HDTV progress abroad

[Alan Roberts]

The Warren's open on the architecural open days, but there's a series of technical open days as well when projects and wares are displayed. I used to do the HDTV demos, but I suspect you might have guessed that smile.gif

[cstv]

Oh, i didn't realise they had technical open days - i take it they're publicised on the BBC website somewhere...?

[Alan Roberts]

'sright. You need to apply for an invitation, or to know someone who works there (not me any more, I retired smile.gif ) They happen during the summer in alternate years (at least that's what they used to do). You should contact Peter Shelswell at KW for more info.

[cstv]

i just might do that, Alan. Thanks!

[infocus]

Originally posted by Alan McKeown:
Quote:
455 lines was used by the French at about this time. They were “persuaded” by the Germans to change to 441 lines for a few years during the early 1940s !
All very interesting! I have a dim and distant memory of hearing that the French 819 line system came about due to some French engineers during the war not wanting to help the German war effort, but not to be seen to be doing nothing. They thought TV standards reasonably uncontroversial! Can anybody confirm or deny the story? Did they not have to close down TV transmissions during the war anyway, for the same reasons as the UK?

I believe whilst it may have had good resolution in the vertical direction, to achieve comparable horizontal was beyond the technology of the day, and would have required large bandwidth anyway. The 625 system was a better hor-vert compromise for a reasonable channel bandwidth.

[Alan Roberts]

I can confirm that only 405 and 819 received the accolade of CCIR nomenclature. The other "standards" didn't last long enough to make it onto the pages of standards documents.

[Alan McKeown]

The 819 line system was indeed developed during the war years. But it was the Germans who had the last word as it was the 625 line system developed in Germany and later the PAL colour system (also developed in Germany) which would become the eventual standards. Both the 405 line and 819 line standards are long gone.


Doubling the number of scan lines requires a quadrupling of the video bandwidth to also double the horizontal resolution.

The 405 line system had a video bandwidth of 3 MHz whereas the 819 line system had a nominal video bandwidth of 10 MHz.

The channel bandwidths were 5 MHz and 14 MHz respectively.


The characteristic I disliked most about the 405 line system was not so much the coarse line structure, annoying though that was but the infuriating 10.125 kHz whistle from the line time-base and line-scan components!


Alan

[Alan Roberts]

And don't forget that no-one ever made a camera that could fill the 819 bandwidth, nor could monitors display it.

[infocus]

A few searches revealed a few intresting pages, and it's interesting to muse on "what ifs" in the light of todays situation.

For example, from http://www.sptv.demon.co.uk/405colour/
"As late as 1965, ITV were lobbying heavily for the adoption of 405 line NTSC Colour. It would have made a lot of commercial sense. If today's political climate had existed then, the government would very likely have chosen 405 Colour because of these commercial benefits."
and
"Advantages:
We would have had much more space for more TV channels for many years.
BBC 1 and ITV would have remained on VHF, and the majority of our TV viewing would have been in NTSC on VHF, as it still is today (2001) in the U.S.A.
The UHF bands would have had space for 6 or 7 networks, (instead of the 4 or 5 we have today) meaning 8 or 9 networks in total.
In 1989, Sky television could have been offered 1 or 2 of the unused UHF networks, and there would still have been room for a complete "Channel 5" network 10 years later.
In the Digital world, 405 would have allowed twice as many channels in the same bandwidth, and Digital Terrestrial TV could have been a true rival to Digital Satellite, having an almost equal number of available channels."

So, this whole thread is not a new argument! I can only be thankful that "todays political climate" did not prevail in the 60's. (Digital 405 line!?) But if 405, why not PAL at least? The question also comes up of why did the UK not follow Europe with the 625 line system after the war. Apparently, the BBC did not want to upset the few customers who had bought TVs before the war. Of course, this decision saddled us with an inferior system to the rest of the world for the next twenty years, and the change when it finally did come was far more difficult.

It reminds me of my mother telling me that after the war there were calls for Britain to adopt driving on the right hand side of the road. With no complicated motorway junctions or one way systems, and most signs having been taken down to confuse any invading enemy, it would have been relatively simple and cheap. Just think of the benefits today, both economic and in terms of saving accidents. But I suppose few people then would even guess how commonplace taking cars to and from Europe would become, let alone the import/export benefits to be had.

But back to television, and lots of interesting history at: http://www.bvws.org.uk/405alive/index.html if you have the time!

[Alan Roberts]

The BBC was experimenting with 405 NTSC well before ITV were, I saw the kit when I joined BBC R&D in 1968. It was ancient even then. 405 PAL would not have made sense because of the half-vertical chroma resolution. We were at a time when Eurovision was on the march and we all wanted to exchange programmes, so a single European standard made sense. 625 was the obvious choice, but only because Bands IV and V were opened up. There was a big EBU meeting at Kingswood to decide the colour standard, and demonstrations of options were made for the meeting. NTSC was the preferred option until only a short while before the meeting. Dr. Bruch (Bosch, he also later produced the cyclic field blanking variation that ensured that the colour burst was always in the same phase for the first appearance of it in each field) produced the PAL idea and it was built into existing NTSC coders in a few days. PAL was demonstrated and clearly won even though the decoders were effectively unmodified NTSC boxes with just the subcarrier frequency changed.

It was several years before delay lines were cheap enough to put in TV sets; until then, the vertical averaging was done in the eye. Sony refused to use delay lines in TV sets for many years so that they didn't have to pay for use of the patent; that's why the sets had a "tint" control. It was only when delay lines were in universal use that the "Hanover bars" effect went away (the result of phase errors rotating the subcarrier, seen as line-by-line saturation errors rather than hue errors as would appear in NTSC).

[Alan McKeown]

It is worth noting that the 405 line 4:3 system had a potential horizontal resolution of 360 lines/picture height (l/ph) whereas the present DVB 625 16:9 system (as broadcast by the BBC) has a horizontal resolution of 395 l/ph at best.

For comparison, the modern HDTV standards:

750 line (720p) has 720 l/ph potential horizontal resolution.

1125 line (1080i) has 1080 l/ph potential horizontal resolution


Alan

[Richard Payne]

Originally posted by cstv:
3D positioning for virtual sets is used all over place. I assume largely for cost reasons because generally speaking it looks a bit pants. T4's Popworld have been using it for a few years now to make people feel sick by keeping the camera moving very slowly through the whole show! It was used in the BBC's Euro/local election coverage and for Battlefield Britain... I think it was used for FightBox (very odd programme) and is used on BBC news occasionally...

I assume we're talking about the same thing here -bassically chromakey that can move without the need for computer controlled camera mounts. It works using markers on the walls of the studio to work out where the camera is. http://www.seriousmagic.com/ukvidsamples.cfm?from=y

This program handles virtual sets and camera moves from a locked off position and doesn't break the bank. The demo video has more cheese than Cheedar but stick with it as its quite an impressive bit of software.

[cstv]

"because the tools at hand, should never limit the vision inside!"

Wow! can you feel the brie? tongue.gif

looks quite clever though!

[harlequin]

Originally posted by StevenBagley:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />he one tomorrows world showed off used fixed tracking on a 'false ceiling' coupled to what i assume was a transponder unit on the camera.You mean this then smile.gif

http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/projects/virtual/index.shtml

Steven </font>[/QUOTE]thanks .... will read it on monday at work.

[Alan McKeown]

The BBC production “Pride- the law of the Savannah” is scheduled to be shown by Pro Sieben in HDTV on Thursday, October 14, 2004 at 19:00 BST.


Astra 19.2 degrees East
Transponder 103
12.460 GHz
Horizontal polarisation
Symbol rate 27.5 megabaud
FEC 3/4

Video is 1080i (50 Hz)
Audio is Dolby Digital 5.1


Alan

[Alan Roberts]

WATCH THAT PROGRAMME :D

I know lots about it and how it was done, and many of the pople involved. It's good.

[Alan McKeown]

Thanks Alan for the information and recommendation.

My Wife thought she had seen the programme’s title before and that it had been broadcast on BBC-4, but she wasn’t sure. Certainly neither of us have seen the programme itself, even in low definition smile.gif

We look forward to seeing it for the first time and in High Definition, as nature intended all television to be!

It will be the first time we will have seen a BBC programme in HDTV!


Alan

[infocus]

Originally posted by Alan McKeown:
It will be the first time we will have seen a BBC programme in HDTV!But hopefully not the last.......!? How has it come about, and who are "Pro Sieben"?

[harlequin]

'pro sieben' are 'pro7' if i'm not mistaken ..... a rather good german tv station.

http://www.prosieben.de/index.php

were on analogue sky and showed many usa series that others didn't.

[Alan McKeown]

That’s correct, Gary.

As I understand it, the “Pride” programme is a BBC / Pro Sieben Co-Production.


Alan

[infocus]

More info about "Pride" at this address (http://www.sonybiz.net/images/editorial/E/S2S11.pdf?BV_SessionID=@@@@2099045685.1097537083@@ @@&BV_EngineID=gadclggmjgehbemgcfkmcfjfdhk.0) (Page 13)

[Alan Roberts]

Yep, that's the one.

I nearly fell over when I saw the first rushes 2 years ago, the pictures are truly stunning (and John used my settings for the 900, or at least that's what he started from). The odd thing is that, after the first 10 minutes or so, the lions totally ignored the large trundling rock that followed them around; they first tried to eat it, then climb on it. But once they worked out that it wasn't a threat, they ignored it. Some of the footage was shot from as close as one foot from the teeth of a lion eating a zebra, you can see the dribble, but it was the sight of the dung-beetles clambering out of the grass to tidy the place up that got the biggest set of cheers when we showed it at Kendal Avenue. The camera lenms was fitted with an "anti-lick" filter because feline tongues are very rough. No kit was damaged on the shoot, unlike the previous elephant shoot when all manner of stuff was stamped on, kicked, thrown in the river.....

[Alan McKeown]

The opera “Aida” (Verdi) is to be shown live from the Monnaie theatre in Brussels, by HD-1 on Friday, October 15 2004, commencing 19:00 BST.

Video is 1080i (50 Hz)
Audio is Dolby Digital 5.1


Alan

[Alan McKeown]

I have seen an HDTV trailer for “Pride” which looks impressive.
Unfortunately the lions spoke German. I hope we will be able to persuade them to speak English on Thursday.

The facility to select language does exist on the receiver though I do not know if this will be activated.


Alan

[Alan Roberts]

It hadn't occurred to me that there might be a German version, but since it's going out on a German channel, I don't see why it wouldn't be. I didn't know it was ready for transmission, let alone that there's a German version.

[infocus]

Originally posted by Alan McKeown:
Unfortunately the lions spoke German. I hope we will be able to persuade them to speak English on Thursday.Wow - I can't wait for HD! In SD all you get are roaring sounds...... ;) :D

[Alan McKeown]

“EBU Technical Recommendation R112 - 2004
EBU statement on HDTV standards
EBU Committee First Issued Revised Re-issued Technical Committee 10.2004
Keywords: HDTV, Emission, progressive scanning, interlaced scanning

The EBU Technical Committee recommends that EMISSION standards for HDTV should be based on progressive scanning: 720p/50 is currently the optimum solution, but 1080p/50 is an attractive option for the longer term.

Although there are strong technical arguments in favour of progressive scanning for emission, the EBU Technical Committee recognises that some broadcasters might wish to broadcast 1080i programme material.

As consumer electronics equipment (e.g. set-top boxes and displays) will accept both 720p and 1080i formats, broadcasters will be able to select either of these formats – even on a programme-by-programme basis.

Taking into account that production and emission standards do not need to be identical, further EBU studies on PRODUCTION standards for HDTV in Europe are in progress. This work is not intended to result in a recommendation for a single standard for HDTV production. “

[Alan Roberts]

Yes, that's the correct statement. It was leaked to me 5 days ago. It leaves the door open for 1080 to get to the home. Since film is a "progressive" format, amd much of European HD production is shot in 1080/25psf, it makes most sense to transmit it in 1080 rather than downconvert it to 720 and repeat each frame. This option allows a 1080i format to carry either 1080i material which will have similar overall resolution to 720p, or film-type higher-res material. It assumes that the decoder will accept a flag of some sort to tell it that the picture is 25psf and not 50i, and do the correct thing for the display (which will be different for each type of display).

This decision is what I've been fighting for since 1988. I have a niced rosy feeling at present smile.gif

[infocus]

Amazing - it seems common sense has prevailed for once! Just difficult to see why there was ever an argument.

One thing still confuses me. I understand that to get over the "jerkiness", 50p is better than 25p, but for 1080 thats not yet realistic - hence 50i. But if much HD production is 1080/25psf, then why not 25p? Would that not compress more easily?

[StevenBagley]

One thing still confuses me. I understand that to get over the "jerkiness", 50p is better than 25p, but for 1080 thats not yet realistic - hence 50i. But if much HD production is 1080/25psf, then why not 25p? Would that not compress more easily?1080/25p transmission would not give the motion rendition that people expect for live material (e.g. sports, music concerts etc). However, 1080/50i does allow this motion rendition and transmits 25psf material identically to a 25p transmission.

Presumably it just requires a flag in the stream to tell the boxes to do some vertical filtering on the 25psf signal to remove interline frequencies before passing it to CRT displays -- in much the same way that they'll use a flag telling them they are receiving 1080/50i material to deinterlace and rescale it for progressive devices.

Steven

[Alan McKeown]

Re. the ProSiebenSat HD broadcast of "Pride - Das Gesetz der Savanne" (Pride - The Law of the Savannah) this evening.

The lions did not speak in English. They did not speak in German. They did not even roar. For alas there was no audio at all of any kind that I could decode. I presume someone had forgotten to set the correct “flag”. Very disappointing as the pictures looked great, but were not really watchable for long with no sound.

I noticed on the opening credits, Robbie Coltrane, Sean Bean, Kate Winslet, Helen Mirren and John Hurt among the “cast” list, presumably their voices only.


Alan

[infocus]

Originally posted by StevenBagley:
1080/25p transmission would not give the motion rendition that people expect for live material (e.g. sports, music concerts etc). However, 1080/50i does allow this motion rendition and transmits 25psf material identically to a 25p transmission.
My point was not why 50i instead of 25p, but rather why 25psf instead of 25p? (When the latter would presumably be easier to compress.) Hence transmit 1080/50i or 1080/25p according to source.

[StevenBagley]

I think 25psf in a 50i transmission would be identical to a 25p transmission but with different MPEG header flags set.

Steven

[Alan Roberts]

Let's get this sorted out before we get too confused.

720/50p has great motion portrayal because every frame is transmitted complete. It's spatial resolution of 1280x720 is good enough for displays up to about 40" viewed at 2.5 metres. It's raw data rate is 1280*720*50=46.08Mpixels/second. At 10-bit, 422, you need 921.6Mb/s. But, 720/50p is not an ITU standard (yet).

1080/50i has equally great motion portrayal if the viewer is not too close to the screen, just like conventional tv. Fields of 540 lines are transmitted at 50Hz, two fields are needed to get a full frame. It's spatial resolution of 1920x1080 is good enough for displays up to about 65" viewed at 2.5 metres. It's raw data rate is 51.84Mpixels/second. At 10-bit, 422, you need 1.0356Gb/s. 1080/50i is an ITU and SMPTE standard. You don't get as much value for money from 1080/i because it cannot carry full vertical information, Takashi Fujio of NHK measured a factor of about 0.6, that may be a little mean, if we assume a 2/3 "interlace factor", then 1080i can carry 720 scene samples vertically, the same as 720p. This also means that 1/3 of the transmitted bits do not carry significant scenic information, so you get only more horizontal detail, not vertical, than 720p.

1080/25psf is used only for getting a film look. It tgakes prgressively scanned frames from the camera ar 25/second and delivers them as two fields at 50/second, interlaced. The signal travels exactly as though it were interlaced. The data rates are the same as for 1080/50i, but you get the full vertical resolution so no bit-rate is wasted. 1080/psf is not an ITU or SMPTE standard because it doesn't need to be, it's actually an interlaced standard, only the content is progressive.

1080/50p does it right. Every 1/50 second, you get a new full progressive frame. Raw pixel rate is 103,86Mpixels/second, and you need 2.0736Gb/s for 10-bit 422.

1080/25p is perfect for film but rubbish for everything else. Transmitted frames need to be repeated to avoid flicker, so everything has film motion unless you have an extremely clever decoder that draws intermediate frames using motion adaption. That's highly unlikely in consumer kit.

Clearly, 1080/50p is where we'd like to get to, but at over 2Gb/s it's a bit expensive at present. There's only one HD camera that'll do it, in prototype, and recording can't be done on tape yet. That will change.

So, with a bit-budget of about 1Gb/s, what's the best compromise? 720/50p is fine for the intermediate displays we've got at present, but there's a new 65" 1920x1080 tv set just launched in Japan last week, and we know of work on 100" panels. So displays are going to get bigger and cheaper within the first years of life of any standard we adopt. So fixing exclusively on 720 would be a mistake at this stage. Clearly we're going to need 1080/50p eventually, but how do we get to it?

1080/50i works well. In the US a huge proportion of the HD production is 1080/24psf (which is near enough to 25psf, we just play the tape faster), so there's a large installed base of production kit that we can use already. They handle it in the same way that they handle film on SD but they've got a new option, to transmit it at 24*p and let the decoder sort it out, either with a 2:3 pulldown to get to 60*Hz or 3:3 to get 72Hz which really doesn't flicker. The rest of production is at 1080/60*i which works exactly like 1080/50i. 1080/60p is at the top of the list of standards in the ATSC, it's the final aim point; 1080/50p should have the same status for us, it's what we want but we can't afford it yet.

1080/50i or 1080/25psf is a good compromise for now. It can carry film at full resolution provdied the decoder reads carried flags to tell it how to deal with it. 720p alone is not sufficiently forward-thinking, but as an alternative to 1080/50i it's just fine. For now.

Did that help?

* In the US, for ease of convertion to NTSC, they run it all 0.1% slow, so material shot at 24psf is shown at 23.976 for 2:3 conversion to 59.94 rather than 60Hz.

[infocus]

I'm sure several of you will have seen it, but in case not, at this (http://www.ebu.ch/trev_home.html) link from the EBU, a couple of interesting articles by John Ive of Sony, and David Wood of the EBU Project Group B/TQE.

Interesting to compare two paragraphs. At the bottom of page 5, John Ive says "All the major manufacturers have announced that the next generation of television displays will follow the 1920x1080 common image format. This is the first time that screen sizes are to be video centric rather than computer centric."

In David Woods report, a somewhat different view: "The display manufacturers tell us that the "core" flat panel...... should be the "WideXGA" flat panel, which is a 768-line progressively scanned display. This is a key assumption, and it should be clearly stated that we have to rely here on information received from outside sourcs."

And I don't see how both of them can be right......

[infocus]

Thanks for a great pull together, Alan, but the whole concept of Psf for HD still worries me. I understand it as a way of getting progressive images over an interlaced only system, on current DV cameras for example, when the recording system is interlaced, and it's the only way to do it.

But for HD, isn't the progressive ability there from the start - if displays will handle 720p and 1080/50i, then why not 1080/25p, and in which case why then bother with 25Psf at all? Surely splitting it into fields hinders compression?

Yes, 1080/50p must be the ultimate goal, which then begs the question if I buy a display in the next couple of years, will it be able to handle 50p when it comes along? Conversely, if there become a large number of displays in circulation NOT able to handle 50p, will broadcasters ever be able to transmit it, without having to simulcast 50i as well?

[Alan Roberts]

You've missed a couple of point.

First, psf. It came for free in equipment that was originally designed only to do interlace. It costs no more to do psf than i. Doing p costs a lot more because there isn't a formal standard for it; if you deliver 25p to a display it will flicker like you can't imagine, there needs to be processing to prevent it. If you deliver psf to a display, it doesn't flicker, it just works. psf is a sensible way to deliver p, because it works with no processing in an i channel.

Second, displays are no longer tailored to specific standards, that's why we can feely mix 720 and 1080 on the same display. The display has a scaler, all flat panels do (except some that I'm told will switch it off if the incoming standard pixel-matches the display). So a display has only to accept the transmitted signal, the scaler does the rest. If it (a panel with scaler) can do 1080/50i, it can do 1080/25psf and 1080/50p. It's the scaler that has to do the hard part, not the display itself. Whether a way will be found to transmit 50p is such a way that a first-generation 50i decoder/scaler can deal with it remains to be seen, but it won't be the display that has the problem.

[Alan McKeown]

Quote:

"1080/50p does it right..... Raw pixel rate is 1.0386Gpixels/second”


Isn’t that a little excessive? smile.gif


Alan

[Alan Roberts]

Yup, corrected. A slipped zero.

[Alan McKeown]

Apparently the HDTV transmission of “Pride” last evening was actually the “English” version which makes it all the more galling that I could not get the sound to work.

There was a simultaneous broadcast in SD (letterboxed 4:3) which had the “German” version of the soundtrack.


Alan

[Alan Roberts]

So it had to be settings in either the tranmission or your decoder then. Personally, I'm much more interested in the pictures than the sound, it was the first time anything big had been shot in HD using my camera settings. The (ungraded) rushes were astounding but I've seen nothing more of it since then.

[infocus]

I assume you're certain it was the transmission, and not your receiver? Sounds like a phone call to Pro7 is called for, if only to let them know that people were interested in the transmission!

Regarding the Psf points, I'm just surprised that if a scaler can convert 1080/720 to a 768 display, its not able to "deflicker" 25p.

[Alan McKeown]

Quote:
** ** ** ** * * ** **
“I assume you're certain it was the transmission, and not your receiver?”

No, I’m not at all certain that it was the transmission but the other two regular HDTV station’s sound signals work fine even when they are transmitting Dolby Digital.

In the “early” days (about four or five months ago!) it was not unusual to loose the audio when the transmission changed from stereo to surround or vice-versa. This could be cured by rescanning the relevant transponder. In recent months this problem no longer shows up but whether this is due to the broadcasters getting their act together or my updating of the receiver firmware (via the internet), I know not.

It may be (though it seems unlikely) that from ProSieben there is an output only on the optical fibre connector intended to feed an AC-3 (Dolby Digital 5.1) amplifier but as I have no AC-3 system (only plain stereo) at the moment, I am unable to check that.

The ProSiebenSat HD channel is still broadcasting in 1080i (an upconverted version of their SD programming, but still soundless as far as I am concerned!). Hopefully the problem will be sorted out before the next showing of “Pride” (whenever that may be)!


Alan

[Alan Roberts]

First, look at it simplisticly.

At 1080/50i or 1080/25psf, there are 50 images per second, albeit with only half vertical resolution. The display needs 50 images per second, so all that's needed is to do some spatial re-sampling to get from 540 lines to whatever the display needs. At 720, the same happens but the whole frame's available.

At 25p, there are only 25 images per second, so each has to be shown, then held in memory and reshown. That doesn't happen in any of the decoders in use for ATSC etc as far as I'm aware. It's not hard to do, but it has to be done. But it's not just a matter of "de-flickering" because you're still left with film motion, so it won't do for news, sport, light entertainment etc, but it's fine for feature films, some drama, some documentaries and wildlife. If the decoders get built with the ability to repeat frames, then it doesn't matter whether it's 25psf or 25p, the result's the same, but a crt display would need no processing to show 25psf but would need a frame store to show 25p.

In practice it's not that simple because scaling from a single field isn't very good, usually a 3-field filter does a better job using some tricks that I'm not at liberty to tell you about.

And, by the way, there are already displat panels in the range 1024x1024 to 1920x1080 on the market, so the displays to do better than 720 are already avaibale, alberity scarce and expensive.

For programme-making, 25psf holds the crown for drama, wildlife, and anything else that woiuld otherwise be shot on film and needs a film look. Production in psf is a darn sight easier than 25p for exactly the same reasons, display during shooting or editing can use any 1080/50i unit because it works, no extra processing needed.

[Alan Roberts]

I suggest we call this thread full and start a new one, because what we're actually talking about now is HD in Europe. I'll open it with a few quotes from this thread.

[cstv]

just a quick link (http://www.dvdoctor.net/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=29;t=001748) to the new thread that Alan set up...

[infocus]

I got back yesterday from a week working in the States, and thought it worth posting about what I found there on this subject. Since America hasn’t "belonged" to Europe for over two hundred years, I thought I’d better temporarily return to this topic……. ;)

No sooner had we cleared immigration and headed to the bookstall in search of maps, than the subject first arose – one of the first magazines I saw proclaimed it as an “HDTV special!” For the next few days, physically no sign at all of anything other than 4:3 NTSC tellys, with the occasional widescreen plasma in bars etc displaying stretched pictures – depressingly like the UK, it seemed! There were a few newspaper and TV ads for TV products, and in those retailers seemed keen to boast about anything which could have “HD” put in the spec.

Eventually there were a few free daytime hours, giving me the chance to do a little shopping, and suddenly found myself outside a fairly large shop selling TV’s. Going in was like entering an Aladdins cage. Every screen in the front section was a plasma or LCD, and every one was displaying true HD – what a change from the average UK store with a poor RF distribution, and showing stretched pictures on the widescreen sets!

I got to chat with a (very knowledgeable) salesman for quite a while. Their store was more upmarket than the really big chains, but not too exclusive, and was part of a chain of about 200. They were concentrating almost exclusively on HD, and my understanding is that the current situation is that whilst HD sales are numerically still in the minority, they are where the money is, and where the growth is seen. In that store there were only about 4-5 conventional TVs, sitting rather forlornly in a corner, and there THEY were the ones with the wrong shaped picture – all squashed up! I understand that most of the big TV retailers tend to be in out of town malls, and that whilst most of their stock still is conventional “pile ‘em high, sell ‘em cheap”, they are increasingly selling HD stock.

We later saw a big Sony store in another big mall, and the picture was repeated here. In the TV section it was either big HD displays (including the biggest plasma I've ever seen, and only $20,000 to you, sir), or sexy little LCD screens.

So what does all this prove? On the one hand, if you live in the States, you can sit at home now with an HD receiver and enjoy quite a lot of HD programming, and this trend is expected to accelerate. On the other, they (like the UK) have a huge legacy problem, and whilst there is talk of analogue shutdown quite soon, I find it difficult to see how it’s going to happen. Cable is much more prevalent than here, so possibly that may help – perhaps broadcast TV will become HD only, leaving cable to solve the majority of the legacy problem? I’d be very interested in comments from any Americans on what I’ve written, and how accurately (or not) they think it reflects the situation.

Finally, from the latest “HDTV news, Mark Schubin” that Alan Roberts posted, this link (http://www.torontofreepress.com/2004/bray102904.htm) gives an overview of the situation in Canada, which seems to be halfway between the States and the UK – and where the UK is likely to be in 2-3 years time. I can’t finish any better than by leaving it to the opening and closing comments from that author:
“High definition TV is all the buzz in the consumer electronics world, and justifiably so.”
and
“HD is definitely the future of television, whether transmitted via satellite, cable, or (eventually) the Internet, and I can't wait until it finally becomes ubiquitous.
Unfortunately, that won't happen overnight.”

[infocus]

Originally posted by cstv:
Oh, i didn't realise they had technical open days - i take it they're publicised on the BBC website somewhere...? Cstv - going back a little bit, and referring to Kingswood Warren, but you may be interested in the following link. Open days. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/opendays/index.shtml) Happy viewing!

[infocus]

I know that the main Australian networks have also been simulcasting HDTV for some months now on DTT, ...................

I've further read about the blue laser DVD replacement formats being developed specifically for HDTV movies, and HD camcorders for the consumer - JVC already having product on sale.

It all makes me wonder why so little is normally heard of this in the UK. (Perhaps it could form a Computer Video article!?) Do the broadcasters here have any plans to move to HD, or will they be forced to anyway when "Eastenders" etc look poor alongside the latest feature film on Blu-Ray!? Any Australian readers have any comment on whats happening over there?

Not much more than 18 months ago (!) I started this topic off with those remarks, at a time when the letters "HD" were hardly mentioned. How times change!

I've just come back from a spell in Australia, and it was interesting to see for myself how the situation was developing over there. Certainly HD sets were nowhere to be seen in any of the motels we stayed at, and neither did either of the two friends we stayed with have such a set. (They are far from the "early adopter" stereotype, though!) Interestingly though, both of them were well aware of it, and also interesting was how even with them "digital TV" seemed to be synonomous with "high quality" in a way that it has singularly failed to be in the UK.

In a major Melbourne department store, I made a point of going into the electronics section, and at first sight it seemed little different from a comparable UK equivalent. That includes the fairly dreadful RF feed giving a grainy image on most of the sets...... There seemed a higher percentage of CRT sets than in the UK, and certainly more of them seemed still to be 4:3. Finally, in one corner ("Home cinema") every one of the large plasmas/LCDs was displaying off air HD, and I can't emphasise too much how different they looked to the rest of the shop. I got to talk to a (knowledgeable) salesman there, who was also interested about the situation in the UK. His complaint was the lack of inbuilt digital tuners (sound familiar?), but he said that their HD sales were good, and most relevantly, ramping up quickly. He told me that generally public interest was high, it was just a question of affordability, and that the signal is far from universally available. Generally it seems that uptake has been good, compared to other new technologies, and given how recently it has been introduced.

Now just back in the UK, I went into my local Currys today and couldn't help but notice the large LG display of about 6-7 HD ready monitors, including a 60" plasma. The pictures on them looked stunning, especially compared to the fuzzy RF distribution throughout the rest of the shop, and it was little surprise to find an anonymous looking box at the back feeding component to all of them. It was interesting also to see the reaction of a couple in the shop, and from the snippet I overheard they had gone in to buy a Samsung model, but seemed won over to a LG set. Strange that! ;) (I foresee manufacturers increasingly putting in their own signal sources.)

The publicity about Sky also seems to be ramping up, though I think it's a month or two before it will get really intense. I came back to the UK fully expecting the BBC to have announced it's own HD plans at IBC, and was surprised no such thing happened. I'm not sure if they are being very clever (letting Sky do the spadework, then justifying the spending of public money by being seen to be answering the public demand) or very stupid (letting Sky steal a march, and losing the "we're the best" crown).

Reading through this thread again, only about a year ago the opinion was that HD would come in Europe, but was likely to be at least five years away. What a difference a year makes!

[Alan Roberts]

Sorry chaps, I've been a bit lax recently. I'll start posting Mark's memoes again this week (I've got all the backlog on file).