BBC Presentation on HD

[StevenBagley]

Just found this http://hdmasters2007.com/pdf/Presentations/HDM2007_Quested-BBC.pdf online, some interesting bits and pieces in it...

Interesting comments too about what isn't HD too :)

Steven

[PaulD]

Hi
Quote: Audiences have always expected the BBC to lead in technological advancements:
– 40s HD experiments with 1001 line camera
That's not any 'audience' that I ever came into contact with :(

Quote: The close-ups on HD have a completelydifferent quality to anything I’ve ever seen before on television, they’re much more like close-ups in the cinema.
As in Desperate Housewives. where all the CUs have to have a soft-focus resolution destroying filter to eliminate the said ladies age-related skin deterioration... ;)

[mdiver]

I thought P2 was dead?

[PaulD]

Hi
The advantages of P2 over other solid-state media are that:
a) its a RAID technology, so can achieve higher data transfer rates than simple flash-memory devices, and
b) its high quality control during manufacture - all the internal P2 card memory chips are specifically chosen for their high performance and low error rates.

That guarantee is presumably worth the price premium to the BBC, and other professional users, given that the optimal workflow is to reuse the cards repeatedly again and again.

[infocus]

Quote: Audiences have always expected the BBC to lead in technological advancements:
Hmmm - I'd have been tempted to shout out "so why are you so far behind Sky with HD then?" :)

How long was it since the BBC official line at presentations such as Video Forum was:
[i]"It would be hard to justify the necessary investment of licence fee to initially serve a small number of consumers"

Until just before Sky made their announcement, I seem to recall........ ;)

[Alan Roberts]

The reason why BBC went for P2 was much more down to how the workflow worked, than the camera or card performance. It fitted extremely well in with the clip-based system they were trying to get started. Plus, the codec on the only competitor at that time, Sony XD, didn't deliver pictures that survived as well as DVCPROHD pictures did by the time they'd got through that process and to the home.

However, all that's about to change, because the new coders from both Sony and Panasonic are both significantly better, and we're seeing wavelet compression getting in on the act as well. So, as evger, it's all going to change again :)