In the army one guy on our truck was a telecom electrician. He told me some amazing stories of what POTS system can tolerate without quitting. The whole bank of batteries under water while still running, cabinet full of drift snow and still working etc. Plus you can always hardwire stuff in an emergency. Won't do you any good with VoIP.
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com
On a sunny day (Fri, 16 Feb 2007 16:50:44 GMT) it happened Joerg wrote in :
I do not get it, both the RTL and the ITV was in 720x576 i @25fps, and very good quality (except from some far away country, but that was clearly 'soft focus' cameras....) Maybe it was transcoded from PAL to NTSC or something that you did see. I grab it over satellite, and record digitally, so I can timeshift if needed. Quality is good to extremely good. I would expect them to go HDTV to, if they did not already.
OTOH some HD digital sets have problems rescaling normal 720x576 to
1902x1080 I (this last is the HD standard we have). Maybe that is what you did see, a crap set.
Correction: 1920 x 1080 I, typo.
We already have that in France, for a fixed price of 30 euros per month:
HDTV Free telephone High speed Internet
All through the copper wire of the regular phone line.
And FFTH is coming by the end of the year...
I heard a TeeVee ad for some wireless phone outfit (I don't recall which one), but they really hyped up the line: "You can still make calls, even when the power goes out!"
I thought that was rather timely, thread-wise. :-)
Cheers! Rich
Did you mean "now exchange..." ?
It makes a significant difference. ;-)
Cheers! Rich
Yeah, but who wants to pay two month's rent or more just for a f****ng TeeVee? And twenty to fifty bucks a month for the signal?
There are a lot of people in the US that can't afford that kind of outlay, or commitment - denying them free TV is discriminatory and anti-American.
Thanks, Rich
Just had lunch at a brewpub (B.J.'s in Folsom, CA). They have six high-end sets behind the bar and another dozen or so throughout the rooms. Panasonic etc., the good stuff. Sure, it's often NTSC that has to be rendered but it's going to stay that way for a long time. My take is that the industry needs to get the scan conversion properly done or we'll stay with the old tube set which works fine. And I am not being unrealistic here since I was involved in the design of numerous medical imaging scan converters. With an image quality like that on "modern" TV sets the cardiologists who have kicked us out the door. And yeah, those are also fast moving images. A jagged line is totally unacceptable in that business.
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com
colors.
Maybe. Fortunately, I've no idea of the mechanics, so I can just note what I see. (My eyes only?), the colour rendition and picture clarity varies depending on the particular channel and programme and also the time of day. Don't know how they measure these things but to a casual eye, all the programmes look normal. Indeed some can even look 'better'. Look closer though and the attraction is superficial, skin deep. It's sort of smoke and mirrors resulting in flashy bright images with sharp edges and lots of contrast and little else. Look for any nuanced detail you know to be there and you will not find it. I reckon the best and simplest test of all is just to watch out for a Black car turning up in shot and then look for detail. (also applies to any large coloured object, especially if moving. Technically they've done a good job squeezing the new channels in but 'quality' was not at the top of their list. 'Quality' is a lost cause anyhow, as evidenced by the normal analogue channels now having an unacceptable 10dB-16dB average sound level variation when switching channel to channel. What happened to those VU meters!. john
-- Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
On a sunny day (Fri, 16 Feb 2007 21:38:06 GMT) it happened Rich Grise wrote in :
Yes, sorry... new agreement, xept for UK and Ireland.
It does, all criminals now move to the UK :-)
On a sunny day (Fri, 16 Feb 2007 21:41:04 GMT) it happened Richard The Dreaded Libertarian wrote in :
Sorry, but Dutch TV is free via terrestial digital (3 stations + local stations). It is not free via satellite (logic escapes me, you need a card in that case).
It did cost me about 30 Euro or so one time to buy the settop box. Other payed more, I have more features for the buck: ftp://panteltje.com/pub/dvb-t-nl.txt
You do no not need a new teevee.
On a sunny day (Fri, 16 Feb 2007 22:44:41 GMT) it happened Joerg wrote in :
Yea... Well it _is_ consumer stuff of course. OTOH I have tested the HDTV transmission quality already years ago via satellite, and the amount of detail if you _do_ have a 1920x1080 monitor is stunning. Question is: if you really want to count the nose hairs of Oprah.
My take is: If they can't get the scan conversion properly done it is better to keep the classic tube set. Which we'll do. That doesn't need scan conversion and produces a good picture quality. Including fast moving objects where a lot of those $1000+ sets fall apart.
But you'd probably also be stunned when you would look at how much programming content (as a percentage on a daily basis) has to go out that isn't available in HDTV. That needs to be reckoned with by the design engineers. Again, scan conversion is not rocket science. In the old days we needed three expensive TRW chips for that but now we do all that in one FPGA.
A friend who works at a TV station said something similar: That the cost for make-up would go up drastically, to cover all those little zits and wrinkles that wouldn't matter with NTSC.
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com
On a sunny day (Sat, 17 Feb 2007 01:05:30 -0000) it happened "john jardine" wrote in :
Well, I cannot speak for the UK digital terrestial, but only for UK digital satellite. As to BBC and ITV quality, BBC is very good, and ITV too, it depends if the have old films, US NTSC to PAL converted shows, etc. The best quality test is always a live shot from the announcer..
This really sounds like you have a problem with either your settop box or with the TV.
In mpeg2 video compression, a steady object is displayed in more detail then a moving object, also there are interpolation frames, so motion is not as 'absolute' displayed as in PAL or NTSC analog. At very high compression rates you will see a person in sharp detail when the head is
100% still, not moving, and as soon as the person turns the head only a little bit, all those little spots are gone... The other thing that is sometimes annoying at high compression rates, is artefacts around objects. Some UK satellite channels in the Sky package in fact only send at 352x288 size, and the set resizes that to normal (is not that the 'open-access' channels?).Channels are sold to paying customers. Some work with really low bitrates, some need only really low bitrates.
Yes, I did complain quite a bit to a broadcaster, and the reply I got was: 'We get it from the US, we only edit it a bit ....', I was complaining about severe distortion, you get this when you get the material as AC3, decode it to wave, then clip it because you do not know what a VU meter is, or an oscilloscope, and then encode again for Europe to mp2. The mp2 encoding will see the clipping as signal, and favour that above the real audio, result: harsh sound, distortion, too loud... When I went into broadcasting, we got 9 month in the school bench again, payed by the network, to teach us the technical stuff. There were some _good_ people there, and BBC had good people too. But that was long ago before digital, I do not know the situation in BBC ATM, but I did read they massively cut in the number of technical people. Smaller and smaller equipment....... less in house quality control and knowledge, maybe less budget, does not help. These days all you need is be a rapper I think to do audio ;-)
We now see HD camcorders recording on flash cards, that have better quality then the original studio equipment of the seventies. Too bad all the lighting technicians, sound technicians, video and audio engineers, directors, the whole club is now done by the local disk jockey :-)
On a sunny day (Sat, 17 Feb 2007 17:05:28 GMT) it happened Joerg wrote in :
Ah, not only the makeup! I have worked there, in the studio, there is a whole department building the sets, painting floors, making objects, and it looks _real_ on TV (NTSC or PAL). Halls full of props... With HD you can see it is painted, fake, etc :-) I have wandered on the studio floors at times, _everything_ you see, from building to trees, is _fake_, painted, painted on a background, windows with blue chromakey screens, it is a world of it own. Real artists make it. They make everything, as no commercials were allowed in the productions at that time, they even made their own toothpaste labels, _every_ detail :-)
So where will it go? Maybe just watch YouTube, just as much fun. OTOH I watched Leathal Weapon 2, Hollywood still knows the art.
Maybe we get digital artists and plays...
stations).
Don't you have a TV tax (Kijk en Luister Geld)?
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com
jardine"
see.
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sort
and
be
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'absolute' displayed
the head is
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variation
meter is,
the
ATM, but
knowledge,
quality then the
engineers,
Nice one Jan!. A pleasure to read. (And learn).
john
-- Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
On a sunny day (Sat, 17 Feb 2007 20:47:04 GMT) it happened Joerg wrote in :
stations).
That was abandoned many years ago, and the 'omroep' (govs radio + TV network) is now payed from taxes in the Netherlands (and commercials I suppose). Germany still has this contribution, even introduced it recently for each PC, as PCs are multimedia these days bummer. Dunno about other European countries, UK has Sky, and that is not free. Many here have cable and that is not free either. I have satellite with hundreds of free channels from many countries, and free digital terrestial, more then I can ever watch.
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third world? ;-)
This is what they did for ISDN. Unfortunately, that doesn't provide enough power. I have my ISDN phone on a UPS. I guess they assume everyone has a mobile phone so in case of problems, people can still make a phone call.
-- Reply to nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.) Bedrijven en winkels vindt U op www.adresboekje.nl
On a sunny day (Sun, 18 Feb 2007 20:05:44 GMT) it happened snipped-for-privacy@puntnl.niks (Nico Coesel) wrote in :
We know how that worked in Louisiana. The cellphone towers were down, without power themselves.
I personally have about 12 hours amateur radio battery backup :-) Or 1 hour at full power worldwide on SW. Long enough to say 'hello world'.
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