Hi Definition as standard?

[cliffster]

Hi all.

Was just wondering, can anyone see a time when all transmissions will be in full 1080p?

I can see at the moment this seems unlikely because of cost/bandwidth considerations, but I'm assuming that there must have been a time when a full switchover from black and white to colour seemed just as unlikely.

Seems a shame that companies are spending so much r&d on fantastic sets only to be let down by lousy sd signals (Dave, Bravo we mean you!)

I think I read on a thread here last week that Clare was going to ask some questions of some broadcasting big-wigs concerning Hd signals, bit rates etc but I cant seem to find it

Also, excuse my ignorance but can someone explain how an Sd signal is converted to Hd, is it just a case of turning up the transmission power?

Thanks in advance.

Cliff

 

[micks_address]

I think you'll see 1080i a lot sooner than 1080p... i dont know if anyone is broadcasting in 1080p at the moment?

cliffster:

Hi all.

Was just wondering, can anyone see a time when all transmissions will be in full 1080p?

I can see at the moment this seems unlikely because of cost/bandwidth considerations, but I'm assuming that there must have been a time when a full switchover from black and white to colour seemed just as unlikely.

Seems a shame that companies are spending so much r&d on fantastic sets only to be let down by lousy sd signals (Dave, Bravo we mean you!)

I think I read on a thread here last week that Clare was going to ask some questions of some broadcasting big-wigs concerning Hd signals, bit rates etc but I cant seem to find it

Also, excuse my ignorance but can someone explain how an Sd signal is converted to Hd, is it just a case of turning up the transmission power?

Thanks in advance.

Cliff

 

[cliffster]

Good point. Sky Hd is 1080i, but even 720p would surely see a huge improvement

There seems to me to just be too great a variance in transmission quality at the moment.

 

[Clare Newsome]

No plans for 1080p at present; more to follow when I get a chance to write up my meetings in a blog (it's pre-Awards fervour here at WHF)

 

[cliffster]

Hi Clare.

Thanks, will look forward to that, should make interesting reading!

In the meantime anyone like to hazzard a guess, Hd (at least 720p) across the board in what, a year, five years, never?

Cliff.

 

[daveh75]

cliffster:Also, excuse my ignorance but can someone explain how an Sd signal is converted to Hd,It isn't...

 

[cliffster]

So how does it work then?

Cliff.

 

[daveh75]

cliffster:
So how does it work then?

Cliff.How does what work? Not entirely sure what you're asking,tbh....

 

[Andy Grange]

I think there's two points here:

1. There might be a time in the not too distant future where all current TV shows are shot in HD, how far away that is I have no idea.

2. There will however always be content that wasn't filmed natively in HD, and (you would imagine) this will be the case for quite some time. As an example, think of all the repeats shown from way back when on the various channels on Sky/Virgin. These would need to be upscaled/upconverted, and will never be native HD. I can't see this changing for quite some time, unless someone figures out a way to turn SD into native HD, rather than the current upscaling/upconverting.

 

[6th.replicant]

Andy Grange:I think there's two points here:

1. There might be a time in the not too distant future where all current TV shows are shot in HD, how far away that is I have no idea...
Not as far off as one would imagine. AFAIK, most of the BBC's in-house or co-production content is HD, and has been so for many years. Top Gear, for example, has been shot in HD for years, long before it was deemed worthy for inclusion on the BBC's HD channel in the UK.

Even Home and Away has been shot in HD for yonks, but HD broadcasting in Oz seems to be the norm, as is the case in many other countries, apart from the UK...

 

[micks_address]

i dont think you'd see an improvement with 720p, the idea was 720p would be better for film and 1080i for sports but I think 1080i looks just as good as 720p..

if you could get full 1080p and full lossless audio would be a bit of a blow to the blu-ray sector..

cliffster:

Good point. Sky Hd is 1080i, but even 720p would surely see a huge improvement

There seems to me to just be too great a variance in transmission quality at the moment.

 

[Andy Grange]

6th.replicant:Andy Grange:I think there's two points here:

1. There might be a time in the not too distant future where all current TV shows are shot in HD, how far away that is I have no idea...
Not as far off as one would imagine. AFAIK, most of the BBC's in-house or co-production content is HD, and has been so for many years. Top Gear, for example, has been shot in HD for years, long before it was deemed worthy for inclusion on the BBC's HD channel in the UK.

Even Home and Away has been shot in HD for yonks, but HD broadcasting in Oz seems to be the norm, as is the case in many other countries, apart from the UK...

I wonder how long 'yonks' actually is though? Do you think we'll be seeing a HD version of Open All Hours, G-G-G-Granville? There's quite a few decades worth of TV material that gets spewed across a number of channels with surprising regularity, bet your bottom dollar a good percentage wasn't filmed in HD.

 

[daveh75]

Despite the fact HD broadcasts have been available for 4 years in the UK, only a quarter of households tune into them, and HD channels still only make up less than 10% of the total number of channels available,then factor in the technical issues/costs and i think it's going to be a very very long time, if ever before HD broadcasting is the norm...

 

[robjcooper]

Cliff,

There is no real need for the broadcasters to transmit 1080p as intrinsically 1080i and p are the same - we work on everything in 50i and not 25p (even film originated material), and all the final masters we deliver are 50i (although 25p is also acceptable). And as you say bandwidth considerations mean that 'i' is all we shall see (unless you'd like your signal compressed even further just to allow the transmission of 25 progressive frames per second rather than 50 interlaced fields!). 720p is a non starter - nothing appears to be being shot using the format any more (I've certainly not worked on anything shot at 720 for a couple of years) and also it would mean that your nice 1080 TV would have to upscale the image to fit.

As of April 2011 for the BBC and 'early' next year for ITV1&2, all new programmes will have to be HD originated and mastered. Obviously re-runs of old shows will have to be up-resd from their Standard def masters. However, where material was originated on film and is still available in that format, some of the broadcasters are now re-transferring this older material to HD masters and restoring and cleaning them up, and although for modern acquisitions, 16mm and super16mm film are regarded as being standard definition formats, the results of a new HD transfer of older material, especially when it is sympathetically cleaned up and restored, gives a far superior result to up-resing from a 1'' or BetacamSP analogue tape.

I could try and explain how technically an SD signal gets up-resd, but suffice to say it's a lot of computer processing to try and estimate and construct new pixel information using temporal changes, usually between 4 consecutive frames, as well as analysing luminance and colour information differences or similarities between those frames. There are a couple of ways to do it. We have a magical box of tricks called a Teranex VC300 http://www.teranex.com/products/vc300. Also, Sony's fabulous HDCamSR vtrs have an upconvert option so you can play an SD Digital Betacam tape and it's internally converted and output as an HD signal. The results are very good using either method, but are still up-resd Standard def images.

Just because something was shot ages ago doesn't mean it's not HD - 35mm or 70mm film far exceeds the resolution of any HD format, and you only have to watch something like Blade Runner or Psycho to realise that it's not the age that matters.

Rob

 

[cliffster]

Hi Rob.

Thats more like it, very informative.

So. It is possible, in theory then to be able to convert most t.v. content into Hd and since most people now have full 1080 t.v's what is stopping all channels broadcasting it?

Presumably it's cost but where does that cost arise? Is it infrastruture or does an Hd signal cost more to transmit?

Can you see Hd becoming the norm one day?

Thanks

Cliff.

 

[TKratz]

micks_address:

i dont think you'd see an improvement with 720p, the idea was 720p would be better for film and 1080i for sports but I think 1080i looks just as good as 720p..

if you could get full 1080p and full lossless audio would be a bit of a blow to the blu-ray sector..

What exactly do you mean by 'don't think you'd see an improvement with 720p'?

Wouldn't see an improvement compared to SD material, or improvement from the current 720p to future 720p content?

Personally I find both 720p or 1080i a big improvement over SD material, whereas the difference between these is small. I would actually prefer 720p over 1080i. In general digital signals are meant for progressive picture whereas the old CRT monitors handled interlaced signals much better.

 

[robjcooper]

Hi Cliff,

Yes, you can convert anything to an HD frame resolution (even VHS or Video 8), but it is not actually true HD. A single frame of true HD material contains 2.073,600 separate original pixels, an SD frame contains 414,720. What the up-converters do is try and make a best guess as to what those missing 1,658,880 pixels might have been, but as they never existed, the up-resing is just a very large amount of incredibly clever algorithm generated computerised guesswork.

For the broadcasters, there is very little point in up-resing archive material unless it is on a format which can have a reasonably acceptable HD master made of it, which rules out anything recorded to analogue tape formats. If however, you have access to something on film, then the results, even from 16mm, can be very good and are definable as HD. Even if a broadcaster wanted to up-res all their old analogue tape based material, the cost of doing all this up-resing would be immense, especially if your were recording it all to tape. (an HDCamSR VTR costs in the region of £80K without any options like the up converter boards).

Also, If you're going to say that you are transmitting completely in HD, transmitting old episodes of up-resed SD tape based shows is basically a con. However, all the main broadcasters like the BBC, ITV and Channel 4, Sky and in an increasing amount, CH5, all now require that new programmes are produced from start to finish in HD, so they are working towards a fully HD environment. Where there is a need for up-resed SD in a programme, (tape archive material in a documentary for instance) then compliance allows a maximum of 25% of the show to be of up-resed content but no more.

The infrastructure costs of moving to HD transmission is also very high. Every piece of equipment needs replacing, and most broadcasters would probably have started their HD infrastructure from scratch. Transmission costs are not something I could tell you about but obviously, as your signal requires more of that valuable bandwidth than for SD, the facilities providing the transmission route will be charging you a premium rate.

So for the major broadcasters there will come a time quite soon when their main channels are mostly true HD originated footage. From next year, BBC1, ITV1&2 will be simulcasting HD and SD, Sky transmits most if not all, of its HD channels as simulcasts - it is far easier and gives much better results downconverting the HD output into SD for the transmission routes. Classics and older material will stay how it is on SD channels - as the material in relation to HD material is of a much lower quality, these channels will rely on the in built up-resing technology in your TV to fill your HD screen.

And finally a general point about 1080i and 1080p which seems to be misunderstood by a lot of people. Namely that both these formats are full HD. The main reason for 1080 i being used by the broadcasters is that it is easier to transmit - bandwidth restrictions mean that it is easier to send 50 smaller packets per second than 25 ones twice the size. Very simply, all an interlaced signal means to film based material is that when the original film is scanned in either a telecine or a film scanner it is buffered into a frame store. When it is recorded onto the master tape the output of the telecine/frame scanner separates it into 2 fields, the first field being the odd lines 1 - 1079, and the second field even lines 2 - 1080. When these two separate fields arrive at your TV, they are once again buffered and re-interlaced as a single progressive frame just as the original film was. In fact the most common recording format for progressive based material devised by the wizards at Sony is 1080 PsF which stands for Progressive segmented frame, which in essence is just another way of recording a single frame in 2 parts - just like the fields in 1080i.

Hope there's something of interest in there.

Rob

 

[TKratz]

But 1080i will never be as good as 1080p no matter how good the deinterlacing process is, and on large screens the different is significant in my opinion.

 

[AVLee]

they are testing a full HD satellite service atm in Holland.

read that somewhere, within an article talking about 3D.

he end

 

[micks_address]

i meant you wouldnt see an improvement going from 1080i to 720p

TKratz:micks_address:

i dont think you'd see an improvement with 720p, the idea was 720p would be better for film and 1080i for sports but I think 1080i looks just as good as 720p..

if you could get full 1080p and full lossless audio would be a bit of a blow to the blu-ray sector..

What exactly do you mean by 'don't think you'd see an improvement with 720p'?

Wouldn't see an improvement compared to SD material, or improvement from the current 720p to future 720p content?

Personally I find both 720p or 1080i a big improvement over SD material, whereas the difference between these is small. I would actually prefer 720p over 1080i. In general digital signals are meant for progressive picture whereas the old CRT monitors handled interlaced signals much better.

 

[cliffster]

Hi Rob. Once again, fascinating.

So, to summaries, lets take Top Gear on BBC2. As you've said, it's already filmed in Hd. The Beeb have the money to pay the transmission costs and most new sets have Hd receivers so to my mind there is no reason why they can't transmit in Hd and do away with the specialised Hd channel. presumably this would count for Itv, Four, Five etc.

I suppose we can't really have an Hd switchover whilst so many people have sets without Hd receivers, but with the rate at which technology turns around it wont be long before these sets are all upgraded and there are always set top boxes for those who want to keep their existing t.v.'s for longer.

Daveh75 stated that only 25% of Hd t.v.'s are used for watching Hd. I'm sure he's correct, but if you don't have Sky Hd (pricey) or Virgin (limited content) how do you access it?

I read somewhere that the take up of Sky's Hd service far surpassed their expectations by many times, look at the success of Blu-ray in a short period of time. New technology is always driven by consumer demand and imho people want Hd.

So, to answer my own question. I can see Hd taking hold very quickly with all major channels transmitting in native Hd within 3-5 years, with costs of the pay channels dropping accordingly. I can see the independents (Dave, Bravo, etc) continuing in Sd for some time due to the costs of transmission and their poor advertising revenue streams, but at some stage I CAN see everything being broadcast in Hd whatever the source and Sd being as old hat as black and white is now.

Of course by then we'll probably all be enjoying our new holodecks

Cliff.

 

[robjcooper]

Or 3d TV - now there's a whole different ball game !

 

[cliffster]

Hi Clare.

Just picked up the awards issue, realy enjoying it. The new format continues to look very snappy! Now that the awards are over does that mean that we will hopefully be getting your blog on Hd in the near future?.

Thanks.

Cliff.