Top Gear in HD?

[low strife]

I remember reading somewhere that, for season 12, they switched to some new camera\scanner system of something or other, and that there would be new doors being opened, bla, bla, bla; the meaning being that they would be offering it in a higher quality release or similar.

I've seen the Top Gear polar special in HD (1080P one looks insane), and I'm in the process of downloading the New Zeland episode of Top Gear live (720P x264). However, is the normal broadcast show ever going to be capped in 720P? I'd love to see it.



Sorry if this is the 2398th thread about this, but I searched for "HD" and it didn't come up with anything, and "Top Gear HD" didn't either.

[Shawn]

I'm sure it will be capped in 720p once the BBC starts airing Top Gear in HD.

We don't know when that will happen, so far only the polar special was aired in HD.

[low strife]

Originally Posted by Shawn

I'm sure it will be capped in 720p once the BBC starts airing Top Gear in HD.

We don't know when that will happen, so far only the polar special was aired in HD.

That sucks. You'd think they would start doing it.

Probably as a re-run.

[Speedtouch]

They don't have any plans for the future specifically for Top Gear to be broadcast in HD, so don't hold your breath.

[Cobol74]

1080i is the broadcast standard, as far as I can recall, here (UK) anyway.

[eizbaer]

Originally Posted by Cobol74

1080i is the broadcast standard, as far as I can recall, here (UK) anyway.

it is?

[Cobol74]

More Europe Stupidity. ...

http://www.burnyourbonus.info/hdtv-faq/faq2.html

See the bit on the EBU (European Broadcasters Union) and going for 50 Hz frequency.

Any how - 1080i for terrestrial here. ...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcintern...rom_the_h.html

[ashspet]

so, I should start saving for a new telly then...

[Cobol74]

One that supports 1080p/1080i and 720p and you can not go far wrong I would say.

[Dr_Grip]

Originally Posted by Cobol74

More Europe Stupidity. ...

http://www.burnyourbonus.info/hdtv-faq/faq2.html

Some information is _totally_ misleading, if not wrong. So, just to clear some things up:
a) the useage of 50hz is not eurocratic stupidity, but a necessity, as european PAL has always been 50hz in comparisation to U.S. NTSC's 60 (i suspect having the same picture frequency as the AC current frequency made hardware production easier in the old days). That means that we have to stick to 50hz to ensure backward compatibilty of the equipment, of telecine processes etc. Additionally, the converting of traditional motion pictures, shot at 24fps (more on that later) to 50hz is much simpler than to 60hz (2:3 pulldown, a procedure producing massive image quality problems, the so-called "telecine judder"), which means that the higher nominal frame rate of US HD will _not_ give you a better picture quality.

b) the whole business about 24 fps being not a high enough framerate is bullshit. 24 fps are used for feature films, on the big screen, for ages. Why exactely the same amount of frames should not be enough for Joe Sixpack and his LCD at home is beyond my understanding. How exactely cranking up the frame rate to 30 or even 60fps while using 24 fps source material should improve any image quality is beyond my understanding.

c) the explanation of the reasons behind the interlacing process is dead wrong, but that does not really matter as HD CRTs are not in use outside editing suites, afaik.

[teeb]

Originally Posted by Speedtouch

They don't have any plans for the future specifically for Top Gear to be broadcast in HD, so don't hold your breath.

Although the BBC are committed to having a certain number (all?) of its programmes broadcast in HD by 20something blah blah blah...

[Cobol74]

Originally Posted by Dr_Grip

Some information is _totally_ misleading, if not wrong. So, just to clear some things up:
a) the useage of 50hz is not eurocratic stupidity, but a necessity, as european PAL has always been 50hz in comparisation to U.S. NTSC's 60 (i suspect having the same picture frequency as the AC current frequency made hardware production easier in the old days). That means that we have to stick to 50hz to ensure backward compatibilty of the equipment, of telecine processes etc. Additionally, the converting of traditional motion pictures, shot at 24fps (more on that later) to 50hz is much simpler than to 60hz (2:3 pulldown, a procedure producing massive image quality problems, the so-called "telecine judder"), which means that the higher nominal frame rate of US HD will _not_ give you a better picture quality.

b) the whole business about 24 fps being not a high enough framerate is bullshit. 24 fps are used for feature films, on the big screen, for ages. Why exactely the same amount of frames should not be enough for Joe Sixpack and his LCD at home is beyond my understanding. How exactely cranking up the frame rate to 30 or even 60fps while using 24 fps source material should improve any image quality is beyond my understanding.

c) the explanation of the reasons behind the interlacing process is dead wrong, but that does not really matter as HD CRTs are not in use outside editing suites, afaik.

"The standards to be used in Europe were specified by the Technical Committee of the EBU (European Broadcasting Union.) One reason given is that 50 Hz will mean a lower bit rate so the channel uses less bandwidth. This is of course silly since the same effect can be achieved at 60 Hz by turning up the compression ratio. The incompatibility with the US standards of 60 Hz will of course be a problem. It will mean a reduction of quality in conversion of US programs to Europe because they will effectively have to repeat every 5th frame. No doubt this will show as a judder to the discerning eye. There may be further problems with incompatibility between DVD, computer video and games consoles. Another reason suggested for using 50 Hz in Europe is that the mains frequency is 50Hz. If you film at 60 fps under artificial lighting from a 50 Hz AC supply you may see a 10 Hz flicker. The significance of this is probably overstated for professional recordings but there are certainly cases where it will be an important consideration, e.g. floodlit football matches. The most convincing reason for the choice of 50Hz is simply that the existing European TV standards use 50Hz. The standards will co-exist for some time and it will be simpler to produce programs in two standards if they at least have the same frame rate. This is a short term local gain that will leave us to deal with global incompatibility for the long term. More significant will be the extra costs of having all hardware such as cameras produced with multiple frame rate standards and the loss of quality in converting between them. Not to put to fine a point on it, it was an appallingly stupid decision by a European standards committee that we will have to live with until the standards become obsolete and they have another chance to get it right. To be fair, not everyone agrees on this. Some people think that the EBU made the right decision. They point out that films and many other broadcasts are actaully recorded at 24 fps and the process of upscaling to 50 Hz gives a better result than upscaling to 60 Hz."

I suppose you are in the last camp, fair enough.

Personally I think that the world should be compatible none of the Europe / North America split. That way leads to market rigging - see the present DVD regionalisation issues. ....

[the Interceptor]

May I just gently squeeze between you guys that - at least as far as my informations go - all HDTV-capable devices will accept 50 as well as 60 Hz signals in all possible resolutions!? Therefore, who broadcasts what is absolutely irrelevant, since all HDTV signals are perfectly fine for any HDTV-capable TV all over the world.

[Cobol74]

Except for the HD ready that do not accept the 1080p but thinking about it I suspect that you are correct, all our (European) stuff will be compatible probably with everything - I bet that North America get stuff missed off - like their DVD players and TVs at the moment - Region 1 and NTSC only.

[Dr_Grip]

My problem with the text was not that it is against format wars. I am all with it - and you - on that. I am just not convinced that 60Hz should be the standard to adopt. I don't see its merits and 50hz's market penetration/installed base is much bigger (even the combined number of TV sets in the US and Japan can't beat the rest of the world). Additionally, Hollywood will never step away from 24fps as their global distribution system depends on this standard. Every try to get cinema owners to adopt a new standard failed so far, see 70mm, IMAX and digital projection (ok, the latter might actually be a success in the very very long run).
Conversion from 24fps to 25 fps or 50 half-frames is almost lossless (no loss in picture quality and a slight loss in audio quality). 25fps delivers the same results as 30fps. As most U.S. dramatic TV is still recorded on film stock, losing 5fps would lower production costs. Everybody wins.

This said, my problems withs the text are:
a) putting the blame on "stupid" buerocrats (makes blaming them less plausible when it's really their fault ^^). The EBU is not even a government body, but the european association of public broadcasters (including the BBC, producers of our beloved Top Gear).
b) The rather stupid assumption that a higher framerate equals a better picture quality (especially if you trade it in for higher compression rates which means less brilliance per frame) and
c) constantly getting the facts wrong. I simply don't like people arguing for some cause while being wrong about the underlying facts.

Let's take two more examples:

"If you film at 60 fps under artificial lighting from a 50 Hz AC supply you may see a 10 Hz flicker."

As NO ONE is shooting at 60fps except for slow motion shots (both film stock and harddisk space are expensive, so you don't crank up the frame rate when you don't need it - and IF you do, for example for repeats in a football match or TG beauty shots, you want to go to 75 fps or more) the problem is rather academical. BUT even when shooting at 60 fps for the above assumption to be right the camera's shutter would have to be in perfect sync with the AC current, which it of course isn't. The way it's done in the "real" world is to run HMI lamps (you won't see a flicker on normal bulbs as they don't go completely dark the instance the current changes direction) on electronic ballasts operating at around 20.000Hz.
Things like stroboscobes of flashlights get synced with the camera shutter so they will flash when the film stock/chip actually "sees" it.

"More significant will be the extra costs of having all hardware such as cameras produced with multiple frame rate standards."

Every even semi-pro camera out there is capable of multiple frame rates (not only for the 24/25/30 problem, but more important for slow motion and "ramps", that means changing the frame rate while shooting) and digital editing suites give a shit how many of the frames on the harddrive they shall display per second, so what's the point of this?

[Thraxes]

Oh man...

I just wanted to don my broadcasting engineers hat and dive right in but Dr_Grip has in essence already written most that I would have to say.

Except for a few things: I know from a few colleagues at ZDF (large german public broadcaster) that the 50Hz / 60Hz question isn't a question at all, there are just too many reasons not to force 60Hz onto an existing 50Hz infrastructure. To start with, for some time there will be a mix of both SD and HD content so both systems must allign properly. Then there is the fact that while HMI lights are indeed used - as Dr_Grip mentiones - , that is mostly in outdoor productions as the color temperature lines up nicely with that of the sun (or for high speed slomos). At all major studios I've ever been in, incandescent halogen lights are what is mainly used and so the worry of flicker is indeed a factor (even if it is subtle) and running the equiptment at multiples of the power grids frequency is simply the easiest solution. So 50Hz base it is.

I also got this info from the head engineer of NDR (another german public bcaster) while discussing H264 HDTV broadcast encoders with him: If the playout format is 720p50 for public broadcasters, then the full 50FPS will always be used at every point in the production chain when producing native HD. Nowadays it makes doesn't sense going down to 25FPS for low budget productions and ramping it back up to 50 for high value stuff. If you are using HDCAM tapes, most decks will only support 720p50/24/60 (although my tape knowledge is a bit rusty, admittedly). If you are outputting to a HardDrive-based system there is always going to be some form of compression involved and the gains in bitrate/quality by going to a lower framerate aren't that high with modern codec implementations. Besides, with HDD capacity constantly getting cheaper, there is even less a reason to skimp on the FPS.

A few of my friends from uni were actually involved (as test subjects) in the testing that the EBU conducted, this was during the time they were trying to decide to go with 1080i or 720p. I myself was involved in sepperate tests for professional HDTV H264 encoders (as an observer for my employer, who makes such encoders) that are used by several large broadcasting companies (private, not public). In both test series, 1080i was compared to 720p. I came out of the test with the same impression that my friends and colleagues got at the EBU: 1080i is awesome for sedate stuff... normal drama TV series and things like that. It starts falling down when lots of motion is introduced. The test sequences had an alpine super-G ski run and a football match. Both were much more pleasing to the eye in 720p.

Then you have to bear in mind, the testing in all cases was done with top of the line Pioneer Plasmas. Not many people have something as nice as that in their living room. Many people are running much cheaper LCDs which in many cases are just gruesome when it comes to interlaced content. Bear in mind, the public has to be sold on HD, and if the 300 Euro TV falls down during the winter olympics or world soccer championship (which are incidently the full regular service HDTV launch cases for the germans 2010) many will ask why their license fee is being wasted on this new fangled HD crap... "buy a better telly" is not a good answer apparently. Sport will be the main launch vehicle for HD in Germany so I can understand why the broadcasters want to go with a higher temporal resolution rather than spatial.

Hmmm damn... that is quite bit that I had to say after all...

Anyways: Germany is going to be using 720p50 as of 2010. I don't know what the BBC has planned, I am willing to bet though that they will stay with 1080i. in both cases 50Hz baseline is a given.

If there are any further questions, the engineer will gladly respond

[actng]

as long as it's 16:9 i'm happy... which is what it is right now.

[Cobol74]

My point is that the US will not change - they never do and that if at all possible we should go into line with them. One of the reasons, about the differences in standards we have met before - in the UK in the 60's we went from 405 to 625 PAL and for a considerable time there was dual standard broadcasting.

But OK point taken - pity that the systems are not 100% compatible that is all.

[low strife]

Nice debate guys. I learned ALOT of shit.

[klankymen]

Originally Posted by Dr_Grip

Additionally, the converting of traditional motion pictures, shot at 24fps (more on that later) to 50hz is much simpler than to 60hz (2:3 pulldown, a procedure producing massive image quality problems, the so-called "telecine judder"), which means that the higher nominal frame rate of US HD will _not_ give you a better picture quality.

Well, yes and no. While you are of course correct that converting to 60 fps may create judder, converting to 50fps is not optimal either... since bascially you are converting to 48fps, and then just speeding it up. so every sound will go slightly up in pitch, and every movement will get slightly faster.

Based off the 24fps base film, the best choice would clearly be 72Hz