What happened to TV1's AC3?

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petes117

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#25709 29-Aug-2008 18:41

Is TV1's AC3 feed dead? Has anyone else experienced this?

It was working fine for me yesterday and today, nothing so far. TV1's AAC (libfaad2) works, and TV3's AC3 is still working right now. I'm using AC3filter, PDVD8 and EVR renderer.

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#160787 29-Aug-2008 18:44

Gone here also (Waiatarua)

singingbird

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#160801 29-Aug-2008 20:48

gone from wharitie peak not back yet at 8.48 pm

openmedia

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#160805 29-Aug-2008 21:00

Gone for now i'm afraid.

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lchiu7

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#160987 31-Aug-2008 09:07

Sad is this is a long term situation. But then TV1 has little I personallly would watch anyway so it's TV3 for me most of the time. I wonder if TVNZ really understand the demographics of the folks who are into the high-tech area and who are prepared to try to receive HD broadcasts?

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openmedia

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#161008 31-Aug-2008 11:23

lchiu7: Sad is this is a long term situation. But then TV1 has little I personallly would watch anyway so it's TV3 for me most of the time. I wonder if TVNZ really understand the demographics of the folks who are into the high-tech area and who are prepared to try to receive HD broadcasts?

If you want AC-3 I advise you to contact TVNZ. They will be listening to feedback in this space.

Sadly the AC-3 stream uses 300K + of bandwidth which could be used to improve the picture quality.

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.

Spong

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#161016 31-Aug-2008 12:52

If TVNZ are watching this space, I for one would far rather have the AC3 channel, than to allocate another 300K to provide better picture quality. At the current bit rate, things get a little blocky when the action is fast and furious, e.g. running, swimming etc, but I can't see another 300K making much difference to that. During the Olympics, I found the Ac3 channel brought a huge improvement to the realism of almost being there, and the same goes for similar broadcasts that can take advantage of the rear and centre channels.

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petes117

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#161025 31-Aug-2008 13:58

Well we've also essentially lost the Sports Extra channel as well as TV1's AC3. So one has to wonder how much TVNZ listens to any feedback these days.
I agree the surround sound during the Olympics was phenominal, a huge improvement over stereo sound.
What Freeview needs is a standard for all channels: 720p and AC3 across the board and upconverted SD programs when HD isn't available.

openmedia

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#161028 31-Aug-2008 14:16

Spong: If TVNZ are watching this space, I for one would far rather have the AC3 channel, than to allocate another 300K to provide better picture quality. At the current bit rate, things get a little blocky when the action is fast and furious, e.g. running, swimming etc, but I can't see another 300K making much difference to that. During the Olympics, I found the Ac3 channel brought a huge improvement to the realism of almost being there, and the same goes for similar broadcasts that can take advantage of the rear and centre channels.

I'm afraid tha the people who make the decisions won't be interested incomments posted on forums. You will need to contact TVNZ directly.

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.

openmedia

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#161029 31-Aug-2008 14:18

gurthang117: Well we've also essentially lost the Sports Extra channel as well as TV1's AC3. So one has to wonder how much TVNZ listens to any feedback these days.
I agree the surround sound during the Olympics was phenominal, a huge improvement over stereo sound.
What Freeview needs is a standard for all channels: 720p and AC3 across the board and upconverted SD programs when HD isn't available.

There isn't enough capacity for all the channels to transmit in HD, hence the 2 HD and 3 SD channels on the TVNZ Multiplex.

Plus there is a hell of a lot of material that isn't available in 5.1, and people get confused if the AC.3 is only carrying 2 channel audio. What do you propose for that issue?

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.

old3eyes

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#161036 31-Aug-2008 14:30

openmedia:
gurthang117: Well we've also essentially lost the Sports Extra channel as well as TV1's AC3. So one has to wonder how much TVNZ listens to any feedback these days.
I agree the surround sound during the Olympics was phenominal, a huge improvement over stereo sound.
What Freeview needs is a standard for all channels: 720p and AC3 across the board and upconverted SD programs when HD isn't available.

There isn't enough capacity for all the channels to transmit in HD, hence the 2 HD and 3 SD channels on the TVNZ Multiplex.

Plus there is a hell of a lot of material that isn't available in 5.1, and people get confused if the AC.3 is only carrying 2 channel audio. What do you propose for that issue?

Actually all the HD stuff I download from US and UK broadcasters is in AC3 so it's out there. They just need to get more HD content.. The SD stuff is in regular prologic stereo..

Regards,

Old3eyes

lchiu7

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#161047 31-Aug-2008 16:47

openmedia:
gurthang117: Well we've also essentially lost the Sports Extra channel as well as TV1's AC3. So one has to wonder how much TVNZ listens to any feedback these days.
I agree the surround sound during the Olympics was phenominal, a huge improvement over stereo sound.
What Freeview needs is a standard for all channels: 720p and AC3 across the board and upconverted SD programs when HD isn't available.

There isn't enough capacity for all the channels to transmit in HD, hence the 2 HD and 3 SD channels on the TVNZ Multiplex.

Plus there is a hell of a lot of material that isn't available in 5.1, and people get confused if the AC.3 is only carrying 2 channel audio. What do you propose for that issue?

I am confused by the bandwidth comment. In the US there are at least 5 OTA HD channels that broadcast in AC-3 and they do MPEG2 so arguable they require more bandwidth. We do H.264 which is supposed to be more efficient so you would think we could handle 3 OTA channels in HD with 2 audio tracks. This is unless the Govt had decided to limit the bandwidtha available on Freeview to something much less and use the rest of the bandwidth for other purposes.

Of course there is another answer. Ditch AAC audio and do everything as 2 or 5.1 channel audio. I feel sure that would be a popular decision!

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petes117

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#161070 31-Aug-2008 18:25

My main gripe with this topic is that TV1 broadcast the Olympics in HD with AC3 then as soon as its over they snatch it back with no explanation.
If anything its TV2 that should have AC3 now as they play much more overseas stuff on there (Spiderman2 and Constantine are on tonight, one presumes in HD but only 2 channel sound).

petes117

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#161072 31-Aug-2008 18:34

openmedia:
gurthang117: Well we've also essentially lost the Sports Extra channel as well as TV1's AC3. So one has to wonder how much TVNZ listens to any feedback these days.
I agree the surround sound during the Olympics was phenominal, a huge improvement over stereo sound.
What Freeview needs is a standard for all channels: 720p and AC3 across the board and upconverted SD programs when HD isn't available.

There isn't enough capacity for all the channels to transmit in HD, hence the 2 HD and 3 SD channels on the TVNZ Multiplex.

Plus there is a hell of a lot of material that isn't available in 5.1, and people get confused if the AC.3 is only carrying 2 channel audio. What do you propose for that issue?

Two HD and two SD channels. Sports Extra doesn't count anymore, they might as well axe it and give us our AC3 back ;)

openmedia

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#161091 31-Aug-2008 20:57

lchiu7:
openmedia:
gurthang117: Well we've also essentially lost the Sports Extra channel as well as TV1's AC3. So one has to wonder how much TVNZ listens to any feedback these days.
I agree the surround sound during the Olympics was phenominal, a huge improvement over stereo sound.
What Freeview needs is a standard for all channels: 720p and AC3 across the board and upconverted SD programs when HD isn't available.

There isn't enough capacity for all the channels to transmit in HD, hence the 2 HD and 3 SD channels on the TVNZ Multiplex.

Plus there is a hell of a lot of material that isn't available in 5.1, and people get confused if the AC.3 is only carrying 2 channel audio. What do you propose for that issue?

I am confused by the bandwidth comment. In the US there are at least 5 OTA HD channels that broadcast in AC-3 and they do MPEG2 so arguable they require more bandwidth. We do H.264 which is supposed to be more efficient so you would think we could handle 3 OTA channels in HD with 2 audio tracks. This is unless the Govt had decided to limit the bandwidtha available on Freeview to something much less and use the rest of the bandwidth for other purposes.

Of course there is another answer. Ditch AAC audio and do everything as 2 or 5.1 channel audio. I feel sure that would be a popular decision!

At present they have only allocated 3 digital multiplexes, each of which can do about 30Mbit of data. A HD channel is about 10 Mbit, and SD channels about 2.5-3. The multiplexes are allocated to TVNZ, Mediaworks, and Kordia. At present TVNZ have pretty much used their capacity, but Mediaworks have lots of spare space as they are only running 2 channels.

In OZ they have 5 multiplexes, one per broadcaster, with one 10 Mbit MPEG2 HD channel per multiplex. Hence the poorer video quality on AU HD.

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.

singingbird

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#161106 31-Aug-2008 22:11

But hold on minute, doesnt freeview have 5 freqs on the uhf band for transmission, so why dont they just fire up the two more channels and split the channel load across those, the loss of ac3 is sucky, it would be nice if they would do some kind of ac 3 on ch two.

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