When Is High Def Not High Def!

[Haptic]

When BBC say it is lol,

 

Angry BBC HD Viewers Complain That Popular Programmes Are 'Fuzzy' | UK News | Sky News

[GrumbleDook]

Old story ... and another attack by Sky on BBC ... gives journalism a bad name ... ah, no ... a *lot* of journalists give journalism a bad name and I feel sorry for those doing a decent job.

[SteveBentley]

My understanding of this is that they reduced the bitrate when some new, allegedly more efficient encoders were installed. People have said the picture quality (which, let's not forget is the whole purpose for the existence of an HD channel) is worse than it used to be. They also point out at the resolution is lower than Sky's HD offerings.

 

The BBC, on its blogs where people have been complaining about this, has appeared to stick it's fingers in its ears, shrug its shoulders and try to claim that it's not really worse, people just think it is, despite people having recordings before and after which demonstrate otherwise.

 

On a related note, I think somebody needs to kick ITV up the backside about the picture quality of their SD channels on Sky, they're appalling!

[Theblacksheep]

On a related note, I think somebody needs to kick ITV up the backside about the picture quality of their SD channels on Sky, they're appalling!

 

Is that ITV or is that Murdoch with the bitrate dial?

 

HD is pretty poo at the moment. Some SD channels have dipped bitrate since the brilliance of digital.

[IrritableTech]

On a related note, I think somebody needs to kick ITV up the backside about the picture quality of their SD channels on Sky, they're appalling!

 

Absolutely agree. When ITV SD show football, it's often hard to work out what are feet, and what's the ball. It seems the quality took a dip each time they added a channel, presumably so their broadcast fees didn't go up too much.

 

Is that ITV or is that Murdoch with the bitrate dial?

Nothing to do with Murdock. ITV are incharge of the bitrate - they just need to spend more money with Astra to get it turned up.

Edited December 15, 2009 by terrorvis

[SteveBentley]

The trick to ITV is the Add Channels option - add the ITV Westcountry feed (get the details from wildsat.com) and it's much better.

 

The reason why? Analogue! Since ITV shut down the Westcountry studios it wasn't worth paying BT to install links to the analogue transmitters for the few months they would be in operation, so they feed them from satellite, and so they bumped up the bitrate so it would look ok on analogue.

 

@Theblacksheep - shouldn't be anything to do with Murdoch in most cases, most of the regional feeds are on Astra 2D, which is tightly aimed at the UK and Ireland, so they don't need to encrypt it, so they don't need to involve Sky and can arrange this carriage directly with Astra. A few are on 2B and have to be encrypted because they are receivable outside the UK, which has rights implications, and they would have to pay Sky for that.

[IrritableTech]

@Theblacksheep - shouldn't be anything to do with Murdoch in most cases, most of the regional feeds are on Astra 2D, which is tightly aimed at the UK and Ireland, so they don't need to encrypt it, so they don't need to involve Sky and can arrange this carriage directly with Astra. A few are on 2B and have to be encrypted because they are receivable outside the UK, which has rights implications, and they would have to pay Sky for that.

 

Although this is all true. It doesn't make any difference to the bitrate, which is entirely between the broadcaster and Astra. All ITV have to pay sky for is an EPG listing, and presumably a fee for the regional aspects, ie. getting the correct region on 103.

[SteveBentley]

I wasn't sure whether the 2B space is subleased from Sky or not.

[zag]

I usually ignore anything put out by Murdoch and his bbc bashing journalists but they have a point on this one.

[AyatollahPies]

They are just trying to save you from seeing every wrinkle on Dot Cotton's face.

[mattx]

I usually ignore anything put out by Murdoch and his bbc bashing journalists but they have a point on this one.

 

Yes they certainly do - I also fail to understand why there is no 5:1 sound too. I watch some of the HD content and even I notice the difference and I'm blind as a bat.