BBC HD

I've not had the chance to play with the KMW 500, clearly I should do though, but I get your point about the PDW700/800, IMO they are probably winning out in terms of hire simply because you still can walk away with your rushes at the end of the day. I know the BBC are very much pushing the tapeless route, but the on location wrangling of data still needs a standardised workflow, all to often I hear stories of rushes being lost in the edit, or at some point in-between shooting and post...

I merely used the "ENG" as a broad term for the type of cameras used in the field, as opposed to the high end Reds, Alexas, or even film cameras.

A lot of high end BBC work, like Countryfile, use the DVCPro route for similar reasons as you know where you are with tape. And to me it still looks stunning when it plays out, despite coming from a camera that is technically a 720 and shouldn't meet BBC HD sped but with some fairly clever incamera upscaling it does. But far more indies still prefer the HDCam/DVCPro options over SxS and XDCam disks are just expensive. Although stock for both are all low on the ground at the moment push everything up!

The Canon 305 has very much filled a gap, it's the only smaller camera I'm aware of that meets the required 50mbps data rate, but the sensor it tiny and again technically shouldn't be approved, but it is, and its awful in low light (the 105 is wonderful at it though). The Nanoflash on the back of an EX3 always seemed like a silly idea to me, surely its only a firmware rewrite to record at 50mbps, unless SxS cards don't have the speed needed? I suspect had Sony done this the 305 wouldn't have become as popular as it is.

But back to the original point, from what I've seen, there is nothing wrong with BBC HD/BBC One being at 1440 at the moment, simply because as has been said there isn't enough content that's true 1920 in its entire production line that warrants it.

I would rather they uped the bitrate than the resolution personally.

what are the EBU guidelines relating to HD, I'm pretty sure they source live events in 1920x1080i in 4:2:2 which then ends up downsampled to 1440x1080i on the BBC, or am I wrong.

Wouldn't it be possible to encode using AVC (using the same bitrate) in a way that a 1920x1080 encode wouldn't look worse than 1440x1080 on complicated content - but on easier to encode content it would look more detailed? eg. by changing the block size or other parameters depending on how complex the content was to encode.

Though I suppose even if you could, if the bitrates weren't high enough it might keep going from a detailed picture to a less detailed/softer one and might not look that good because of it.

Most live events will be distributed at 1920x1080 4:2:2 (and uplinked used MPEG2 4:2:2 or H264 4:2:2 in some cases). Live events are one of the main sources of full 1920x1080 4:2:2 material.

Live events that the BBC cover as host broadcasters (like Wimbledon for instance) in HD are likely to be originated at 1920x1080 4:2:2 - as will most BBC live programmes.

However - that's what the contribution circuits run at - and has little relevance to what reaches viewers at home.

These live events will be broadcast at 1440x1080 on BBC One HD and BBC HD - just as they would be broadcast at 1440x1080 in a number of other countries (like France or Japan), or de-interlaced and broadcast at 1280x720 by many other EBU broadcasters (SVT, NRK, Das Erste, ZDF etc.)

The EBU still recommend 1280x720p for broadcast to viewers at home (based on SVT research from about 6 years ago or so) rather than 1920x1080i or 1440x1080i as well.

(NRK have the slightly oddball arrangement where they originate HD at 1080i but broadcast it at 720p - with cross-converters in their playout chain)

Well i tried T in the Park in 1920x1080i HD 4:2:2 looked stunning, but the data rate almost killed my hard disk.

One more question overseas BBC HD channels are running at 1920x1080i nearly all material is pre-recorded whats the excuse there?

AIUI that's a choice made by the platform providers that uplink the BBC HD channels, AFAIK the BBC don't uplink them themselves. BBC HD is a subscription channel outside the UK, and I don't think the Beeb run their own transponders for these. What the platform provider choses to do is up to them.

For most BBC HD programming (apart from high-end drama, and possibly pre-recorded studio shows like Later... if they aren't recorded to HD Cam prior to editing) there is no benefit of 1920x1080 over 1440x1080, as much of the content is 1440x1080 (the BBC's Factual Production Village in White City is pretty much entirely geared around a DVC Pro HD workflow)- particularly as BBC HD overseas doesn't air any live content (no sport) AIUI.

Certainly comparing BBC HD Nordic with BBC HD domestic doesn't have me shuddering at the lower resolution of BBC HD - watching on a 40" Full HD panel with the sharpness correctly turned down to 0 (i.e. no additional artificial detail-masking sharpening applied).

That will have been a contribution circuit - which has to be much higher quality to ensure decent quality reaches the end user. Not designed to be viewed at home, but designed to ensure that quality to the viewer at home matches that of pre-recorded content delivered on tape (and soon file)

Well Telenor and TVN Grupa ITI seem to be doing the uplinks for BBC HD Nordic and Europe (I think it's the same) both decided 1920x1080i is the way it go, although there was a very brief(thankfully) short lived 720p expiriment. Maybe in future the BBC will find a way to show live content in 1920x1080i and switch to 1440x1080i for the stuff natively recorded in this format.

Well I just managed to watch it, but only just

I suspect that once 1920x1080 AVC Intra 100 and XD Cam HD 422 stuff becomes more widespread there will be more and more 1920x1080 pre-recorded content in the schedule. And encoders are still improving, so a switch to 1920x1080 full-time is probably likely at some point.

I don't think a dynamic switching system is going to happen - it would not be a recipe for a clean playout operation. (Switching resolutions dynamically is likely to cause a visual disturbance)

Hmm - I doubt it was massively more than 60Mb/s was it? That's less than 8MB/s... A normal, nothing special 3.5" USB 2 external hard drive usually delivers 20-30MB/s, and my nothing special Linux-based server happily runs at around 80MB/s over GigE using regular SATA 3 1TB and 2TB 3.5" desktop (not server grade) HDs.

Sorry if I've missed this being covered, but the wife and I were watching Springwatch earlier this year and we were both massively impressed with the quality of the video in particular. As a broadcast engineer, I generally like what I see on the HD channels anyway, often trying to point out the improvements to a normally disinterested wife who thinks it looks like 'normal telly'. However, as I was part way into saying how good the pictures were, she interrupted to agree!

Any ideas what equipment they were using? I'm guessing they had a high bandwidth satellite link back to the BBC to keep the pictures clean, but it really was amazing how much better the picture quality was on this outside broadcast compared to most studio based programming, where contribution bandwidth shouldn't be an issue.