:

. . .once you'd put the faders the other way round ;-)

Didn't radio and television faders work in opposite directions?

--
Alan White
Mozilla Firefox and Forte Agent.
Twenty-eight miles NW of Glasgow, overlooking Lochs Long and Goil in Argyll, Scotland.
Webcam and weather:- http://windycroft.co.uk/weather

On Fri, 17 Sep 2010 08:07:47 +0100, Alan
wrote:

On Fri, 17 Sep 2010 07:04:46 +0100, Mark Carver
wrote:

. . .once you'd put the faders the other way round ;-)

Didn't radio and television faders work in opposite directions?

...and VT ones worked fully open where Radio ones didn't..

--
Z

In message , Zathras
writes
On Fri, 17 Sep 2010 08:07:47 +0100, Alan
wrote:

On Fri, 17 Sep 2010 07:04:46 +0100, Mark Carver
wrote:

. . .once you'd put the faders the other way round ;-)

Didn't radio and television faders work in opposite directions?

..and VT ones worked fully open where Radio ones didn't..

But you didn't want all three fully open

--
If one person has delusions, we call them psychotic. If, however, 1.5 billion
people have delusions we must apparently call them a religious group, and
respect their delusionary state.