7mate

[betty boop]

then they would not be able to have their 3rd channel

Oh yeah makes much more sense to put some 4:3 stuff from the 80s on the HD channel, and put the premier events in plain old sd at YouTube pq

[ckent]

why arent we getting to see the games opening ceremony in HD then if thats were the cameras went

But we are, just not live.

You should ask why we aren't seeing it live maybe?

[ckent]

.

I think we should have NOT allowed SD tuners/Set top boxes to be sold it could have averted this problem

Agreed, but it was a massive fear campaign in the Herald Sun and the Daily Telegraph, also with a fair bit of enthusiasm from Fairfax and the ABC, all of whom wanted the digital spectrum pie to be split up into lots of little SD channels rather than allow the existing networks to do HD.

That argument on its merits is okay (even if I disagree with it), but what we got instead in 1998-1999 was these massively overhyped arguments that HDTV (the system) would force us all as viewers to upgrade to HDTV (the screens) and not only that, it would cost us $20,000. There have been a lot of techno-phobic insults to the intelligence over the years in the media, but this one was the king of the sh-theap before and since.

You also got Murdoch / News Corp helpfully paying for letterbox drops to marginal electorates, spreading this misinformation, and so even my reasonably technical-minded friends were led astray until I corrected them, one by one; and a bloke in a plane flying his banner across the sky saying "STOP THE HDTV LIES". All this backed up by uninformed taxpayer-funded journalists, filing the most uneducational reports I've ever seen on Four Corners.

CK.

Edited October 15, 2010 by ckent

[Timmy Downawell]

Agreed, but it was a massive fear campaign in the Herald Sun and the Daily Telegraph, also with a fair bit of enthusiasm from Fairfax and the ABC, all of whom wanted the digital spectrum pie to be split up into lots of little SD channels rather than allow the existing networks to do HD.

uh... and the commercial networks who wanted to max out their muxes with HD so they had excuses not to spend money on additional multichannels. They didn't want more channels or competition so HD was a perfect way for them to protect their oligopoly. Don't pretend there weren't agendas on all sides here.

[davmel]

You also got Murdoch / News Corp helpfully paying for letterbox drops to marginal electorates, spreading this misinformation, and so even my reasonably technical-minded friends were led astray until I corrected them, one by one; and a bloke in a plane flying his banner across the sky saying "STOP THE HDTV LIES". All this backed up by uninformed taxpayer-funded journalists, filing the most uneducational reports I've ever seen on Four Corners.

A decade on and the new baby for those media organisations to spread FUD about is the NBN.

[ckent]

uh... and the commercial networks who wanted to max out their muxes with HD so they had excuses not to spend money on additional multichannels. They didn't want more channels or competition so HD was a perfect way for them to protect their oligopoly. Don't pretend there weren't agendas on all sides here.

Oh, let me agree wholeheartedly. Nevertheless that didn't change my enthusiasm (then, or now) for occupying the spectrum with fewer HD channels rather than more SD channels. Reason? America proved that 1,000 channels don't give no satisfaction; our FTAs were showing most of the good stuff from HBO for free anyway; and the multi-genre / low-quality video demand was being well supplied by Foxtel already.

Having said all that, I'm honestly surprised at what levels of quality we're achieving with 1HD+2SD ten years after the original plan to offer one HD per network only. Yes it's not A-grade but it's not the complete mess I would have expected had you asked me 10 years ago. Most of this is down to improvements in encoders; some of it is down to a cut in quality; and a large chunk is down to a 20% boost in bitrate from the original plans (19.3 to 23.1 megabits), which everyone but SBS has gone and done.

One big reflective question remains for me at this point: Will that change in modulation parameters cause a lot of agony and protest in the regional areas in the next 2-3 years? Already we're looking at a much higher reliance on satellite VAST than originally envisaged. It seems like we're about to return to the funny old days of massive antennas across the valleys, like they used to do around Wollongong and Newcastle before UHF was introduced.

CK.

Edited October 17, 2010 by ckent

[DrP]

When 7 changed its modulation params here a while back, people that had marginal reception did notice an increase in issues and one viewer that I know on the very margins actually did lose 7 (but it was easily remedied by raising his antenna). On the most part though, no one would have even been aware but for the fact that lots of non-compliant receivers needed to be rescanned to detected the altered transmission.

SBS is likely to remain at 19Mbit/sec for some time, if not for ever, IMO because of the SFNs it has running. Fiddling with the parameters would no doubt move mush zones around and cause grief for quite a few people.

Edited October 17, 2010 by DrP

[ckent]

SBS is likely to remain at 19Mbit/sec for some time, if not for ever, IMO because of the SFNs it has running. Fiddling with the parameters would no doubt move mush zones around and cause grief for quite a few people.

Ah yes, forgot about the mush zones, which the other UHF networks aren't bothered by.

Still, I'm keeping a very keen eye on the lousy propagation in the regional areas. Would VSB have worked better I wonder? I'm also interested to see if the announcement comes out this week that regional areas will use DRM instead of DAB+, because if so, it's a slap in the face for COFDM.

CK.

[pneu]

Having said all that, I'm honestly surprised at what levels of quality we're achieving with 1HD+2SD ten years after the original plan to offer one HD per network only. Yes it's not A-grade but it's not the complete mess I would have expected had you asked me 10 years ago. Most of this is down to improvements in encoders; some of it is down to a cut in quality; and a large chunk is down to a 20% boost in bitrate from the original plans (19.3 to 23.1 megabits), which everyone but SBS has gone and done.

I agree, the video quality is very good considering. But I think the biggest factor is actually the video processing of the TV you are watching. I found that high quality upscaling can make these low bitrate channels look good even on large 58"+ screens. I won't mention brand names but there is one manufacturer who continually gets SD processing wrong year after year

[ckent]

I agree, the video quality is very good considering. But I think the biggest factor is actually the video processing of the TV you are watching. I found that high quality upscaling can make these low bitrate channels look good even on large 58"+ screens. I won't mention brand names but there is one manufacturer who continually gets SD processing wrong year after year

Ah yes completely forgot about that. Watching GO!99 on my TV's tuner (2008 LG plasma) is so much inferior to watching it via my TiVo upscaling to 1080i. No idea why — actually I have a few ideas, and would love to do a research paper on it, haha.

The TiVo processor is just as old as the TV, so you get quality with some brands and others not. Foxtel IQ2 (via BSkyB) also deserves a mention. It takes the Foxtel SD turd and polishes it quite shiny, ohyes.

But the other thought I had when you said that was that before 2006, most HDTVs couldn't even deinterlace SD properly. If you fed them a sharp, static 576i SD picture, everything would still wobble.

By about 2008, most HDTVs could also do it successfully to a 1080i image, which is important on a 1920x1080 panel, or even a 1376x768 panel! It put to bed all the arguments about whether it was better to broadcast 720p or 1080i.

[fredofrog]

Watching Foxtel on a Rear Projection monster does remind one of standing on a turd

[pneu]

Ah yes completely forgot about that. Watching GO!99 on my TV's tuner (2008 LG plasma) is so much inferior to watching it via my TiVo upscaling to 1080i. No idea why — actually I have a few ideas, and would love to do a research paper on it, haha.

The TiVo processor is just as old as the TV, so you get quality with some brands and others not.

It could be the Tivo's cadence detection at work (it will weave deinterlace before upscaling for 2:2 material). But when it switches back to video mode deinterlacing it's pretty shabby if you ask me, there is a lot of line twitter and moire, and general blurriness.

I recently had a Samsung 58C7000 and was feeding it HDMI from the Tivo set to Native. SD channels looked really really good on that TV, unbelievably good in fact. The TV had its own advanced cadence detection which locked on really well and even had 2 selectable thresholds for when there are mixed cadences on screen. It was truly superb SD performance.

[ckent]

Yeah TiVo and IQ2 both prefer heavily to go to weave mode, and generally this is a good thing until you get a bit of scrolling credits, etc.

But the real reason it looks better is the sharpening filter (or unsharp mask, who knows) which gives hard edges (on an SD plane) to be hard edges on an HD plane. This is important because the main, and sometimes only, way you'll notice the difference between SD and HD native, is on edges.

When there's film or other progressive 25fps material on the same channel, and I watch through the TV tuner, well it's also doing weave mode, but it's just not as sharp.

And then you get the macro blocking which is ironically much less noticeable via the TiVo, so they obviously know what they're doing when it comes to intelligent sharpening and softening, done on a necessity basis.

I think this comes from good experience in handling craptastic NTSC material in TiVo's home market ;-)

they have to make the most out of it :-)

[Wags69]

I thought 7mate were going to show HD sports, well what about the international rules and V8's today????????????????

[fredofrog]

I thought 7mate were going to show HD sports, well what about the international rules and V8's today????????????????

Nope, that's GEM but why Mate is chosen to not show HD sports might be explained by Leckie and the new investor capitalist eagerness to shpow endless profits/ratings wins in case it's resold on the market in the future abit like Nine was destined to with CVC

[keiron]

Does anyone know what bitrates 7 are using? 7mate doesn't seem to be that high, the PQ is pretty ordinary for an HD channel imho.

[DrP]

7 QLD is essentially CBR 10Mbit/sec.

[digitalj]

7mate as seen via PRIME is 10.25-10.3Mbps

[ckent]

I thought 7mate were going to show HD sports, well what about the international rules and V8's today????????????????

Were these in HD to begin with? Or just upscaled from SD? There's your answer.

There's really no point when it looks just as good on 7SD channel. Unlike the Foxtel situation, where I'd always tune to the Fox Sports HD channels because their SD channels are so poor, this is not such an issue on the FTAs because their SD channels are okay (at least their original ones).

[jase79]

7mate via Southern Cross is 8.75mbps running @720p. Well at least in Hobart anyway.

[davmel]

7mate via Southern Cross is 8.75mbps running @720p. Well at least in Hobart anyway.

Holy crap, has SC ever used 720p before?

Maybe metro Seven will make the move as well so they can bump their main 7SD channel bitrate higher as it is now their premium channel. 7SD is the highest bitrate SD channel on FTA at the moment with 6.5 Mbps (excluding when Ten drops OneHD stream on Thursday mornings for a few hours and Ten goes up to 7 Mbps).

[jase79]

Holy crap, has SC ever used 720p before?

Maybe metro Seven will make the move as well so they can bump their main 7SD channel bitrate higher as it is now their premium channel. 7SD is the highest bitrate SD channel on FTA at the moment with 6.5 Mbps (excluding when Ten drops OneHD stream on Thursday mornings for a few hours and Ten goes up to 7 Mbps).

It used to be 1080i at around 12.5mbps a while back, i think it changed to 720p @8.75mbps when they introduced 7TWO last year and its been that way since. Apparently in northern tasmania they still run the HD channel at 1080i (not sure about the bitrate) so as far as i know 7mate is only 720p in Hobart. I think it actually looks better than most of the other HD channels down here (judging by the footage from the grand final shown in HD), especially WIN HD or now GEM HD which is run at a pathetic 9.7mbps 1080i down here.

[willwalk]

Hmm has anybody in Tassie seen the SC10 loop during ads in 7mate? THe SC10 loop (nature loop) was shown during ads in 7Mate here in Darwin. I am just wondering if people in Tassie saw it as well?

It's not really a problem, not that i care anyway, but it is weird. I haven't seen a SC 10 nature loop on SCTV 7 in darwin before. It was the same loop on DDT HD before ONE HD came along.

Eventually they will put local ads in 7mate for sure but I am just surprised to see a loop on a 7 network channel.

[ckent]

Hmm has anybody in Tassie seen the SC10 loop during ads in 7mate? THe SC10 loop (nature loop) was shown during ads in 7Mate here in Darwin. I am just wondering if people in Tassie saw it as well?

It's not really a problem, not that i care anyway, but it is weird. I haven't seen a SC 10 nature loop on SCTV 7 in darwin before. It was the same loop on DDT HD before ONE HD came along.

Eventually they will put local ads in 7mate for sure but I am just surprised to see a loop on a 7 network channel.

It's still a little bit stunning how they've gone from just this:

- Southern Cross SD + analogue

to a total of:

- SC SD + analogue

- SC 7TWO

- SC 7mate

- TDT SD

- TDT ONE HD

and soon:

- TDT ELEVEN

So it's probably no wonder that they haven't installed the facilities to insert ads on so many channels yet

[jase79]

Hmm has anybody in Tassie seen the SC10 loop during ads in 7mate? THe SC10 loop (nature loop) was shown during ads in 7Mate here in Darwin. I am just wondering if people in Tassie saw it as well?

It's not really a problem, not that i care anyway, but it is weird. I haven't seen a SC 10 nature loop on SCTV 7 in darwin before. It was the same loop on DDT HD before ONE HD came along.

Eventually they will put local ads in 7mate for sure but I am just surprised to see a loop on a 7 network channel.

Yes i've seen it, it has been on both 7mate and 7TWO down here during some of the ad breaks (ads do come up every now and then on both channels). The same loop used to be played on SC HD until they started showing ads on it.

Edited October 25, 2010 by jase79