Re: BBC HD on Freeview proposal


"DAB sounds worse than FM" <dab.is@dead> wrote in message news:6MNKi.53654$rr5.8986@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
The BBC has 2 multiplexes with a total of 36.2 Mbps of capacity at its
disposal, and it broadcasts the following channels:

http://www.dtg.org.uk/retailer/dtt_channels.html

BBC1
BBC2
BBC3 / CBBC (time-share)
BBC4 / CBeebies (time-share)
BBC News 24
BBC Parliament
BBCi
Community Channel
301/302/303
Radio stations

The radio stations consume 1888 kbps in total, leaving 34.312 Mbps

The Community Channel only broadcasts from 6am to 9am, which won't clash
with the BBC HD channel.

Assuming the BBC HD channel requires 10 Mbps, that leaves 24.312 Mbps for
the remaining channels.

If the BBC invested in new MPEG-2 encoders like the commercial TV channels
did a couple of years ago, and then allocated the 24.312 Mbps as follows, I
don't see why they couldn't fit the HD channel in:

BBC1 - 3.5 Mbps
BBC2 - 3.5 Mbps
BBC3 - 3.5 Mbps
BBC4 - 3.5 Mbps
BBC N24 - 3 Mbps
BBC Parliament - 1.5 Mbps
BBCi & 301/2/3 - 5.8 Mbps combined
Total = 24.3 Mbps

The bit rates above for BBC1-4 are *higher* than the commercial TV channels are
using at the moment, and apart from BBC1 a bit rate of 3.5 Mbps is about what they're using at the moment. So if the BBC purchased the same encoders that C4, ITV etc bought a couple of years ago when they reduced the bit rates of their channels, the quality would be okay BUT we'd be able to get the BBC HD channel for the full 9 hours, which I would say is a good trade-off.

What a load of HOGWASH.

The only major difference between to old encoders and the new encoders is that the new encoders are faster and therefore able to statistically multiplex more feeds. The quality of the output streams of the new encoders is inferior to what it was because they now use a lower bit rate and every commenting on the quality of ITV channels have pointed that out in this group many times.


Issues
====

BBC Parliament's bit rate looks a bit low, but it's only a quarter-screen channel, and at the end of the day who watches the bloody thing? It seems

BBC Parliament is now a full screen channel. Why should people have to endure an unwatchable quarter-screen version again and why should people have to have the quality of BBC1 degraded when the present picture quality on BBC2 and BBC3 is ***?

that it's main reason for being there is to make the politicians feel important, and I dread to think what the audience figures are for it.

I can't find out what the combined bit rate is used for BBCi (excluding 301/2/3), but I recorded 301 and 302 last night to see what bit rate levels they were using and they were as follows:

301 = 2.93 Mbps
302 = 3.45 Mbps

But they were both carrying sodding CBBC stuff at 10.30pm - shouldn't kids be in bed by that time??

As far as I'm concerned, squeezing the bandwidth that's used for the BBCi and 301/2/3 streams would be well, well worth it, because I don't think the BBCi stuff will be used much, and they could still broadcast, but just at a reduced bit rate, say.

More bull***. Why should I have to suffer reduced and unwatchable picture and sound quality on the Athletics and other sports events I watch on interactive. Its already bad enough that pop music is unwatchable on these channels because of the low audio and video bitrates.


I might be missing something out above - if I am, please point it out. But I have a suspicion that the BBC is playing a political game with its bandwidth, because it is claiming that it hasn't got enough in order to try and persuade Ofcom to give it some spectrum gratis. But I think it's now clear that Ofcom and the government have got absolutely zero intention of budging on this issue, so they should forget it and pull all the stops out to launch the HD channel.

What is needed is for all the current analogue spectrum to be handed over for HD broadcasts not for SD to be cripple so that a tiny minority can have the benefit of *** HD services for only 6 hours a day, none of which will even be live, and will only be one channel. NOBODY will waste their money on equipment for a service like this when they can get a full service on satellite.

What the government should do is pass legislation forcing all broadcasters to use a minimum of 5Mbps for SD TV with sound encoded at a minimum of 256kbps including all the radio stations so that the colour space used by SD can be increased from 4:2:0 to 4:2:2 and thus match the same colour space as far superior analogue broadcasting and DVD. When you consider that this is the format used by DVD it is clear that 10Mbps is totally inadequate for HD TV even when using MPEG-4 since HD TV carries 6 times the information.

HD TV for the 5 existing analogue channels should use the existing analogue frequencies and be broadcast at 24Mbps using Dolby 5.1 encoding and government legislation should make this minimum bit rate mandatory.

The government should also pass legislation forbidding the terrestrial spectrum to the used by Con Channels such as bid-up.tv, price-drop.tv, QVC and Ideal World and the telephone gaming/gambling channels given the scandals that have emerged already. The space freed will allow the bandwidth of the existing ITV station to be increased to the minimum of 5Mbps.

Similar regulation should be legislation on regarding DAB forcing all broadcasters to use a minimum bit rate of 256kbps mp2 and 160kbps mp4.

That is what we should be campaigning for.

.

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