TVNZ to go HD in Jul 2008

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#88700 30-Sep-2007 10:37

DS9: Hi, I would not say "ahead" the US and Canada have had HD for 7-8 years and Europe for 3-4 years, it just means we will have caught up after 5 years lagging behind the nearest, unless you judge our Tech by Brazil etc. The good thing for us is that HD is becoming standard so we will then be on an even keel. Still I have lived in the UK and Canada and they both use 1080i except the US feeds in Canada somtimes it comes through 720p. Which is known as HD lite over there. Some of my friends have even seen test signals of 720i from the US, they believe is why DirecTV are saying they will have 100 HD channels.

The great thing about NZ however if that we have gone straight to MPEG4 H264 as the broadcast standard meaning we won't be stuck (like Australia and the UK are) with a huge installed base of MPEG2 STB's that they have to still support - something that is very difficult when bandwidth is such a precious resource.

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#88708 30-Sep-2007 12:42

DS9: Hi, I would not say "ahead" the US and Canada have had HD for 7-8 years and Europe for 3-4 years, it just means we will have caught up after 5 years lagging behind the nearest, unless you judge our Tech by Brazil etc. The good thing for us is that HD is becoming standard so we will then be on an even keel. Still I have lived in the UK and Canada and they both use 1080i except the US feeds in Canada somtimes it comes through 720p. Which is known as HD lite over there. Some of my friends have even seen test signals of 720i from the US, they believe is why DirecTV are saying they will have 100 HD channels.

Some notes. HDLite is not a brand nor technology but a derogatory name given to DirectTV services. DirectTV apparently are notorious for taking HD feeds and recompressing them when they send down the signal from their birds in order to cram more channels in the same bandwidth.

As for the difference between 1080i and 720p my understanding is (Cyril feel free to step here) that the bandwidth for both is similar and in the US ABC, Fox and ESPN chose 720p since they felt the progressive signal provided a smoother picture, especially for sports broadcasts.

Larry

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#88713 30-Sep-2007 12:57

Directv "HDLite" refers to low bitrate 1080i.

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#88863 1-Oct-2007 08:46

sbiddle: And I'm sure there will have to be at least one idiot who gets media attention because they spend $x on a 852x480Plasma because they were under the impression it was HD simply because it was a flat screen or were told incorrectly by a salesperson that it was.

Actually the warehouse is still selling these TVs and avertizing them in the papers as HD ready because thay have a HDMI port on the back..

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#88864 1-Oct-2007 08:53

old3eyes:
sbiddle: And I'm sure there will have to be at least one idiot who gets media attention because they spend $x on a 852x480Plasma because they were under the impression it was HD simply because it was a flat screen or were told incorrectly by a salesperson that it was.

Actually the warehouse is still selling these TVs and avertizing them in the papers as HD ready because thay have a HDMI port on the back..

Anybody who buys one of these sets from the Warehouse is unlikely to be the type of person who will then invest in either a HD ready STB or a Blu Ray or HD DVD player so the Warehouse might be safe here :-)

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#88873 1-Oct-2007 10:33

oh yeah, someone pointed out to me that the typist is at TVNZ is probably dyslexic.

h.246 ABC is probably h.264 AVC

having watched some h264 720p footage (admitted transcoded from 720p MPEG DVB-T HD) it looks a darned sight better than what we currently get, especially noticeable in the long camera shots. That blockiness that you get with current feeds is much sharper :)

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#88898 1-Oct-2007 12:39

allstarnz: oh yeah, someone pointed out to me that the typist is at TVNZ is probably dyslexic.

h.246 ABC is probably h.264 AVC

having watched some h264 720p footage (admitted transcoded from 720p MPEG DVB-T HD) it looks a darned sight better than what we currently get, especially noticeable in the long camera shots. That blockiness that you get with current feeds is much sharper :)

Come on .... tell us what you were watching and what on.

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#88902 1-Oct-2007 13:05

old3eyes:
allstarnz: oh yeah, someone pointed out to me that the typist is at TVNZ is probably dyslexic.

h.246 ABC is probably h.264 AVC

having watched some h264 720p footage (admitted transcoded from 720p MPEG DVB-T HD) it looks a darned sight better than what we currently get, especially noticeable in the long camera shots. That blockiness that you get with current feeds is much sharper :)

Come on .... tell us what you were watching and what on.

There is plenty of 720p content available on the net if you look in the right places! :-)

lchiu7

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#88905 1-Oct-2007 13:23

Nothing legally wrong with looking at this stuff

http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/hdtrailers.html

Note you will need either Quicktime or VLC to play them but they look pretty good. The 1080p ones need a fairly grunty PC to play though

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#88910 1-Oct-2007 13:57

lchiu7: Nothing legally wrong with looking at this stuff

http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/hdtrailers.html

Note you will need either Quicktime or VLC to play them but they look pretty good. The 1080p ones need a fairly grunty PC to play though

www.apple.com/trailers also has plenty of stuff in HD.

allstarnz

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#88923 1-Oct-2007 15:29

old3eyes:
Come on .... tell us what you were watching and what on.

a friend sent me over a couple of All Black games recorded from Ten in Australia to drool over. Was watching it on my 22" widescreen LCD. Certainly a lot better quality than what is on The Rugby Channel or TV3

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#88939 1-Oct-2007 17:20

From Wikipedia:
Non-cinematic HDTV video recordings are recorded in either 720p or 1080i format. The format depends on the broadcast company if destined for television broadcast, however in other scenarios the format choice will vary depending on a variety of factors. In general, 720p is more appropriate for fast action as it uses progressive fields, as opposed to 1080i which uses interlaced fields and thus can have a degradation of image quality with fast motion.

Anyway, as the talk is of future-proofing, does anyone know if the transition from 720p to 1080p will be easier given the standards that TVNZ and freeview have implemented?

I understand that 1080p is not a common format and requires a great deal of processing power to render and bandwidth to transmit, but it's always worth considering upgrade paths.

old3eyes

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#89028 2-Oct-2007 08:24

Don't expect to see 1080P tranmissions anytime soon anywhere. The bandwidth required is too much or if the do it will be compressed that much it will look like SD

Regards,

Old3eyes

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#89033 2-Oct-2007 08:58

JonC: From Wikipedia:
Non-cinematic HDTV video recordings are recorded in either 720p or 1080i format. The format depends on the broadcast company if destined for television broadcast, however in other scenarios the format choice will vary depending on a variety of factors. In general, 720p is more appropriate for fast action as it uses progressive fields, as opposed to 1080i which uses interlaced fields and thus can have a degradation of image quality with fast motion.

Anyway, as the talk is of future-proofing, does anyone know if the transition from 720p to 1080p will be easier given the standards that TVNZ and freeview have implemented?

I understand that 1080p is not a common format and requires a great deal of processing power to render and bandwidth to transmit, but it's always worth considering upgrade paths.

1080p can be transmitted over DVB-T. The reality is we'll never actually see it due to the bandwidth. a Single DVB-T mux allows 23mbps but 1080p requires around 20mbps for a single stream. Suddenly we'd be back in the dark ages with 2 TV channels in NZ, even though they would both be stunning 1080p! :-)

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#89173 2-Oct-2007 21:03

The dark ages? Like when these were 'new' and 'fresh'? (Ok, granted the last one was the birth of our third channel, and I have WAY too much time on my hands

)

Just imagine if this is all we had, but in jaw-dropping, glorious 1080p...Would it really be so bad?

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