UK - BBC HD and BBC1 HD moving to DVB-S2 on June 6th

[mvallevand]

Without wanting to hijack the thread...is HD really that good? Judging by martin123's post, it suggests it is.

There are two perspectives to this. I have seen some amazingly good digital SD PAL widescreen high bitrate captures that rival DVD quality. Analog SD captures are severely limited by the analog broadcast source, no matter how high a resolution you use to capture them. Being 4:3 you also loss resolution for wide screen broadcast.

Martin

[gEd]

Without wanting to hijack the thread...is HD really that good? Judging by martin123's post, it suggests it is.

What a great question (hence all the replies).

The boring techie answer is that it all depends on the size of your screen and how far away from it you sit when watching tv.

I have a 40" Sony Z4500 1080 screen that I watch from 3.5m away. For me, sometimes the differences between HD and SD vary between "wow, that looks really great" and complete indifference, where HD doesn;t appear to really add any wow factor to the proceedings (unless you get really close to the screen when it becomes blindingly obvious how much more detailed HD is).

The most striking difference I have seen was when watching a live champions league game a few weeks back in HD. For giggles, I switch to SD on the Sony and SD looked truly terrible in comparison (and my sony has very good SD upscaling omo, which is one of the reasons I bought it)

I think of it like I do graphics in computer games. Good graphics don't make a good game and if the game is good enough, sometimes you don;t care so much about the graphics (my kids are hooked on minecraft atm which has very low-res graphics)

[bgowland]

Interesting to read the various responses. Although I don't have access to any HD broadcasts, I have watched some HD stuff and although there was some "wow factor", I never really came to the conclusion that HD in general was really that great.

I suppose it comes down to what sort of thing you like to watch - I'm not a sports fan but I can understand how fast camera panning would be improved in HD over SD and I can also see how it would affect action films as well. I have to admit I'm sometimes conscious of 'fast action' in SD where it just doesn't look right but it generally doesn't bother me.

gEd's comment about computer games probably says it all - I'm more interested in quality of content rather than quality of presentation.

I know someone who works for the BBC in post-production - chances are if you've watched any BBC HD stuff he would have been involved in the final mix-down. He's very precise when it comes to all things AV and I was surprised that his overall opinion is that "it's a bit hyped". He admits that some stuff is really impressive but that a great deal of it doesn't gain anything. One of his favourite sayings is "the tail wagging the dog" - the companies tell the public it's good, the public believe it therefore they want it.

I'm sure in years to come when everything is properly filmed and broadcast in HD I'll look back at SD in the same way as when I watch a DVD then watch something on VHS tape (yes...I still own a VCR).

Anyway, interesting to read the comments.

Cheers,
Brian

[imilne]

The changeover seems to have happened.

These are my new tuning strings for GBPVR:

Code:

T:10847,V,23000,89~NID:32~ONID:2~TSID:2050~P:6941~V:5400~VTYPE:H264~A:5401~L:eng(AC3)~PMT:260~TXT:5403~PCR:5400~N:>BBC One HD (AC3)
T:10847,V,23000,89~NID:32~ONID:2~TSID:2050~P:6940~V:5500~VTYPE:H264~A:5501~L:eng(AC3)~PMT:258~TXT:5503~PCR:5500~N:>BBC HD (AC3)

I've also edited the ini files for NPVR that I think most people would use (personally I have my own cut-down set containing the frequencies for the few channels I actually care about).

Oh, and I dunno if it's my imagination or not, but tuning into these channels now seems a bit slower than it used to, using a Hauppauge HVR-4400.

Iain

[NumberFive]

Hi imilne,

I can't get those .ini files to work. It seems that my Nova-S2 is trying to scan them as a DVB-S rather than a DVB-S2 multiplex.

Any ideas?

[imilne]

Does this help: http://www.hauppauge.co.uk/board/showthr...B-S2/page2

[NumberFive]

I got this from satellites.xml (http://www.wintvcd.co.uk/sat/wintv7/satellites.xml)

Code:

<transponder frequency="10847000" symbol_rate="23000000" polarization="V" fec_inner="8/9" broadcast_type="DVB-S2" modulation="QPSK" pilot="-1" rolloff="35" />

Don't really know how to convert this into an instruction for the .ini file though. :S

[Pob]

The .ini files were just missing the extra S2 pilot / rolloff value of 69;

Code:

T:10847,V,23000,89,69~NID:32~ONID:2~TSID:2050~P:6941~V:5400~VTYPE:H264~A:5401~L:eng(AC3)~PMT:260~TXT:5403~PCR:5400~N:>BBC One HD (AC3)
T:10847,V,23000,89,69~NID:32~ONID:2~TSID:2050~P:6940~V:5500~VTYPE:H264~A:5501~L:eng(AC3)~PMT:258~TXT:5503~PCR:5500~N:>BBC HD (AC3)

[NumberFive]

Turns out that was it. You need:

Code:

11=10847,V,23000,89,69

[imilne]

Hmm, weird that mine didn't. I wonder if the extra bit would speed up the tuning...

Iain