BBC cripple HD offering to make it fit on Freeview

....snip...

"True HD", ie 1080 minimum I'd pay for a decent screen the cost of a
HD DSAT box of some sort is not great. "HD Ready" is a misleading
marketing expression in my book. In shops I've rarely seen proper HD
on the demo sets, there is another thread somewhere about in which
someone asks about the difference SD/HD. If you have ever seen proper
HD you don't need to ask about the difference it is very obvious. By
proper HD I mean from Bluray or other decent bit rate source. DSAT
HD can just about manage it not so sure about freeview. Freeview SD I
consider virtually unwatchable even on the mains stream channels...

Don't mean to sound snobbish but what sort of TV do you have? The problem
with SD on an HD/HD-ready TV is upscaling, turning 600-odd pixels into
720/1080 by "guessing" a few intermediate pixles and moving things around.

You can sometimes see this is you try deliverably setting a computer to
LOWER resolution than the monitor it is attached to (say 800 x 600). On a
cheap monitor the "guess" is merely "copy a nearby pixel" and the results
are horrendous. Better monitors are a little more clever and the results
can be quite good, but certainly not as good as the native format.

TVs are the same - "guess" can be anything from "crap - resulting picture is
awful" to "that's actually rather good". And of course when the TV is
typically larger than ye older TVs (say 32+ inches) any problems are even
more obvious.

My understanding from following this NG is that the difference between
"Brand X, £400 model" and "Brnd X, £600 model" is often NOT the screen,
rather the extra £200 buys you a better processing engine inside which does
upscaling etc much better.

Paul DS.

On 16 June, 20:39, Andy Champ wrote:

OTOH I do have about 5 hours of wish-it-had-a-higher-bitrate iPlayer to
watch...

I don't think the iPlayer bitrate is a problem - not for SD. The top
rate on iPlayer is 1.5Mbps H.264 at 25fps, which is potentially better
than most of Freeview.

I think it's the 50i25p conversion (or, in the case of "filmic"
programmes, the 50i25p50i25p conversion!) that makes the picture
nasty - and of course watching 50i content at 25p makes it stuttery
and/or blurry.


For iPlayer HD, I agree with you - it needs more bits to give a decent
1280x720p25 picture - but more bits would be impractical, as even
fewer PCs would be able to keep up with a higher bitrate.

Cheers,
David.

On 16 June, 15:57, "Dr Zoidberg"
wrote:

I also wonder how many people who foam at the mouth about DOGs are telling the truth when they say they won't watch any channel that uses them.

I've got an AVIsynth script that removes the translucent BBC DOGs in
real time. It's a very geeky solution, but maybe it'll be made
available in a more user friendly / automatic manner by someone one
day.

I wouldn't _not_ watch something because it had a DOG - but if it's
going through my PC for any reason, I'll remove the DOG before
watching it.

Cheers,
David.

On Tue, 16 Jun 2009 13:00:10 +0100, "Paul D.Smith"
wrote:

True, but what channels are they? Are are people really going to watch HD
in numbers without sport and big bucks movies - neither of which will be
free.

BBC HD and ITV HD both show sports and movies for free. C4 HD shows a
range of movies also. OK, not premium first-run stuff but no worse
than the usual terrestrial fare.

--

"tony sayer" wrote in message
...
In article , tim.....
scribeth thus

"Dave Liquorice" wrote in message
hill.net...
On Tue, 16 Jun 2009 19:38:00 +0100, Java Jive wrote:

"There's a TV aerial, and there, another one! People are obviously
doing very nicely for themselves around here!"

I wonder if the same thing ever happened with satellite dishes!
Somehow I doubt it,

Oh it did, but there was a little bit tagged onto the end of that
quote "on benefits".

It was very noticable how the dishes first sprouted on the poorer
estates.

"Dad, what's the little box on the end of a satellite dish called?"

"Son, that's a council house"

I'll get my coat
tim

'Twas ever thus thought of...

Course Thatcher did a lot more social levelling than any socialist mob
ever did by letting tenants buy their own properties)..
Tony Sayer


She would have if she had then let the councils spend the money to build
more, but that would have fecked her invention of the illusion of "the
property market".

With "the property market" she created the illusion of personal prosperity,
whilst in reality burdening the masses with mortgages eating most of their
wages, and worst of all by filtering all those wages into banks mortgages,
she's deprived people of purchasing goods and services providing jobs
and industry

Which eventually helps force wages down so we're become a low wage
economy and getting lower all the time

Steve Terry

2Bdecided wrote:

I don't think the iPlayer bitrate is a problem - not for SD. The top
rate on iPlayer is 1.5Mbps H.264 at 25fps, which is potentially better
than most of Freeview.

I beg to differ. There are obvious jpeg-type artefacts, especially in
sky shots and other almost-flat colour areas.

The fact that Freeview is just as bad - or even worse - doesn't cheer me
up. Come to that, I've seen obvious problems in SkyHD football - you
can see every blade of grass, until the picture pans. They then all
vanish, only to reappear when the camera sits still. And, no, I wasn't
paying attention to the game


I think it's the 50i25p conversion (or, in the case of "filmic"
programmes, the 50i25p50i25p conversion!) that makes the picture
nasty - and of course watching 50i content at 25p makes it stuttery
and/or blurry.


I realise I'm not going to get game-style true 100Hz pictures off any
broadcast. And "filmic" annoys me. I'd rather it had motion blur.

For iPlayer HD, I agree with you - it needs more bits to give a decent
1280x720p25 picture - but more bits would be impractical, as even
fewer PCs would be able to keep up with a higher bitrate.

I have one of them... Core2 plus a last-generation gamer's graphics
card. (My son upgraded!)

Andy

In article , Steve Terry
scribeth thus
"tony sayer" wrote in message
...
In article , tim.....
scribeth thus

"Dave Liquorice" wrote in message
whill.net...
On Tue, 16 Jun 2009 19:38:00 +0100, Java Jive wrote:

"There's a TV aerial, and there, another one! People are obviously
doing very nicely for themselves around here!"

I wonder if the same thing ever happened with satellite dishes!
Somehow I doubt it,

Oh it did, but there was a little bit tagged onto the end of that
quote "on benefits".

It was very noticable how the dishes first sprouted on the poorer
estates.

"Dad, what's the little box on the end of a satellite dish called?"

"Son, that's a council house"

I'll get my coat
tim

'Twas ever thus thought of...

Course Thatcher did a lot more social levelling than any socialist mob
ever did by letting tenants buy their own properties)..
Tony Sayer


She would have if she had then let the councils spend the money to build
more, but that would have fecked her invention of the illusion of "the
property market".


Yes an old tub thumping labour supporter mate of mine did very well out
of her ideas but he'd never admit that the house she permitted him to
buy made him a enough to live on after he had the only access to a lump
of land behind him.

With "the property market" she created the illusion of personal prosperity,
whilst in reality burdening the masses with mortgages eating most of their
wages, and worst of all by filtering all those wages into banks mortgages,
she's deprived people of purchasing goods and services providing jobs
and industry

Which eventually helps force wages down so we're become a low wage
economy and getting lower all the time

Steve Terry


-- Which no one has reversed have they after all that time;?..

Tony Sayer

"tony sayer" wrote in message
...
In article , Steve Terry
scribeth thus
"tony sayer" wrote in message
...
In article , tim.....
scribeth thus

"Dave Liquorice" wrote in message
owhill.net...
On Tue, 16 Jun 2009 19:38:00 +0100, Java Jive wrote:
snp
Course Thatcher did a lot more social levelling than any socialist mob
ever did by letting tenants buy their own properties)..
Tony Sayer

She would have if she had then let the councils spend the money to build
more, but that would have fecked her invention of the illusion of "the
property market".

Yes an old tub thumping labour supporter mate of mine did very well out
of her ideas but he'd never admit that the house she permitted him to
buy made him a enough to live on after he had the only access to a lump
of land behind him.

With "the property market" she created the illusion of personal
prosperity,
whilst in reality burdening the masses with mortgages eating most of their
wages, and worst of all by filtering all those wages into banks mortgages,
she's deprived people of purchasing goods and services providing jobs
and industry

Which eventually helps force wages down so we're become a low wage
economy and getting lower all the time
Steve Terry

-- Which no one has reversed have they after all that time;?..
Tony Sayer


Property owning via mortgages is such a powerful drug i can't see anyway
to wean the British off of it
At least not until we get an economy crushing depression like the 1930's
again

The only thing about this impending UK economic disaster that would make
me **** myself, would be if France with it's mixed economy, stopped
accepting
UK passport holders like myself, but having a French grandmother may be
in my favour?

Steve Terry

"2Bdecided" wrote in message
...
On 16 June, 15:57, "Dr Zoidberg"
wrote:

I also wonder how many people who foam at the mouth about DOGs are
telling the truth when they say they won't watch any channel that uses
them.

I've got an AVIsynth script that removes the translucent BBC DOGs in
real time. It's a very geeky solution, but maybe it'll be made
available in a more user friendly / automatic manner by someone one
day.

I wouldn't _not_ watch something because it had a DOG - but if it's
going through my PC for any reason, I'll remove the DOG before
watching it.

Cheers,
David.



Simple solution. Filter one's viewing through non DOG **** sources. There's
more than enough film and programme content (plus t'interweb, books, social
conversation, clubs, travelling, journals, blogs, newspapers) to fill one's
mind.

"Mark Carver" wrote in message
...
tony sayer wrote:

Can anyone answer me this.

Why is a lump of metal and plastic shaped into a satellite dish treated
any differently to a lump of metal and plastic shaped into a TV
aerial?..

I'd love to know the answer to that too. Also, you actually have to point
out Sky/Mini dishes to foreign visitors, because they're not used to
seeing anything that small ! No one in *any* other country has a problem
with dishes, it's purely a UK thing. I'm sure that the Beeb's continued
refusal to embrace satellite as a 100% bona-fide delivery system is
indicative of that culture. We need to shake it off PDQ IMHO.

--


The BBC is more concerned with not seen to be embracing BSKYB too much. If
only The BBC hadn't ****ed up their satellite and interactive strategy way
back in the 1990s by over-partnering with BSKYB.

If The BBC had done their job properly, satellite would not be seen as under
Rupert's control today.