TVNZ, Hobson St and HD playout status

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#446251 7-Mar-2011 12:40

Upgrading speakers, can make it sound worse. :-(

richms

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#446253 7-Mar-2011 12:46

grolschie: Upgrading speakers, can make it sound worse. :-(

It does, my antique mcintosh ones are great for playing casette and freeview HD on because they are so non-revealing and go loud. My lowend B&W 30somethings sound tollerable at low volumes but really show the problems at normal listening levels, and when I had them, some kefs were just unusable with freeview. Targetting the audio format at 20c speakers in a television is not what you expect for a broadcast format with HD in the name. Then again, with what I have heard of HD radio sourced stuff, its probably about right ;)

Richard rich.ms

grolschie

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#446280 7-Mar-2011 13:17

So do TVNZ need convincing somehow that this is a problem?

richms

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#446304 7-Mar-2011 13:53

grolschie: So do TVNZ need convincing somehow that this is a problem?

Who knows, its probably being decided by deaf old guys on a board or something who own a bose and cant hear the shortcomings with that or anything.

Richard rich.ms

Deev8

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#447304 10-Mar-2011 14:27

richms: ... its probably being decided by deaf old guys on a board or something who own a bose and cant hear the shortcomings with that or anything.

Who knows if they are deaf or old, but we can be reasonably sure that accountants play a big part in the decision making. All they want to know is what return they will get, in terms of increased advertising revenue, for any investment in improved broadcast audio.

lchiu7

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#447753 12-Mar-2011 09:50

richms:

Best thing with AC3 is the LFE - means that those of us with decent systems can actually get some bass out of it ;)

Not sure if TV3 are using the same AAC encoders but it's really enlightening to watch a TV3 DD5.1 show and switch from the AAC track to the DD5.1 track. The sudden emergence of the LFE channel is quite noticeable and the width of the audio space increases significantly as well as the dynamic range.

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tehconz

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#448742 16-Mar-2011 02:08

In terms of DD 5.1, programs have been ingested off tape with 5.1 audio for several months now, and you can actually listen in 5.1 within the building. The only step left is to reconfigure the headend encoder (and have Sky reconfigure theirs) to encode a dolby stream. As was mentioned earlier, the audio processors have a pseudo 5.1 function, which activates in the absence of real 5.1 audio, but this only feeds the dolby steam, the AAC stream will not change. Any "pseudo 5.1" you're hearing at the moment is Dolby Surround matrix encoding from the source material, nothing to do with the new kit.

I'm not sure exactly what the holdup on 5.1 is either, but I'm told that it is quite a major task to reconfigure the headend, and is not an easily reversible process should something go wrong. It seems the go-ahead is tied up in management somewhere, just like the 16:9 switch was in 2007. The good news is that the new "Media Centre" playout facility is working pretty well, and more and more HD shows are being delivered.

As for he HE-AAC audio quality, the bitrate was kept pretty low to allow more bandwidth for HD picture. Obviously the introduction of two DD5.1 streams will take even more bandwidth, and this may be part of the reluctance to fire it up.

cyril7

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#448749 16-Mar-2011 07:34

Hi, thanks for that update, look forward to DD once its there.

Cheers
Cyril

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#448772 16-Mar-2011 08:52

tehconz: In terms of DD 5.1, programs have been ingested off tape with 5.1 audio for several months now, and you can actually listen in 5.1 within the building. The only step left is to reconfigure the headend encoder (and have Sky reconfigure theirs) to encode a dolby stream. As was mentioned earlier, the audio processors have a pseudo 5.1 function, which activates in the absence of real 5.1 audio, but this only feeds the dolby steam, the AAC stream will not change. Any "pseudo 5.1" you're hearing at the moment is Dolby Surround matrix encoding from the source material, nothing to do with the new kit.

I'm not sure exactly what the holdup on 5.1 is either, but I'm told that it is quite a major task to reconfigure the headend, and is not an easily reversible process should something go wrong. It seems the go-ahead is tied up in management somewhere, just like the 16:9 switch was in 2007. The good news is that the new "Media Centre" playout facility is working pretty well, and more and more HD shows are being delivered.

As for he HE-AAC audio quality, the bitrate was kept pretty low to allow more bandwidth for HD picture. Obviously the introduction of two DD5.1 streams will take even more bandwidth, and this may be part of the reluctance to fire it up.

The had no problems at all in configuring this for DD5.1 during the China Olympics in 2008..

Regards,

Old3eyes

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#448863 16-Mar-2011 12:46

All those who reckon better speakers makes FV sound worse need to get a better system or have their ears checked.

Oh, and if TVNZ do go Dolby Digital in the far flung future, FFS set the channel flag correctly so that 2 ch material can be decoded properly without the forced 5.1 flag that TV3 uses.

lchiu7

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#448891 16-Mar-2011 14:43

old3eyes:

The had no problems at all in configuring this for DD5.1 during the China Olympics in 2008..

I thought of that also but then did TVNZ6/7 exist? Those channels would take up capacity on the transponder.

Still the question to ask is, how on each can broadcast engineers design a system where the delivery of HD content with appropriate audio has the potential to cause capacity constraints on the transmission?

I have no idea if all Freeview decoders can handle DD but maybe the answer is to ditch the AAC track completely and save the bandwidth for something decent.

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grolschie

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#448961 16-Mar-2011 17:15

I don't think they could ditch the AAC audio. Our Samsung LCD has a FV tuner and I was told that it cannot get the AC3 audio from TV3. There possibly could be other certified tuners that cannot get AC3 audio.

Behodar

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#448991 16-Mar-2011 18:16

dontpanic42: At the very least, couldn't the bitrate be upped to a healthy 256kbps or more? Considering the video stream of most FreeviewHD stuff is between 4Mbps - 12Mbps, surely it wouldn't be to much of a toll on bandwidth if the audio bitrate increased to something more respectable than what can only be (guessing by the sound quality) around 80kbps, if that.
At least until DD comes.

I just took a look in EyeTV. TV1 and TV2 are both 96 kb/s. TV3/4 have 128 kb/s AAC (and 384 kb/s AC3 in the case of 3).

sbiddle

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#448997 16-Mar-2011 18:36

ilovemusic:
Oh, and if TVNZ do go Dolby Digital in the far flung future, FFS set the channel flag correctly so that 2 ch material can be decoded properly without the forced 5.1 flag that TV3 uses.

What TV3 have done with fulltime 5.1 broadcasts is considered best practice around the world now, much like fulltime 16:9 broadcasts rather than adaptive aspect ratios for 16:9 and legacy 4;3 content.

I don't see what issue there is with it, it means that users don't end up with a audio problems running that result from running 5.1 decoding with 2 channel audio. All 2 channel audio is encoded correctly using LF + FR speakers, it's just encoded within a 5.1 wrapper.

old3eyes

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#449006 16-Mar-2011 18:58

lchiu7:
old3eyes:

The had no problems at all in configuring this for DD5.1 during the China Olympics in 2008..

I thought of that also but then did TVNZ6/7 exist? Those channels would take up capacity on the transponder.

Still the question to ask is, how on each can broadcast engineers design a system where the delivery of HD content with appropriate audio has the potential to cause capacity constraints on the transmission?

I have no idea if all Freeview decoders can handle DD but maybe the answer is to ditch the AAC track completely and save the bandwidth for something decent.

TVNZ6 started September 2007 and TVNZ 7 started in March 2008 and they also had TVNZ Sports Extra at the same time..

Regards,

Old3eyes

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