BBC 1 HD Picture Quality - Any views?

What did you think of Picture Quality last night on BBC 1 HD at
launch?
I'd say it was about twice as good as SD, that's all. It should be
miles better to be true HD.

I watched
- Film 2010 - the studio shots looked very soft.
- The film afterwards, given it was letterbox format you'd expect even
better picture quality. It was nothing special whatsoever.

What's the point of HD if you don't do it properly?

On Thu, 4 Nov 2010 05:29:53 -0700 (PDT), scoobie
wrote:

What did you think of Picture Quality last night on BBC 1 HD at
launch?
I'd say it was about twice as good as SD, that's all. It should be
miles better to be true HD.

I watched
- Film 2010 - the studio shots looked very soft.
- The film afterwards, given it was letterbox format you'd expect even
better picture quality. It was nothing special whatsoever.

Surely the film is broadcast as a 16:9 picture with top and bottom black
bars. The black bars are part of the broadcast picture (they use
pixels).

A TV can handle only two aspect ratios, 4:3 and 16:9.

A film at 1.66:1, 1.85:1, 2.20:1 or 2.35:1 has to be fitted into a 16:9
frame by the broadcaster, not adjusted to fit by the TV.


What's the point of HD if you don't do it properly?

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

In article ,
scoobie wrote:

What's the point of HD if you don't do it properly?

It's still bettter than SD?

-- Richard

On 04/11/2010 12:29, scoobie wrote:
What did you think of Picture Quality last night on BBC 1 HD at
launch?
I'd say it was about twice as good as SD, that's all. It should be
miles better to be true HD.

I watched
- Film 2010 - the studio shots looked very soft.
- The film afterwards, given it was letterbox format you'd expect even
better picture quality. It was nothing special whatsoever.

What's the point of HD if you don't do it properly?
I also noticed the overall softness of BBC1HD (on Virgin cable)...

G

On Thu, 4 Nov 2010 05:29:53 -0700 (PDT), scoobie
wrote:

What's the point of HD if you don't do it properly?

Some of us have been asking that since August 2009 when the bit-rate was
chopped.

--
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

"scoobie" wrote in message
...

What did you think of Picture Quality last night on BBC 1 HD at
launch?
I'd say it was about twice as good as SD, that's all. It should be
miles better to be true HD.

I watched
- Film 2010 - the studio shots looked very soft.
- The film afterwards, given it was letterbox format you'd expect even
better picture quality. It was nothing special whatsoever.

What's the point of HD if you don't do it properly?



you could say that about SD too - SD broadcasts and dvd are both SD mpeg 2
but one looks far better.
same for HD - you shouldn't expect the broadcast H264 HD to look like a blu
ray that uses the same codec.





-- Gareth.

that fly...... is your magic wand....
http://dsbdsb.mybrute.com
you fight better when you have a bear!

On 04/11/2010 12:29, scoobie wrote:
What did you think of Picture Quality last night on BBC 1 HD at
launch?
I'd say it was about twice as good as SD, that's all. It should be
miles better to be true HD.

I watched
- Film 2010 - the studio shots looked very soft.
- The film afterwards, given it was letterbox format you'd expect even
better picture quality. It was nothing special whatsoever.

What's the point of HD if you don't do it properly?

Unlike the BBC HD channel not all the programmes on BBC1 HD are actually
HD. About half of last night's schedulr, including Film 2010, was
originated in SD and upscaled. Better than the SD channel of course, by
virtue of having a higher bit rate, of course, but that's it.

Your criticism is a bit like criticsing an old monochrome film for not
being broadcast in colour.

In general though, i agree with you, based on watching BBC HD it's
always the outdoor landscape/nature/wildlife programmes which impress
more than studio-based productions.

--
mb

On Nov 4, 12:29*pm, scoobie wrote:
What did you think of Picture Quality last night on BBC 1 HD at
launch?
I'd say it was about twice as good as SD, that's all. It should be
miles better to be true HD.

I guess it depends on what you mean by "twice as good". If you mean
the horizontal resolution only looked to be about 1440 pixels rather
than 720 then that's because it's precisely what it is (the BBC
doesn't broadcast 1920-pixel 'full HD'). Given that the vertical
resolution of HD is *less* than twice that of SD (1080 lines rather
than 576), and given the way the brain judges 'quality', the expected
subjective improvement of BBC1 HD over SD is indeed only about 2:1.

Richard.
http://www.rtrussell.co.uk/

In article 7ae71c65-42fb-4511-a8d2-
, Scoobie wrote:
What did you think of Picture Quality last night on BBC 1 HD at
launch?
I'd say it was about twice as good as SD, that's all. It should be
miles better to be true HD.

Since HD only has about twice the resolution of SD, what would you
expect? The cameras in most mobile phones these days can manage more.

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

"Richard Russell" wrote in message
...

I guess it depends on what you mean by "twice as good". If you mean
the horizontal resolution only looked to be about 1440 pixels rather
than 720 then that's because it's precisely what it is (the BBC
doesn't broadcast 1920-pixel 'full HD'). Given that the vertical
resolution of HD is *less* than twice that of SD (1080 lines rather
than 576), and given the way the brain judges 'quality', the expected
subjective improvement of BBC1 HD over SD is indeed only about 2:1.

The above post contains no mention of lossy compression and low bitrates,
nor the fact that most content on BBC1 HD is currently upscaled SD (which
includes a lossy deinterlace-rescale-reinterlace process).
Richard is behaving like a typical BBC employee here by evading the main
issues, it seems.

jamie.
--