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CBeebies HD - Not available in all areas YET!
pete taylor
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I have just read on the BBC red button page 9991 about the Freeview retune on 3rd September and there is an asterisk next to CBeebies HD and the text at the bottom declares that its "not available in all areas yet".
I know its on COM 7 at the moment, but does the "yet" word indicate to anyone that they will eventually get it on the PSB mux now it has been proven that a MUX with the latest encoder can successfully carry more than 5 HD streams?
I know its on COM 7 at the moment, but does the "yet" word indicate to anyone that they will eventually get it on the PSB mux now it has been proven that a MUX with the latest encoder can successfully carry more than 5 HD streams?
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As you say, with the latest encoders, there is the potential for all BBC HD channels to exist on BBCB at some point. However, I personally don't see it changing anytime soon.
And when BBC one regions occur 7 becomes 18 ......
Are you saying that BBC 4 HD /Cbeebies HD would need 7 then 18 feeds to encoders in different parts of the country? Could the encoring not be done at one facility and then the correct mux version just get sent where its needed?
It is already done for BBC A mux though and the BBC would need it done eventually, so if the infrastructure is put in place sooner than later it would surely make sense?
But when do you replace the hardware?
One answer is when you can buy something which gives considerable improvement at a point when the existing is getting a bit tired...
Or at a point when the coding and mux contract has a tech refresh point or renegotiation.
At the moment ( without resilience) there are about half a dozen sets of code and mux for BBC B ...
So to take BBC one regional means Atos buying about 12 to 15 sets .... I.e tripling the current investment .. Which BBC FTV ltd may hope to get some money frm regional itv .... But not any more than ....
( and as ch5 did not take up the capacity , BBC FTV ltd had to pay for unused coders for a few years..... So you can see their uncertainty )
But what will happen at dso2 will both BBC and d3&4 have regionalised coding ?
Or will there be just one regionalised mux ? If so is this BBC FTV ltd?
Or which (new?) mux operator will it be and who will provide the service?
And HD only PSB when? And what about s4c /alba ....
And what will project aurora throw up?
And what will the coders be like in a few years time..... .?
Not easy decisions ....
The somewhat unreliable digitalbitrate.com captured this earlier in the week:
http://en.digitalbitrate.com/dtv.php?liste=1&live=9&lang=en&mux=BBCB
Meanwhile, a516 reported null packets on Friday via Twitter:
https://twitter.com/a516digital/status/523023791782637568
Appears to be setup similarly to COM7 now - looks like there could almost be enough space for two HD channels at peak. Let the speculation, er, continue...
6 HD channels on BBC B was inevitable once Arqiva set COM 7 up that way. We've come a long way since BBC HD at 17 Mbps AVC...
Hopefully satellite won't go the same route.
Mind you, one channel (or even two channels) per mux would not be sustainable (affordable/justifiable) anyway
The encoder hasnt changed it's still H264/AVC, unless they change to H265/HVC then we wont see any better compression.
The only improvements can be from the stat muxing, and to be honest I doubt they can squeeze any more out of that without effecting the PQ at times.
Again, my comment was a generic one relating to raw bitrates (especially the quoted "BBC HD at 17 Mbps AVC..."
But your points are relevant to any current changes of course.
BBC HD PQ on DSAT will drop to the same level of DTT always.
BBC claim there is no platform neutrality but we all know its still around.
So if they do cram another stream into this, its going too look rather crap and DSAT will too
Digitalbitrate results:
Dsat 11024 H:
http://en.digitalbitrate.com/dtv.php?liste=1&live=69&lang=en&mux=11024
DTT COM7:
http://en.digitalbitrate.com/dtv.php?liste=1&live=9&lang=en&mux=COM7
However, there is only so far you can go.
Satellite quality won't drop though: the BBC seems to love null packets and the average video bit rate is already at ~5.5 Mbps, which matches BBC B, even though it could be nearly double that if they wanted.
~5.5 Mbps AVC for 1080i is roughly equivalent to ~2.2 Mbps MPEG for 576i, and that's actually below what you'd see used on most SD channels on satellite. It seems the level of artefacting on SDTV is considered acceptable so with HDTV we only get greater resolution and no compression improvements.
I imagine the BBC will start using 6 channels per transponder when BBC One HD regionalisation is completed, or at the very least 5 channels (mirroring the BBC B mux).
What the hell is going on with that COM 7 graph? There's no way these HD channels have had an average bit rate of like 1.5 Mbps over the past 40 hours (assuming it is hours?).
Dodgy reception.
Hmm. I've given up on COM 7 myself: sometimes it works perfectly, sometimes I get no signal at all, and other times I get discontinuities all over the place. Not worth the trouble for two channels I almost never watch (and I can record Channel 4 HD anyway).
A word of warning here. That website is moving to new servers and many of the scanner sites are offline. The information is likely to be out-of-date and becoming less useful as time goes by. It's probably better to wait for them to move to their new server and bring all of the scans back online.
The COM7 results don't look too convincing, possibly a problem with the receiver/scanner?
I did notice a tweet from a516 about a reconfiguration but believe that was for the BBC B mux.
I queried the validity of the COM 7 scans as they were all over the place with wildly varying total bitrates. A multiplex should run at a fixed bitrate. Also all of the streams on the 40 Mb/s mux are shown on some samples as only using around 10 M/bs overall so, yes, unconvincing.
http://en.digitalbitrate.com/dtv.php?liste=1&live=9&lang=en&mux=BBCB
There's a new stream on BBCB (London)
The video captured by en.digitalbitrate.com is a caption saying "Shop Small, Small Business Saturday, 6th December"
It's SD with Audio Description and Subtitles attached, but no LCN or name.
You can tell the site is still somewhat broken... the screencap for the channel is FilmFour!
This is so ITV and Channel 4 each maintain their 20% of bandwidth on the multiplex.
The ITV portion is subject to agreement between ITVplc and STV and UTV, they may not agree, but ITV would go ahead in England and Wales anyway.