BBC HD critised in The Independent

Peter Duncanson wrote:
On Sun, 13 Dec 2009 11:52:02 +0000, Kay Robinson
wrote:

Remeber the 'millenium bug'? A good example of the lack of
basic common sense in those that rule that they could be conned into
spending billions of public money on something that, had they an ounce
of common sense, they should know wasn't going to happen, but hey,
they do know how to get their cut.

There may have been some people with the snouts in the trough, but the
Y2K problems in computer software and hardware were real. They had to be
fixed to prevent computer chaos after midnight 1999/2000. Many computer
people worked long and hard on the Y2K project. The result was that
almost all the problems were found and fixed in advance. It was the most
successful computer software modification project ever.

I first became involved in about 1997. I realised at the time that the
degree of publicity necessary to get things moving would result in a
backlash if the problems were successfully cured, with people scoffing
and saying that there never were any problems.


The savings in hardware costs in not storing all those 19s all through
the 60s, 70s, and 80s may well have exceeded the costs of inserting them
later.

Not however if you were a well known supermarket I won't name for fear
of lawyers who threw out all their 10-year lifetime corned beef in
1990! It was widely believed that all hell would break loose when the
calendar rolled over; the problem was of course when manipulating
periods crossing the calendar change.

And as for snouts - I am still mystified as to how it could have
affected my wife's car, such that the insurance company saw fit to add a
term to the insurance excluding the Y2K problem.

Her car had points, and a carburettor. No clock.

Anyway (back on topic) replying to
Roderick Stewart wrote:

That might be true, but it would be pointless because it would be
recording vastly more detail than anyone would see in a typical viewing
situation.

720 lines I make limit of visual acuity (a arc second) for a 68 inch
screen at 4 metres - a not particularly large room, but a biggish
screen. That's for 20:20 vision, and it is not uncommon for people,
especially young people, to have much better resolution than that. At
that level on a grid of alternate black and white pixels you could count
every one; diagonals would look steppy. So more is still needed...

Andy

In article , Peter Duncanson
writes
On Sun, 13 Dec 2009 11:52:02 +0000, Kay Robinson
wrote:

Remeber the 'millenium bug'? A good example of the lack of
basic common sense in those that rule that they could be conned into
spending billions of public money on something that, had they an ounce
of common sense, they should know wasn't going to happen, but hey,
they do know how to get their cut.

There may have been some people with the snouts in the trough, but the
Y2K problems in computer software and hardware were real.

Tosh! The only way that all the ails predicted to befall modern life
due to Y2K would have been resolved would be if programmers were
perfect. Apart from minor issues, that otherwise would have been lost
in day to day noise, nothing happened!

Well, they crucified the last guy that claimed he was perfect - and I
have neither met a perfect programmer nor seen any nailed to trees,
though most of those employed by the 'M' & 'A' companies, amongst
others, probably deserve to be!

Y2K was over-hyped from beginning to end, just like the "Commie" threat
before it and the "hot" threat today.
--
Kennedy
Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed;
A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he's ****ed.
Python Philosophers (replace 'nospam' with 'kennedym' when replying)

"Mike Henry" wrote in message
...
In , Andy Champ
wrote:
720 lines I make limit of visual acuity (a arc second) for a 68 inch
screen at 4 metres - a not particularly large room, but a biggish
screen.

I think you'll find that it's one arc minute, which is equivalent to a
pixel-width of 1.16 mm or 0.046 inch at a viewing distance of 4 metres.

That's for 20:20 vision, and it is not uncommon for people,
especially young people, to have much better resolution than that.

The maximum human visual acuity is said to be around 30 seconds of arc or
twice the 20/20 resolution

At
that level on a grid of alternate black and white pixels you could count
every one; diagonals would look steppy. So more is still needed

Is there some nice website which would do that calculation for me in
reverse, ie if I input my viewing distance it can tell me what size 1080p
panel I should buy? TIA.

20/20 vision works out at about 0.01 inch per metre. So for 1080 pixels at
a viewing distance of 1 metre we get:

1080 x 0.01 x 1 = 10.8 inches

I would simply multiply the above by your chosen viewing distance, but Andy
seems to be putting in a factor of two?

On Mon, 14 Dec 2009 01:05:22 +0000, Kennedy McEwen
wrote:

In article , Peter Duncanson
writes
On Sun, 13 Dec 2009 11:52:02 +0000, Kay Robinson
wrote:

Remeber the 'millenium bug'? A good example of the lack of
basic common sense in those that rule that they could be conned into
spending billions of public money on something that, had they an ounce
of common sense, they should know wasn't going to happen, but hey,
they do know how to get their cut.

There may have been some people with the snouts in the trough, but the
Y2K problems in computer software and hardware were real.

Tosh! The only way that all the ails predicted to befall modern life
due to Y2K would have been resolved would be if programmers were
perfect. Apart from minor issues, that otherwise would have been lost
in day to day noise, nothing happened!

Well, they crucified the last guy that claimed he was perfect - and I
have neither met a perfect programmer nor seen any nailed to trees,
though most of those employed by the 'M' & 'A' companies, amongst
others, probably deserve to be!

Y2K was over-hyped from beginning to end, just like the "Commie" threat
before it and the "hot" threat today.

There certainly was some over-hyping. However, no knowledgeable person
ever claimed that a single Y2K problem in one piece of software on one
computer somewhere would cause the downfall of civilisation as we know
it. The impact of individual problems would vary. The major concern was
with the combined effect of a large number of individual problems
occurring at the same time. In about 1998 I gave an analogy: "A few
drops of rain will make you wet. A very large number of raindrops can
cause a devastating flood."

It took hundreds of thousands of programmers working over a period of
many months to perform a detailed search through the inside of every
piece of software looking for date-handling problems and fixing them.

Some date-handling problems did slip through the net and were fixed in
the first few days of 2000.

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

John Legon wrote:
"Mike Henry" wrote in message
...
In , Andy Champ
wrote:
720 lines I make limit of visual acuity (a arc second) for a 68 inch
screen at 4 metres - a not particularly large room, but a biggish
screen.

I think you'll find that it's one arc minute, which is equivalent to a
pixel-width of 1.16 mm or 0.046 inch at a viewing distance of 4 metres.

It was late. Of course I meant to type "an arc minute" not "an arc second"

That's for 20:20 vision, and it is not uncommon for people,
especially young people, to have much better resolution than that.

The maximum human visual acuity is said to be around 30 seconds of arc or
twice the 20/20 resolution

At
that level on a grid of alternate black and white pixels you could count
every one; diagonals would look steppy. So more is still needed

Is there some nice website which would do that calculation for me in
reverse, ie if I input my viewing distance it can tell me what size 1080p
panel I should buy? TIA.

20/20 vision works out at about 0.01 inch per metre. So for 1080 pixels at
a viewing distance of 1 metre we get:

1080 x 0.01 x 1 = 10.8 inches

I would simply multiply the above by your chosen viewing distance, but Andy
seems to be putting in a factor of two?




I _knew_ I should have kept that darnn spreadsheet. But you have
alllowed for me quoting _diagonal_ not _height_ of screen?

Mike you may want to look at test signals on the actual screen as
broadcasts are usually 720 not 1080, and converting them well is a
non-trivial exercise. AFAIK there are no 720 panels, only 768 or 1080.

Andy

"Peter Duncanson" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 14 Dec 2009 01:05:22 +0000, Kennedy McEwen
wrote:

In article , Peter Duncanson
writes
On Sun, 13 Dec 2009 11:52:02 +0000, Kay Robinson
wrote:

Remeber the 'millenium bug'? A good example of the lack of
basic common sense in those that rule that they could be conned into
spending billions of public money on something that, had they an ounce
of common sense, they should know wasn't going to happen, but hey,
they do know how to get their cut.

There may have been some people with the snouts in the trough, but the
Y2K problems in computer software and hardware were real.

Tosh! The only way that all the ails predicted to befall modern life
due to Y2K would have been resolved would be if programmers were
perfect. Apart from minor issues, that otherwise would have been lost
in day to day noise, nothing happened!

Well, they crucified the last guy that claimed he was perfect - and I
have neither met a perfect programmer nor seen any nailed to trees,
though most of those employed by the 'M' & 'A' companies, amongst
others, probably deserve to be!

Y2K was over-hyped from beginning to end, just like the "Commie" threat
before it and the "hot" threat today.

There certainly was some over-hyping. However, no knowledgeable person
ever claimed that a single Y2K problem in one piece of software on one
computer somewhere would cause the downfall of civilisation as we know
it. The impact of individual problems would vary. The major concern was
with the combined effect of a large number of individual problems
occurring at the same time. In about 1998 I gave an analogy: "A few
drops of rain will make you wet. A very large number of raindrops can
cause a devastating flood."

It took hundreds of thousands of programmers working over a period of
many months to perform a detailed search through the inside of every
piece of software looking for date-handling problems and fixing them.

Some date-handling problems did slip through the net and were fixed in
the first few days of 2000.

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

I was involved with some of this stuff and the main reason it passed with a
whimper in our organisation - and I suspect many others - is because of good
corporate planning and execution of work to make sure it didn't. There were
those that said it was just a huge gravy train for the coders and
consultants but in truth the fact that the Y2K incident was a non-event is
testament to the good work that was done by the software industry to make it
so.

Chas

At 21:24:56 Mon, 14 Dec 2009, Andy Champ wrote:
John Legon wrote:
20/20 vision works out at about 0.01 inch per metre. So for 1080 pixels at
a viewing distance of 1 metre we get:

1080 x 0.01 x 1 = 10.8 inches

I would simply multiply the above by your chosen viewing distance, but Andy
seems to be putting in a factor of two?

I _knew_ I should have kept that darnn spreadsheet. But you have
alllowed for me quoting _diagonal_ not _height_ of screen?

It wasn't clear to me which dimension you were quoting, but should have
realised that it was the diagonal .

For 20/20 vision (resolution of one arc minute) I get the following
diagonal screen sizes in inches, per metre of viewing distance:

1280 x 720 -- 17 inches/metre

1366 x 768 -- 18 " "

1920 x 1080 -- 25 " "

So for a 720 line screen at a distance 4 metres, the diagonal would
indeed be 68 inches as you said...

Conversely, the pixels on a 720 line 32 inch screen would be at the
limit of visual acuity at a distance of about 1.9 metres.

--
John Legon

"Chas Gill" wrote in message
...

"Peter Duncanson" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 14 Dec 2009 01:05:22 +0000, Kennedy McEwen
wrote:

In article , Peter Duncanson
writes
On Sun, 13 Dec 2009 11:52:02 +0000, Kay Robinson
wrote:

Remeber the 'millenium bug'? A good example of the lack of
basic common sense in those that rule that they could be conned into
spending billions of public money on something that, had they an ounce
of common sense, they should know wasn't going to happen, but hey,
they do know how to get their cut.

There may have been some people with the snouts in the trough, but the
Y2K problems in computer software and hardware were real.

Tosh! The only way that all the ails predicted to befall modern life
due to Y2K would have been resolved would be if programmers were
perfect. Apart from minor issues, that otherwise would have been lost
in day to day noise, nothing happened!

Well, they crucified the last guy that claimed he was perfect - and I
have neither met a perfect programmer nor seen any nailed to trees,
though most of those employed by the 'M' & 'A' companies, amongst
others, probably deserve to be!

Y2K was over-hyped from beginning to end, just like the "Commie" threat
before it and the "hot" threat today.

There certainly was some over-hyping. However, no knowledgeable person
ever claimed that a single Y2K problem in one piece of software on one
computer somewhere would cause the downfall of civilisation as we know
it. The impact of individual problems would vary. The major concern was
with the combined effect of a large number of individual problems
occurring at the same time. In about 1998 I gave an analogy: "A few
drops of rain will make you wet. A very large number of raindrops can
cause a devastating flood."

It took hundreds of thousands of programmers working over a period of
many months to perform a detailed search through the inside of every
piece of software looking for date-handling problems and fixing them.

Some date-handling problems did slip through the net and were fixed in
the first few days of 2000.

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

I was involved with some of this stuff and the main reason it passed with
a whimper in our organisation - and I suspect many others - is because of
good corporate planning and execution of work to make sure it didn't.
There were those that said it was just a huge gravy train for the coders
and consultants but in truth the fact that the Y2K incident was a
non-event is testament to the good work that was done by the software
industry to make it so.

Chas

Having just re-read what I wrote yesterday I see that it didn't quite convey
what I meant(!). It DID, of course, pass with a whimper and DIDN'T turn out
to be the disaster everyone feared......... :-)

sent an e-mail to the BBC Trust

I received this reply.


Thank you for your e-mail.

I understand you are unhappy with picture quality on BBC HD.

I can advise that you visit the following blog article posted by Danielle
Nagler, the Head of BBC HD, in which she discusses the various issues raised
by recent changes:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcintern..._a_respon.html

I hope this helps to clarify the situation however I appreciate you may
continue to hold a different view.

I can assure you that I've registered all your points on our database, which
is our daily record of all audience feedback. We use this to compile reports
for BBC staff about issues such as those you've raised along with other
feedback or comments we receive (we will not include your personal details
in any such reports). This helps to inform future decisions, so I'd like to
thank you for taking the time to contact us with your concerns regarding
this matter.

Thank you for taking the time to contact the BBC.

Regards

Robert
BBC Information

I doubt they are going to change
Regards
David

On Tue, 15 Dec 2009 10:41:25 -0000, "David"
wrote:

I doubt they are going to change

But it was her article that upset so many people in the first place!!!
--
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.gt-britain.co.uk/weather