this may or may not have been posted already, but I am currently listening to The Dark Lord on iPlayer, and he mentioned it as well.

This will not be forgetten, not for a long time.

ITV's explanation that it was all Technicolor's fault really doesn't stack up. If it was an isolated error, why did they not broadcast the rest of the match in HD? If it was because they were afraid of another cock-up then why was HD briefly resumed half way into the match then abandoned again? And why was James Corden's show afterwards not in HD (as advertised and all subsequent shows have been)?

When I missed the England goal I went ballistic, not helped by my wife saying to me in a voice uncannily like that of one Michael Winner, "Calm down dear, it's only a commercial..."

Presumably when the operator manually over-rode the automation on ITV1HD to get the match back on your screens, by overpatching the London SD feed, he couldn't then get the HD schedule back into automation.

If there were sure that it was fixed then why could not they repatch back to normal during one of the many pauses when they show replays with a brief apology from the commentator and warning there would be a short break on HD as they restored to normal HD quality? Or perhaps they did that and it failed again hence the brief period in HD.

It makes me suspect that they were not sure what had happened and there was more than simple human error so decided to stick with what they had.

Don't forget the incident years ago when a goal was edited out of the highlights!!!

I don't think you understand where the problem was.

The HD feed was still getting to Technicolor in Chiswick. But they couldn't get the automation system for ITVHD to run again once they had crashed out of it.

So it is impossible to manually feed HD to the HD system?

They presumably would have lost commercials during that time but that would have been better than the bad publicity that they have had following the incident, they could even play on that by saying they sacrificed the commercials to let the viewers watch in HD.

I suspect that we will never find out the truth.

They could do, but that would mean a human physically switching between sources during every break and for every change of programme. And there isn't a human there to do that. That's what the automation system is for.

Presumably they could reboot the automated system by half time or the end of the match so they would just sacrifice the advertising income but I suspect the damage to ITV as a brand has been far more than that.

It also gives chance to test the automated system offline.

If they could not recover it by the end of the match then it confirms that the problem is more serious than simple "human error".

Sorry the late contribution, been working away for a week.

There are a number of options if you have a failed vision feed. The usual is a freeze frame. This can be set in the kit to happen automatically. You will all be familiar with events that use lots of Radio cameras, eg London Marathon, Great North Run etc. When a Bike camera goes under a bridge (and the director is a little late cutting away) it loses comms with the helicopter gathering the link, so you get a freeze frame as the link is lost. There are other options in the kit, such as go to black, or a test signal, such as colour bars. Even an option to go to a custom slide, eg 'sorry for the loss of the bike cam'.

I think most agree that a freeze frame is the best, since most accept that radio cams can lose signal, and, aesthetically, a freeze is better than a cut to, say, black.

Given that there are such options, I would be most surprised that a fail condition on a live HD TX would result in an ad player being kicked off. That is surely the last thing the Broadcaster would want?

Also, given that the SD TX apparently carried on, it might have been prudent for ITV to have the failed HD trigger automatically cut to an upconverted version of the the SD feed, since apparently this feed was available and never failed.

Having said all this, I think the mess up was more down to a (computer or playout server) programming issue within ITV UK HD TX. The HD feed was prob good and solid the whole time. The reason ads were cut was, well, a cockup in their HD TX Suite. IMHO.

Again sorry for the late contrib, and the last 200 posts I've not read that have prob spelled this out already

But if their HD TX had been through a piece of kit called a 'multiformat synchroniser', with dual inputs, and set to switch on a loss of input video to a second (upconverted SD) feed, then the switch would have been frame synchronous, ie less than 20 mS, and you would not even have noticed the automatic cut. And as for MPEG coders, etc, that do introduce 1 or 2 secs delay down the line, the synchronous cut before them should not affect them.

As mentioned in my last post though, I dont think this was the issue.

Your job may involve 20 sec backup, but I suspect it's not broadcast video transmission?

Computers maybe?

So, are you really saying, for a minor network ITV HD TX, like eg, the first England match in a World Cup, there is no manual override? No Prog Editor with overall control and a 'big switch'. The whole network can be taken away by automation?

Oh dear. If you give your whole network over to automation then what if it goes wrong on a big event? You might miss an important goal?

OOOps!!

Blame the computers, that's what I say

No this has already gone away for most people- apart from being remembered as a huge cock up. Only you, despite all the answers that have been given here (from people who have more direct involvement than I do) you still aren't satisfied. If you'd read through this thread you'd have had those questions answered. Anyway, I'll use what knowledge I do have to go through these things (again):

1: The feed didn't fail. If it had there would have been a brief moment of black (or a frozen frame) before the channel director cut to the backup feed.

Each broadcaster would have its own arrangements for getting the signal back from SA. Many in Europe might rely on Eurovision. The BBC & ITV have their own circuits back from SA via fibre and satellite. Broadcasters would be using a number of different satellites (unless they were all taking the Eurovision feed.) The BBC and ITV both have HD and SD backups.

2: I can't answer that without knowing exactly how ITV are sending back their coverage. All I can say is that for events of the scale of the World Cup its now very common for all parts of the coverage (pictures, talkback circuits etc) to be bundled together (as one big stream of data) and thus arrive at the same time. The other day I checked this on the incoming World Cup feed I could see against Five Live and Talk Sport from MW. (I'd suspect the feed was taking a similar route back to ITVs, so the delay should have been similar to that on the pictures arriving back at Technicolor.) The pictures arrived first, the Five Live commentary was about 1 to 1.5 seconds behind and the Talk Sport commentary about 6 to 7 seconds behind. I'd assume Talk Sport were therefore commentating 'off tube' in London (using clean match effects supplied to them). I'd assume they were at the England v USA game so I'd expect them to have a similar delay to Five Live.

3: Who knows, but the two mistakes were very different. One was the fault of an advert break not being rescheduled. This one, from what others have contributed here, along with the admission it was 'human error' appears to have been caused by some very bad programming of an ad break (the least likely option) or someone 'previewing' the ad break and accidentally having the playout system in TX mode.

4: Its nobodys policy- it didn't happen. The feed was fine. You wouldn't have a system that would cut to ads rather than a backup feed or apology caption. The problem was with the automation system for ITV1 HD and once it became clear it couldn't be easily solved the quickest way was to patch across ITV1 SD. ITV1 SD would have been using the same incoming feed.

5: The first part (the last we heard) was being investigated. I assume you're referring to the bet offered by Paddy Power? I would argue anyone with any knowledge of the playout system at Technicolor wouldn't be stupid enough to try and 'rig' such a bet and think they would get away with it. If they were going to do it- and the bet was for coverage to be interrupted at any point, not just an England game- why do it with such a high profile game?

The second part of that question is going into the extreme realms of conspiracy theory. Do you honestly think one error such as this (bad as it was) would lead to the 'demise' of ITV? Who exactly would do that? How would they? The BBCs transmission are handled by Red Bee, Skys are in house. Its not as if either could be involved. I don't understand how they'd benefit. Rights holders won't refuse to sell to a broadcaster because of a mistake or two, no matter how high profile they are, with the very occasional exception they're just interested in the cash and/or exposure.

I watched the games yesterday on ITV HD , anyone know the scores?

Why?
I think you'll find Michael Grade went away sooner than you think...last December and I think he took his balls with him.

That post was 5 days ago!
Anyway, it hasn't gone away - if people are still posting on this thread and discussing it on TV.


Well I can't be arsed to read all 53 pages but I suspect you can't either. I think you're mixing it up with this thread, which is much more informative with regard to technical stuff.

I see also on that thread that it is/was possible to insert a pre-encoded advert, after the encoder, thus bypassing the delay (see post #109), so the door is still open for sabotage.


No.

Read my post. I never suggested that. I said "organisation(s) which would benefit from the demise of ITV"


Never heard of bribery then?


Yes, but the whole rhetoric behind having "crown jewels" sporting events has been weakened by this event, and risks "death by a thousand cuts" if it, or similar things, happen repeatedly.

Why has it taken 5 days to point this out? Don't tell me you're all paying as little attention to ITV as I am ........

As you well know, programme editors have no control over the transmission chain, just like anyone else involved in programme-making.

In exactly the same way, the BBC has no control over it's transmission once the programmes leave its domain and enter the world of Red Bee.


Main and first backup HD circuits are sent via fibre (one under Atlantic, one under Indian Ocean). Second HD backup is via satellite. Third backup (SD) is via a different satellite.

There is also the option to take HD or SD match feeds via the EBU, and sound via ISDN.

Technicolour have option of taking any feed directly or from London Studios.

Talkback is via ISDN, and is almost instant. Sound and vision takes around 2 seconds on the fibre, or 5 by satellite.

None of these feeds failed.
Kind of ironic, given that South Africa has no real fibre infrastructure, and large swathes of the country have no electricity, that the problem should arise when the feed reaches Chiswick.

Cheers for that arius - everything well backed up at ITV, good to see and it certainly is impressive given the relative lack of technical infrastructure in SA. (I was there on holiday in March.)

Well not quite exactly the same way. The BBC channels have no automated ad servers in Red Bee to worry about that could take the network away, afaik.

I do feel sorry for the ITV Sport Prod on the ground - they were delivering a solid programme.

But this is the second time this has happened - maybe time to use a different TX chain company?

From Media Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010...orld-cup-gaffe


So basically, someone thought "let's press this button and see what happens?"

typical of Ofcom to let ITV get away with it.

Yes, that's exactly what the article says...

Quote:

Despite accepting that the error was "inopportune and regrettable", ITV expressed its belief that the situation only affected a minority of the game's total audience, as over 90% of viewers were watching in standard definition on ITV1.

So basically, all the early adopters that plough their hard-earned cash into buying a technology that keeps ITV up with other HD broadcasters can stick it up their jacksie, is what I read into this. Thanks ITV..nice to know I'm a 'minority' viewer. I'll never watch another footie game on ITV again, by the way.

What happens if somebody forgets to put the covers on?