Abc1 Soon To Be Hd ?

[MichaelCPE]

The full comparison should be of the old 21 at 5 Mbps, the new 21 at only 4 Mbps, and the new 20 at 3 Mbps.

I've commented (but perhaps that was only on Whirlpool) that 20 does look a bit sharper than the new 21. Others agree with this (no-one disagreeing). So tune to 20 and not 21.

But most who know what HD looks like and what can be achieved with different codecs at each bitrate all think that 20 is upconverted SD.

The comparison which isn't easy to make is with the new 20 and the old 21 at the higher bitrate. So just because 20 NOW looks better than 21 doesn't mean that 20 is an improvement over what we had before.

[davmel]

1 hour ago, alanh said:

Viewer Access Satellite Television VAST has been MPEG-4 compressed for HD streams from the start. Therefore all receivers are HD MPEG-4 capable and their DVB-S2 channels can carry more data than DVB-T transmissions on the ground.

The complication is that the ACMA forced the community owned low power transmitters of their programs to decompress HD MPEG-4 signals and then recompress them as MPEG-2. To do this the signal must be separated into individual channels from a single broadcaster and then after recompression combined in a multiplexer to recreate a single digital signal for retransmission. Thus the demux and mux would have to be programmed for channel 20 and a cable connecting the demux and mux would also be required one each site.

These devices would have to be removed so what ever data was received is demodulated to the Asynchronous Serial data and fed straight into the terrestrial transmitter modulated. Ie the data is totally unmodified. The VAST commercials in the Eastern and Central Footprints do not transmit any HD programs. In the Western Footprint WINHD is advertised.

ABCHD is on VAST and can be received by a satellite receiver, but will not be re-radiated from the community sites until the above equipment is bypassed.

Alan, where have you been for the past 10 years? ABC & SBS terrestrial multiplexes have been relayed throughout all of Australia in identical form via dedicated transponders for each state on Optus D1 for the past 10 years. There is no need for demuxing and remuxing etc as you claim because the entire terrestrial multiplex is transmodulated from the respective sat transponder for that state (and that now includes the ABC HD channel).

Terrestrial re-transmissions of ABC and SBS have nothing to do with VAST. Only selected commercial network channels are demodulated from VAST and converted to MPEG-2 for broadcast locally in remote towns. The ABC/SBS channels on VAST are only there for viewing by direct VAST customers on VAST approved devices, not for relaying to terrestrial transmission sites (which is done via Optus D1). The ABC/SBS transponders on Optus D1 aren't even encrypted so it's relatively cheap and easy to transmodulate them to terrestrial without the expense and complexity of authorised smartcards, CAMs etc.

[BigH]

With all this talk about PQ one thing it seems most people overlook is the inclusion of the properties of the human eye.   

The eye doesn’t work like some digital capture device, what we see is somewhat limited and most of the ‘Processing’ is done by the brain.  So when a TV manufactures says their set reproduces 2 million colours it’s bollocks, the TV screen reproduced 3, red, green and blue the human brain is tricked into see the others. Likewise the contrast ratio is also vastly exaggerated in its usefulness to the viewing when compared to what the eye can take in.

The same goes for resolution, and the apparent resolution is also largely dependent on viewing distance. With SD viewing, a distance equal to 5 times the screen height the apparent resolution in the centre of the screen is optimum for the human eye. Sit closer and you start to see the structure of the image, sit further back and you lose clarity.   

Complicate the issues by getting people to buy TV sets with bigger screens or sit them closer to their smaller ones and you run into a problem. Answer to the problem is increase the number of dots so they don’t see the image structure when sitting too close to the screen.  

So if you have a small room and what to watch a big TV, or you  like getting up close and personal with your favourite News Reader, make sure you’re watching HD. Alternatively watch SD from the correct viewing distance and let your brain do the work.

You’ll be hard pressed to tell the difference between the two.

 

Edited December 9, 2016 by BigH

[MrC]

55 minutes ago, BigH said:

With all this talk about PQ one thing it seems most people overlook is the inclusion of the properties of the human eye.   

The eye doesn’t work like some digital capture device, what we see is somewhat limited and most of the ‘Processing’ is done by the brain.  So when a TV manufactures says their set reproduces 2 million colours it’s bollocks, the TV screen reproduced 3, red, green and blue the human brain is tricked into see the others. Likewise the contrast ratio is also vastly exaggerated in its usefulness to the viewing when compared to what the eye can take in.

The same goes for resolution, and the apparent resolution is also largely dependent on viewing distance. With SD viewing, a distance equal to 5 times the screen height the apparent resolution in the centre of the screen is optimum for the human eye. Sit closer and you start to see the structure of the image, sit further back and you lose clarity.   

Complicate the issues by getting people to buy TV sets with bigger screens or sit them closer to their smaller ones and you run into a problem. Answer to the problem is increase the number of dots so they don’t see the image structure when sitting too close to the screen.  

So if you have a small room and what to watch a big TV, or you  like getting up close and personal with your favourite News Reader, make sure you’re watching HD. Alternatively watch SD from the correct viewing distance and let your brain do the work.

You’ll be hard pressed to tell the difference between the two.

 

Gee thanks BigH.

[MLXXX]

11 hours ago, MichaelCPE said:

But most who know what HD looks like and what can be achieved with different codecs at each bitrate all think that 20 is upconverted SD.

Yes. Although 20 may look marginally better than the current 21 it appears to be upscaled SD in terms of the visible resolution. There will be no point in expressing opinions on comparative picture quality until we find the ABC broadcasting actual HD resolution material rather than SD material. (I had had thoughts of uploading comparative captured frames, but at this point the HD service on 20 is looking so similar to the SD service on 21 that to do so now would be premature.)

We don't know when actual HD resolution material will start to be be shown on 20.

 

10 hours ago, BigH said:

So if you have a small room and what to watch a big TV, or you  like getting up close and personal with your favourite News Reader, make sure you’re watching HD. Alternatively watch SD from the correct viewing distance and let your brain do the work.

You’ll be hard pressed to tell the difference between the two.

Yes SD can look surprisingly good further back from the screen.

And I'd note that only certain types of content benefits greatly from  Full HD. For example, I'm not sure that fireworks is content that is particularly suited to showcasing Full HD.*

I think a football game benefits more from Full HD. Personally I find the blur of SD coverage of a football match quite annoying!

_________________

* Edit: Actually having now checked out some HD coverage of the Sydney New Years Eve fireworks for the night of 2015/16 I have to say that HD can in fact add quite a lot of visual value for fireworks, compared with SD. With the following YouTube clip there's a huge difference in appearance between selecting 1080p resolution using the settings icon (a cog wheel), and 480p.  (Admittedly, standard definition television in Australia usually has 576 horizontal lines rather than only 480 horizontal lines.)

 

Edited December 9, 2016 by MLXXX

[ckent]

On 07/12/2016 at 10:59 AM, MichaelCPE said:

So why has the ABC started Channel 20 if they are not going to show HD for a while?

Why are they not clearly telling us what is happening (ie officially tell us it is only upconverted SD and tell us when we can expect some real HD)?

Ergh, why do they have to have *everything* ready at once?  They didn't even promote Dec 6th at all;  they're only promoting Dec 31st.

Obviously it's easier to get an upconvert running (and shake out any operational issues) than it is to get the complete end-to-end HD production chain.

CK.

[ckent]

On 07/12/2016 at 0:28 PM, laurie said:

To me it looks like 24 is still in HD!!

But it never was.  100% upscale.

[ckent]

On 07/12/2016 at 1:57 PM, pgdownload said:

I don't believe the broadcasting regulations ever tried to stipulate HD as "recorded in HD". They only ever concerned themselves with the broadcast resolution being HD (576p, 720p or 1080i).

Incorrect.  The entire point of the HD quota 2003-2013 was to enforce HD native content.  The networks had to submit a list of content they were acquiring and displaying in HD without any downconversion in the chain.  To total 1040 hours a year (which was quite easy, even when 7mate + GEM started … though until GEM's setup was finalised, they simulcast Today 6am-9am to help get over the line).

ABC and SBS always had an exclusion explicitly *allowing* upconversion because … reasons?  They claimed they were poor, but honestly they used to have an ideological aversion to HD to help their multichannel-loving management.  SBS have long since moved on, but ABC is only being dragged into the late 1990s HDTV out of embarrassment with so many 4K TVs now getting out there.

[MichaelCPE]

1 minute ago, ckent said:

Ergh, why do they have to have *everything* ready at once?  They didn't even promote Dec 6th at all;  they're only promoting Dec 31st.

Have a look at http://abc.net.au/hd and (unless it has changed since I last looked) it says ABC HD has launched, and it says that content delivered in HD is HD. One can be pretty certain that at least some of what has been shown on ABC1 in the last few days was delivered in HD, yet so far nothing has been shown in HD. 

Now I agree that they don't have to do everything at once. What I disagree with is them not making it clear what is happening. And it would be very easy for them to update their webpage and there would be nothing further to discuss here until some real HD is broadcast.

[hrh]

6 minutes ago, ckent said:

They didn't even promote Dec 6th at all

They did

 

1 minute ago, MichaelCPE said:

What I disagree with is them not making it clear what is happening

Did any of the others?

[MichaelCPE]

3 minutes ago, hrh said:

Did any of the others?

Did any of the others not?

[ckent]

On 07/12/2016 at 6:45 PM, BigH said:

 

I imaging that ABC thought it less of battle, and use of the fortunate channel number 24, to put the crap Skype and news footage on the 24 hour news service that had to be HD channel, much to the annoyance of the True HD Program aficionados. The alternative being to fight irate mums if they moved Playschool etc off ABC 2 and made that an HD channel or ABC 1 that at the time was the only channel everyone could receive.    

 

No.  The news channel was chosen to be HD because "reusing" the HD service was an easy way to give something new to viewers without the existing viewers losing any of the existing services (ABC1, ABC2, ABC3).  News 24 could have switched to SD any time after 2013's analogue shutdown but it was less effort to leave it alone.  Before 2013 they had to have *one* channel showing 1040 hours a year of HD, even if it was upscaled — forcing people to have HD decoders, which fulfilled the goals of the HD quota and increased the number of HD decoders in the country.  As a result, there were more people able to watch the original 7mate and GEM and ONE HD, and to this day more can watch SBS HD.

Naturally it would have been nicer to make ABC1 into the HD service, but that would mean that anyone already watching it on an SD decoder and did not want to upgrade, would lose their ABC1 service.  (And, the #1 channel always needed to be available in SD until 2013).  They could have legally switched ABC2 into HD, but it would have still booted off certain viewers.

Whereas when they launched News 24 in HD, even if it was only upscaled, there was *nobody* who couldn't watch News24 in 2010 but could watch it before … since it didn't exist before.  A simple principle of "the people won't know what they've lost if they never had it".

CK.

[MLXXX]

12 minutes ago, ckent said:

But it never was.  100% upscale.

Really? That was not my impression, e.g. looking at some of the studio interviews.

That's quite a serious allegation you've made, ckent, that ABC24 was always just upscaled SD. 

[ckent]

On 07/12/2016 at 11:18 PM, MichaelCPE said:

It seems that SBS HD has done something that has removed the problems it used to very often have when fading into a dark scene where everything would get very blocky, and this could last for several seconds. 

One place that this was always a problem was at the end of 24 hours in Emergence when they had a black screen with a window showing the people and some text below telling us what had happened since the show. Tonight I even turned the brightness up to catch a fault and I couldn't see it at all.

Whatever they have done to fix this problem has made a huge difference. So, assuming that this fix isn't temporary, well done SBS!

They fixed it just prior to Le Tour de France 2016.  I have some recordings from the month before that, and they're noticeably worse.  I've really enjoyed SBS HD's quality for the last 6 months and honestly can't see the point of them switching to MPEG-4, especially not if it turns out like Nine HD.  Bravo to the SBS engineers.

[ckent]

On 08/12/2016 at 11:02 AM, MichaelCPE said:

What makes no sense to me is doing the marketing for wonderful HD, and having people look at it and (rightly) thinking it doesn't make any difference. 

 

Hey I can agree with you 100% on this much.  ABC have many more "don't care about the technical stuff" people in their public service environment, and a few of them are still anti-HD from 15-20 years ago.

There was even an entire Four Corners episode dedicated to describing how stupid and pointless HD was.  They "showed" this to the viewer by downscaling the demo footage and playing that during Four Corners, instead of walking up to an HDTV up close with a camera and pointing out the detail, such an obvious way to "show" it but they couldn't or wouldn't do it.

[MichaelCPE]

1 minute ago, ckent said:

They fixed it just prior to Le Tour de France 2016.  I have some recordings from the month before that, and they're noticeably worse.  I've really enjoyed SBS HD's quality for the last 6 months and honestly can't see the point of them switching to MPEG-4, especially not if it turns out like Nine HD.  Bravo to the SBS engineers.

VERY WRONG. The problems of blocking when fading into dark scenes was very apparent two weeks ago when they last showed Outlander. 

SBS HD has had a major picture quality improvement over the last few days.

And one point of them moving SBS HD to MPEG4 is that the recent quality improvement has happened from taking bits from the other channels. Moving SBS HD to MPEG4 would enable both the quality of the current SBS HD to continue and the other channels to better quality as well.

[ckent]

On 08/12/2016 at 2:25 PM, MichaelCPE said:

If this is some real HD being broadcast but they have gone with a VERY soft picture then I can't see why they bothered.

No, they're just slow at the ABC.  And not bothered about technical excellence.

[ckent]

12 minutes ago, MLXXX said:

Really? That was not my impression, e.g. looking at some of the studio interviews.

That's quite a serious allegation you've made, ckent, that ABC24 was always just upscaled SD. 

LOL I'll bet you $1,000.  But all of this forum knows I'm right.  In fact the only foolish thing may be letting myself get trolled by you.

[MichaelCPE]

2 minutes ago, ckent said:

LOL I'll bet you $1,000.  But all of this forum knows I'm right.  In fact the only foolish thing may be letting myself get trolled by you.

I think you are fairly likely to be right ckent, but no, not everyone on this forum is of that view, and challenging the view is NOT trolling.

My main reason for supporting the view is that when a major news event has happened and ABC1 has been broadcasting the same as ABC24, I've never noticed a lack of picture quality when I've moved from ABC24 to ABC1 (as I prefer ABC1 as they don't have the VERY ANNOYING news bar down the bottom).

[ckent]

24 minutes ago, MichaelCPE said:

Have a look at http://abc.net.au/hd and (unless it has changed since I last looked) it says ABC HD has launched, and it says that content delivered in HD is HD. O

OK right, well, the left hand there doesn't know what the right hand is doing.  They're all* technical dunderbolts there at the ABC.

For instance, the last few months (or more? no idea) of ABC Four Corners has had a terrible SD downscale of whatever HD footage they've been using to acquire footage for their documentaries.  The 720x576 is using a terrible (and possibly not even necessary) drop-field deinterlacer, so it comes out looking 720x360 or so.  Just sh*t video quality and nobody at the ABC gives a crap.

And it wasn't so long ago that little bits of warm-and-fuzzy shows like "ABC Open" were filmed with a DSLR, probably at a lovely 720p, then somebody with an arts degree but zero technical knowhow got in charge of the production flow and decided to deinterlace it at 512x288 and probably ended up blaming "SDTV is interlaced so it's supposed to look like that".  Honestly there's been some really awful video quality on the ABC in the last few years when it's not ordinary.

We had a very brief period of native HD in 2009 but since then all the real engineers have been fired or moved on.  Nobody there probably watches TV at home using a TV aerial anyway.  They know they have a fake antenna on the roof at Ultimo and then boast about their iView service even though it's like watching TV through a coke bottle.

* mostly

[ckent]

14 minutes ago, MichaelCPE said:

VERY WRONG. The problems of blocking when fading into dark scenes was very apparent two weeks ago when they last showed Outlander. 

SBS HD has had a major picture quality improvement over the last few days.

 

Okay well I hope you're right, in which case it should look bloody excellent by now.  Who can believe, there was a time when SBS used to wave around 576p as real HD (regurgitating the propaganda from Seven) but since then their HD chops have really shown off.  I can't give a stuff how awful their SD channels look, and even though I might like some of the Viceland shows, their brand-mark went to 90% opaque soon after launch and it's just management ego getting in the way (literally) of actual content.  SBS seems like they're actually taking HD seriously.  Dammit I have to even admit Seven's HD channel is not bad at all PQ, despite their Melbourne Cup footage (in Sydney) being a complete embarrassment for 2016.

[MichaelCPE]

4 minutes ago, ckent said:

We had a very brief period of native HD in 2009 but since then all the real engineers have been fired or moved on.

I remember back in the early days of HD getting a nasty buzzing in the audio of the ABC HD channel. 

I worked out it wasn't at my end, so rang the ABC, asked to be connected to the control room, was, told there there was a buzzing on ABC HD, they checked and said there was, and thanks for bringing it to their attention. So I went back to may watching, and a few minutes later the buzzing stopped.

Memories of the good old day.

[MLXXX]

25 minutes ago, MichaelCPE said:

I think you are fairly likely to be right ckent, but no, not everyone on this forum is of that view, and challenging the view is NOT trolling.

My main reason for supporting the view is that when a major news event has happened and ABC1 has been broadcasting the same as ABC24, I've never noticed a lack of picture quality when I've moved from ABC24 to ABC1 (as I prefer ABC1 as they don't have the VERY ANNOYING news bar down the bottom).

Oh the news reporting itself on ABC24  was presented with SD resolution quality, even the image of the studio newsreader. I noticed that myself and was appalled. But ckent's allegation is that everything on ABC24 was upscaled SD, not just the news reports. 

[hrh]

1 hour ago, ckent said:

especially not if it turns out like Nine HD.

If your iteration of 9HD is crook I'll presume you are seeing it via an affiliate. I can say with absolute surety that 9HD in Perth is very good compared to the SD version, which isn't too bad and far, far better than it was when program was coming through Mediahub.

47 minutes ago, MLXXX said:

But ckent's allegation is that everything on ABC24 was upscaled SD

Part of the wide sweeping generalisations which abound in these type forums. Along with

1 hour ago, ckent said:

all the real engineers have been fired or moved on.

Edited December 9, 2016 by hrh

[ckent]

1 hour ago, MichaelCPE said: