BBC HD critised in The Independent

Roger R wrote:

Ch4 are announced as launching HD on the Sky platform,

'As launching' ? C4 HD has been available on Sky for a couple of years now,
though E4-HD is launching on Sky next week.

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

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wrote in message
...
On 11 Dec, 11:13, "Roger R"
wrote:
wrote in message

...


but IMO the 'rights holders' are pushing the BBC in this
direction, as they appear to have pushed a number of European national
satellite broadcasters away from FTA for all to FTV for registered
nationals only.


As all Europe moves towards encrypted 'packages' is the BBC FTA HD model
sustainable ?

Well, it's fine for the BBC if it's only showing its "own" content -
but if CH4, five, and others never join them on the platform, it's a
bit pointless.

We might end up with a worse case scenario - the rest of Europe uses a
competitive non-proprietary FTV model, while our "free" broadcasters
are stuck behind Sky's system and on the piecemeal roll out of
Freeview HD with inadequate bandwidth.

(Hope I have at least some of that right :-)

I hope we've both got it all wrong! :-)

Cheers,
David.



IRC didn't the mainly U.S. copyright holders try this on when the BBC went
FTA from satellite, and wasn't the BBC's response simply to drop those
programs?. Perhaps if our so called 'European Union' took a firmer stand by
making it clear that copyright would have to be negotiated on a 'Pan
European' basis, not individual countries, or Europe would boycott their
programmes altogether, then I reckon that they would soon begin to see
sense, after all, what's the difference between granting copyright to the EU
or to the whole of the U.S?

"bartc" wrote in message
m...

"Kay Robinson" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 10 Dec 2009 11:05:01 GMT, Chris J Dixon
sharpened a new quill and scratched:

Grappler wrote:

Danielle Nagler, the BBC's head of HD, admitted there had been "some
issues" with picture quality on certain shows but she did not believe
this "had anything" to do with the lower bitrate.

What was also quite interesting, in the extended interview for
"Points of View", was her take on picture sharpness. She believes
that "HD is not simply about sharpness, it is about picture
depth". I have no idea how that parameter is quantified, nor, I
imagine, does she.

Depth of field was probably what she was referring to. An SD image may
have total pin sharpness of the subject but that sharpness will
deterioate in the rest of the image whereas HD will give an equal
sharpness over the entire image.

I thought depth of field was dependent on the lens on the camera (so
smaller aperture = more depth).

Assuming the content was recorded just once (presumably on HD equipment),
how can HD and SD have different background depth? If the HD image has a
background equally as sharp as the subject, that must be the case on SD
too?

--
Bartc

Perceptually, a difference in background depth is possible, because the
lower resolution image will appear out of focus for background objects.
However, perceptually, most of us think the reduction in quality that has
been forced upon us is very obvious and detrimental. In the real world, if
my eyes stray from the key part (foreground) of an image to a background
part of the same image then they will re-focus to adjust for the depth of
field. Given the size of flat-panel displays it is now possible (and
likely) that my eyes will stray in the same way with an artificial image.
However, no measure of re-focussing will bring a low resolution background
back into focus, whereas the high resolution background is already in focus.

All of this, whilst interesting, remains academic. I venture to suggest we
are universally agreed that the lower resolution "HD" image on BBC is now
degraded to the point where it meets neither the potential of the equipment
or our expectations as viewers. I have little doubt that the very clever
people at the BBC know all of the technical arguments and - if they really
cared about their output enough to fight the accountants (or whoever else it
is that are forcing the Beeb down this route) - then they would do something
about it. As it is I am being taxed (via the licence fee) for a service
that I am no longer getting. Regardless of the finer points of the
technical and perceptual arguments there used to be a day not so long ago
when HD was so good that I felt that I could almost recognise a face on the
football terraces. Now it's just the same old pink smudge that it used to
be. Well Done, BBC. Well Done.

On 11 Dec, 14:12, "Ivan" wrote:
wrote in message

...


On 11 Dec, 11:13, "Roger R"
wrote:
wrote in message

...

but IMO the 'rights holders' are pushing the BBC in this
direction, as they appear to have pushed a number of European national
satellite broadcasters away from FTA for all to FTV for registered
nationals only.

As all Europe moves towards encrypted 'packages' is the BBC FTA HD model
sustainable ?

Well, it's fine for the BBC if it's only showing its "own" content -
but if CH4, five, and others never join them on the platform, it's a
bit pointless.

We might end up with a worse case scenario - the rest of Europe uses a
competitive non-proprietary FTV model, while our "free" broadcasters
are stuck behind Sky's system and on the piecemeal roll out of
Freeview HD with inadequate bandwidth.

(Hope I have at least some of that right :-)

I hope we've both got it all wrong! :-)

Cheers,
David.

IRC didn't the mainly U.S. copyright holders try this on when the BBC went
FTA from satellite, and wasn't the BBC's response simply to drop those
programs?. Perhaps if our so called 'European Union' took a firmer stand by
making it clear that copyright would have to be negotiated on a 'Pan
European' basis, not individual countries, or Europe would boycott their
programmes altogether, then I reckon that they would soon begin to see
sense, after all, what's the difference between granting copyright to the EU
or to the whole of the U.S?

The argument put forward by those at the BBC is that it's only the HD
programme that they are being asked to protect, not the SD version.

The difference in income for a rights holder between selling just an
SD version to the BBC, and selling SD+HD versions to the BBC, is very
little.

So the claim is that rights holders are quite happy to say "fine - you
won't protect the HD version - you can have (and pay us for) the SD
version".

It sounds quite plausible to me. Firstly, these decisions aren't
always rational. Secondly, if the increment really is small (or zero),
then keeping a product well away from FTA broadcast, even later on its
life, may pay dividends many times over in terms of Bluray income.
It's not as if BluRay is cheap - you'd only need a tiny fraction of
those prevented from seeing/copying the movie to go out and buy it to
make the decision pay off.

Strange thing is there are 6 channels of FTA HD in many American
markets. That launched well before BluRay though.


I'm not sure broadcasters can band together in quite the way you
suggest. Wouldn't it count as a cartel? Aren't there laws against such
things?

I'm sure they're free to individually refuse to protect HD and see
what happens.

Cheers,
David.

On 11 Dec, 13:16, Peter Duncanson wrote:

Depth of Field is described hehttp://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tut...Depth_of_field

Depth of Field can be small (subject in focus, everything else blurred)
or large (everthing equally sharp).

Chris J Dixon (above) quotes the BBC's head of HD who believes that "HD
is not simply about sharpness, it is about picture depth".

Assuming proportionately equal compression in transmission the only
difference between SD and HD is picture sharpness[1]. Any differences in
visual apearance are related directly to sharpness, aka definition or
resolution.

[1] I'm assuming that HD TV transmissions have the same number of bits
per pixel as SD.

I think what they're trying to say is much simpler - and matches with
my perception (but not Kay's).

The background is usually out of focus - much much softer than the
resolution limits on SD or HD. So it looks the same on both.

The foreground (subject) should be pin-sharp. This is much sharper on
HD than SD.

So the _difference_ in sharpness is more pronounced on HD than SD -
which makes the foreground (subject) "stand out" more in HD.

It is (I think) why people describe good HD pictures as looking "3D"
when of course they're not - but the subjective impression of being
"3D-like" makes perfect sense to me.

Cheers,
David.

"Mark Carver" wrote in message
...
Roger R wrote:

Ch4 are announced as launching HD on the Sky platform,

'As launching' ? C4 HD has been available on Sky for a couple of years
now, though E4-HD is launching on Sky next week.


Ok, that's one error spotted...tick.

No excuse.

Roger R

At 11:05:01 Thu, 10 Dec 2009, Chris J Dixon wrote:
What was also quite interesting, in the extended interview for
"Points of View", was her take on picture sharpness. She believes
that "HD is not simply about sharpness, it is about picture
depth". I have no idea how that parameter is quantified, nor, I
imagine, does she.

I may be completely wrong, but isn't the notion of "picture depth"
associated with contrast and richness of colour? If an image lacks
contrast then people say it looks "flat". Conversely, high contrast
images have "depth". HD is not simply about sharpness...

In article , Kay Robinson wrote:
What was also quite interesting, in the extended interview for
"Points of View", was her take on picture sharpness. She believes
that "HD is not simply about sharpness, it is about picture
depth". I have no idea how that parameter is quantified, nor, I
imagine, does she.

Depth of field was probably what she was referring to. An SD image may
have total pin sharpness of the subject but that sharpness will
deterioate in the rest of the image whereas HD will give an equal
sharpness over the entire image. Often, when it's a 'busy' image it's
better to have only the subject in sharp focus

Quite so. All the more reason for not reducing the digital bit rate, one
of the effects of which is often to produce exactly the opposite effect,
where the background, being identical in successive frames, is pin
sharp, while a talking head in the foreground is moving and ends up
looking blurred.

This is not helped of course by employing self-op reporters who don't
know how to prefocus a camera for the distance at which they intend to
stand, but low bit rates will make their efforts look worse even if they
get it right.

Rod.
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In article , John Legon wrote:
I may be completely wrong, but isn't the notion of "picture depth"
associated with contrast and richness of colour? If an image lacks
contrast then people say it looks "flat". Conversely, high contrast
images have "depth". HD is not simply about sharpness...

HD is just television with more lines. Signal levels and colorimetry
are just the same as they always were, and vision control (when they
bother with it at all nowadays) is done in exactly the same way.

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

In article ,
Kay Robinson wrote:
Depth of field was probably what she was referring to. An SD image may
have total pin sharpness of the subject but that sharpness will
deterioate in the rest of the image whereas HD will give an equal
sharpness over the entire image. Often, when it's a 'busy' image it's
better to have only the subject in sharp focus. I have a copy of the
BBC film 'Galapogas' in both HD and SD and the SD version is better to
watch because the fussy background has less definition, whereas the HD
version makes the background as sharp as the subject. As our eyes
naturally focus onto the sharper part of the image (where there is a
difference) our brains process the main content and are not distracted
for whatever goes on in the background. This is a basic technique in
photography and has the advantage that less light is needed because
the apeture is open wider.

Surely it's one of the most basic of production techniques to make sure
other parts of the picture don't detract from the important part? Usually
done by the correct choice of lens and exposure to give the required depth
of field. And of course avoiding having distracting things happening in
the background. But is the same in principle no matter what the medium.

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