All posts by Trevor Harris
Below are all of Trevor Harris's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
Interesting stat I came across. Only one in five radios sold in the UK have DAB!. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink.
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Well I certainly will never tune 106. 8 minutes of adverts for 30 minutes of program all at a lower picture quality than SD is at the moment.
It would be much better to have a VOD service for local news. So people can watch the local news at any time and not in half hour slots. It also means a provider can add breaking news as it happens.
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Actually Brian your figures are based on the population where as advertizing rates are determined by viewers and demograph. Has any research been done into how many people would watch these programs?
There was a local station on the Isle of Wight called Solent tv but it failed. The Isle of Wight was considered an ideal place for local TV as people there are very community minded.
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The idea of trying to squeeze 5 HD channels into a multiplex is really bad. Because of the current bandwidth limitations the BBC only transmits 1440x1080 instead of the full HD 1920x1080. A reduction in bitrate will certainly reduce the quality even more. The BBC will say that encoder improvements will compensate but certainly not enough.
I think it will be very optimistic to believe that all these channels will be filled by so called free television. The quality of BBC programs has certainly deteriated over the last year. Just look at the number of repeats being shown this week. Most of the new programs are cheap rubish. The abandoment of F1 is another example of dumbing down.
I would certainly expect the Sky Sports HD channels to be available. And on that bomb shell I will say goodbye.
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Actually Brian I looked at you reference and I could not find any thing about 5 channels in it.
Computing power is not really the problem here. It is a question of encoding quality which has certainly been increasing over the last few years. But the improvements that can be made are limited by the requirement to hold to the H264 specifications. In my view any improvements should be used to upgrade to 1920x1440.
I notice you have not mentioned 3D which must surely be a part of any expansion.
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Yep I have seen this document. As I said rather optimistic and as I said thier 2010 prediction failed as they are still transmitting 1440.
Actually I don't understand you saying there is no consumer demand for 3D. The take up at Sky is the same as HD was at the same stage. Sky have just anounced a big expansion of thier 3D service. ITV has test transmisions at the moment. By 2016 I would expect 3D to be common place.
I have recently bought a 3D camcorder and monitor and have been very suprised how good it is. The secret of good 3D is to keep the depth to a natural level.
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The rapid advance in technology is certainly a problem. Infact I think it would be right to say that when the switch over is complete in 2012 it will be obsolete. We need a faster way of implementing change. I was rather disappointed that mimo was not included in the Freeview HD spec. This requires a new aerial but it would double the capacity of the system.
As for 3D I understand that ITV is planning to show championship football in 3D. It remains to be seen if it will be FTV. There are alot of other events now becoming available in 3D.
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I do not agree that most of the industry believe that 3D is just a gimmick. Have a look at 3D News Including Virtual Reality and Other Immersive Entertainment It was 3D that persuided David Attenborough to switch to Sky with considerable success. Of course there is a commercial element to this but that is the only way of making it all happen. The amount of content is increasing rapidly we now have Blu-ray, Sky, and consumer camcorders. It is also possible to convert 2D to 3D as has been done with the Star Wars films. I think the biggest advance has been in postproduction technology. I have been using Cineforms Neo to edit my 3D and it is amaizing what can be done.
John Logie Baird demonstrated high definition colour 3D in the 1940's so it is hardly new.
You mention the side by side transmission systems. There is a better way and that is using a frame compatable based system such as MVC as used in Blu-ray 3D. The advantage of this is that it is compatable with 2D decoders so a Blu-ray 3D disc will play in a 2D on a 2D player. I tried this by making a 3D blu-ray and it worked in 2D on my very old Sony player. This system gives full HD definition for both eyes but does require a higher bitrate.
I have no doubt that by 2016 3D will be common place and so if Freeview does not keep up with the technology it is going to loose out to satellite.
We have not mentioned Super HD yet with 8k and 4k pictures. A service is already starting in Japan so I would expect that by 2016 we would have some sort of service. I have seen plans to include this on terestrial but it looks to be very limited because of the bandwidth required. Personally I cannot wait for 8k at p50 in 3D. Awesome.
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Voiced Over!! I don't think so you need to watch
David Attenborough's Flying Monsters 3D - Behind the Scenes
- YouTube
Took 9 months to make and more are planned. Sky has formed a new production company called Colossus Productions for producing 3D. There is a long term commitment. Currys and PC World are reporting that 20% of all televisions sold are 3D. Sky claims that half of all 3D tvs in the UK are connected to their 3D service.
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Wednesday 27 July 2011 3:52PM
@Mark
This list price of a national DAB station at 64kb/s is about £1M per year. Premiere Radio managed to get theirs for £650,000 per year. That was a bargain which shows how desperate the multiplex owners are to sell space. I suspect they made a loss on that deal. Just look at Jazz FM's listening hours and it is easy to see how difficult it is to make a profit.
Of course Absolute Radio has AM, FM and DAB stations but still can't make a profit.