TVNZ is now widescreen

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openmedia

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#88223 26-Sep-2007 22:19

This can happen if TVNZ have a matted 14:9 version originally designed for broadcast over 4:3. For 16:9 transmission stead of zooming into the frame they have pillarboxed it.

Generally known online as OpenMedia, now working for Red Hat APAC as a Technology Evangelist and Portfolio Architect. Still playing with MythTV and digital media on the side.

richms

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#88227 26-Sep-2007 23:17

Which really is inexcusable to show a whole program like this, the only way to get it full screen is if your TV has a zoom feature, which few do.

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#88263 27-Sep-2007 09:52

Pillarboxed is how it should be as these programs are NOT sourced 16:9. TVNZ stretched a 4:3 ratio 14:9 copy of Coronation Street using 14:9 zoom to fit the 16:9 frame with only slight pillarboxing on Tuesday. To me this is disgusting debauchery that looks like crap. TV3 would simply have shown it letterboxed (14:9) inside pillarboxing. I never watch or would allow to be watched any 4:3 ratio channels stretched in any way to full my 16:9 screen. TVNZ should also have increased their bitrate by 33% to cater for 33% more picture in the change over. I use a Topfield DVB-S decoder connected via component to a Philips 32PF9531.

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openmedia

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#88266 27-Sep-2007 10:02

Spyware: Pillarboxed is how it should be as these programs are NOT sourced 16:9. TVNZ stretched a 4:3 ratio 14:9 copy of Coronation Street using 14:9 zoom to fit the 16:9 frame with only slight pillarboxing on Tuesday. To me this is disgusting debauchery that looks like crap. TV3 would simply have shown it letterboxed (14:9) inside pillarboxing. I never watch or would allow to be watched any 4:3 ratio channels stretched in any way to full my 16:9 screen. TVNZ should also have increased their bitrate by 33% to cater for 33% more picture in the change over. I use a Topfield DVB-S decoder connected via component to a Philips 32PF9531.

TVNZ have increased their bitrate. It used to average around 4Mbit and now it is upto 6.

Also 16:9 widescreen is anamorphic. It actually has the same number of pixels as the 4:3 feed, but is stretched to fit 16:9

Steve

Generally known online as OpenMedia, now working for Red Hat APAC as a Technology Evangelist and Portfolio Architect. Still playing with MythTV and digital media on the side.

cyril7

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#88272 27-Sep-2007 10:04

Full height 16:9 anamorphic requires no more bitrate than a 4:3 image as it is still only encoding a 720x576 4:3 frame, albeit of a horizontally compressed 16:9 frame. There are no 16:9 frames defined in the DVB standard for SD images, therefore a 16:9 image is transmitted as a 4:3 image, the end result is rectangular pixels, but as far as the encoder is concerned its just processing square pixels.

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allstarnz

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#88296 27-Sep-2007 12:06

openmedia:
TVNZ have increased their bitrate. It used to average around 4Mbit and now it is upto 6.

Ah, i thought so, it seemed that way the other day when I was looking.

I too hate the stretching that TVNZ insist on doing. Though it's ugly, pillarboxing is actually better.

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#88320 27-Sep-2007 15:00

So the vertical resolution of a 14:9 matted version is less than 576 lines as the intention is not to transmit full height??

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cyril7

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#88322 27-Sep-2007 15:27

I think you will find that all technical folk at TVNZ and Canwest also cringe when they see non optimal material sent to air for whatever reason. However to alter the bit rate for a small amount of material that is concidered a temporary transition situation is taking things a bit far.

Hopefully TVNZ lifts its game a bit on this, I think TV3 seem to have definitely provided a more consistant and polished effort for transistion material.

The bit rate resulting/saved from matted regions would more than compensate for resolution loss due to the 14:9 scaling. Exactly how much would be a good question for the encoder designers.

Cyril

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#88577 28-Sep-2007 20:57

yuk.... the in-studio shots for "close up" tonight were bloody awful -i'm wondering if they are shooting 16:9 by cropping and zooming with 4:3 cameras given that it looks so bad

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