All posts by Trevor Harris
Below are all of Trevor Harris's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
Clearly yet another drop in quality and so bad news for Freeview HD. Freeview HD already transmits a substandard 1440x1080 pixels and an even lower bitrate will make things worst. As anyone who has done this sort of testing the testing is totally insuffiecient. HD encoders have just not improved enough to justify 5 channels. In any case they should increase the definition to 1920x1080 first. This would also preclude any 3D on these channels as the side by side 3D does not work at 1440 pixels. All in all this is another case of lowering standards at the BBC leaving SKY to be the prefered choice for quality.
@David
Sky is not forcing Five HD to do anything. Five chose to transmit it's HD as FTV probably because of the low number of Freeview HD viewers partly due to the very limited coverage at the moment.
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@peter
Your post is not disrespectful and you are certainly entitled to your view. You clearly think the trade off of an extra channel is worth the decrease in quality. One of my concerns is that the BBC uses the Freeview HD quality as a benchmark for satellite so we will probably see a decrease in satellite bit rates as well.
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The BBC claims extensive subjective testing. The first thing to notice is that the range of material is actually rather limited. The BBC made the same claims when they made the massive reduction of bitrate on BBC HD. There was a alot of complaints and photographic evidence that the change produced massive amounts of artifacts. It also turned out that the methodology used by the BBC in subjective tests was very poorly designed. For instance the smallest viewing distance was 4 times the picture height. The ITU recommend 3 times the picture height because that is what is needed for the human eye to resolve 1080 lines. The EBU tests which were more thorough recommended a much higher bitrate. There are other issues in the way the BBC do their tests.
Of course picture quality is subjective and people will differ in what is acceptable. I consider that even the EBU standard is too low.
One of the problems of the BBC's low standard has been that many people cannot see any significant difference between SD and HD for some material and so have been put off of investing in HD.
You are right about 3D hopefully side by side will be a temporary solution. I would prefer something like MVC as used in 3D Blu-ray which only require a 50% increase in bitrate. It is also backward compatable with current 2D HD receivers.
The BBC are also going to waist money on broadcasting some of the Olympics in super high definition for the Japanese. I think that they should get HD right in the UK first.
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I wonder if it will be possible to sell all the extra multiplexes. There must come a point where increasing the number of channels becomes uneconomic as it has with DAB. As far as I can see the BBC are not going to want any extra space.
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I think BBC3 HD and BBC4 HD looks very unlikely unless there is a substantial increase in licence fee. It looks as though BBC2 will become a mainly a repeats channel and they are already reducing red button services. The BBC is still making new programs in SD and have been very slow in going HD. There is also the question of whether the BBC will loose the licence fee by 2016 in any case.
I wonder if Sky might bid for one multiplex as they could use for Sky Sports HD.
ITV 2,3,4 HD and E4 HD are all on pay tv and are unlikly to go to freeview unless there is a substancial increase in advertizing revenue. Not sure what 5 HD will do.
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I am afraid the BBC statements are very miss leading. To start with no News is in HD. New series such as Spooks, Casualty, Celebrity Master Chef, Pointless to name but a few are not in HD. As for BBC 2 today no HD at all from 6:00am to 5:00pm. Even Match of the Day 2 and Top Gear are not in HD today.
Terestrial broadcasting is not cheap and it looks to me as though the BBC cannot afford to buy any more space.
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Changing BBC HD to BBC 2 HD should have been done from the begining. What your article does not mention is that BBC 2 is going to carry more repeats many of which are not in HD. I think it would be better to close BBC 3 and BBC 4 and put the best programs on BBC 2.
Satellite viewers seem to be badly hit by these changes. The only programs I watch on the red button are the practice F1 sessions but of course Sky is going to provide them in HD next season.
It is now clear that the licence fee is not a viable way to finance the BBC. I would sell the whole organisation off which could be used to reduce the deficite.
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What a load of rubish. You would think that the BBC executives had more to worry about than a measly £10m. They waisted £1bn on refurbishment of Broadcasting House with £200m over budget. Goodness knows what the move to Salford is costing but must run into billions.
For the first few years of Sky ITV refused to go on satellite but with little impact on Sky. If the BBC were to leave the Sky platform it would have very little effect.
It is possible to write a book on this subject but I think the main argument is in the interview. Why should satellite Sky viewers have to pay twice for BBC programs.
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@brianist
Are your diagrams for all viewers or just Sky subscribers?
Certainly my viewing of BBC 1 is much less than 21%. Infact most of my tv time is spent watching Sky Sports. Most of my time watching BBC1 is for F1 but when it moves to Sky my BBC 1 viewing will be drop to insignificant.
As far as I understand it Sky charges have to be non discriminatory and so any changes would require a change in the law. I also seem to remember that the BBC had previously complained that the charges were too high but an Ofcom investigation found them to be fair.
It must also be remembered that as a PSB the BBC already gets millions of pounds worth of benifits.
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Sunday 4 September 2011 6:40PM
@technophobe
The BBC were caught out by HD an totally misread HD demand and still many programs are not in HD. The BBC were also slow in adopting wide screen. The BBC prefered to spend our money on a massive building program and the legacy DAB radio system. BBC One HD was not planned to start till 2012 and BBC news will not go HD till 2013. When colour was introduced there was a big increase in the licence fee to pay for it but not for HD.
ITV's decision to provide some HD channels as pay tv was mainly financial. Freeview HD only covers part of the country and there will be no more room on terestrial till 2016 in any case. The majority of viewers on satellite are Sky subscribers and they get the ITV HD channels at no extra cost.