Cool; I'm about to disappear for the evening so can't say much atm. But there seems to be something wrong with your 'service' shot--not at original scale?

Quick thought--on 'veil', which is an identical frame, there does seem to be more detail on ITV. The very different contrast/saturation levels have to be because of different decoding paths though, don't they? Perhaps we can compare notes via pm anon.

Not from any highlights show, they are simply the original 16-17GB recordings chopped down by removing lots of the guff using videredo tvsuite which only recodes at edit points so basically for the abbey shots are exact copies of the original transmissions. (for anyone that's not tried this it's amazing it cut down 17GB of footage to around 12GB in about 4 minutes (processing time on a core 3 laptop) thanks to only recoding at edits)

The frame grabs were made using Splash Pro

The file name is simply what I called the file. Basically I wanted to replace the original massive files using AV2HDR (thank you Raydon ). I have also burnt the BBC version to blu-ray, still totally stunning (tsmuxer gui + imgburn).

I could burn the ITV footage but would need to convert mpeg1 layer 2 audio to ac3.

I ended up watching BBC1 HD, as ITV 1 HD picture/sound was out of sync.

No problem on the recording I made (I watched BBC1-HD live)

Sorry about that, forgot photobucket auto shrinks images to below 1MB- here's a mediafire link. Both ITV1 HD and STV HD have less saturated colours than BBC- I presume this was a deliberate choice by the BBC to emphasise the predominant reds and golds everywhere.


Ahh come on now, I did this before with Monte Carlo and Bust on ITV1 HD London/Granada and some people said the extra detail in the 1920 might be down to the encoder difference! Below we can see exactly the same differences between 1440 BBC One HD and STV HD Granada, it's simply a fact that 1440 loses fine detail and brilliance of shiny objects vs 1920 HD:

Will & Kate singing STV HD vs BBC One HD - on STV HD clearly more detail on their faces and hair, more detail on Kate's lace and on the embellishments on William's uniform, look at the RAF badge in particular, the buttons are also more brilliant

Edward & Sophie singing - STV HD vs BBC One HD - on STV HD more detail on the uniforms of Edward & Duke of Kent, on Camilla's hat

Charles & Camilla singing - STV HD vs BBC One HD - on STV HD more detail in Charles hair and uniform, Camilla's hat and jacket

wide alter shot STV HD vs BBC One HD - more detail everywhere, in figures, background on STV HD

Will & Kate vows - STV HD vs BBC One HD - on STV HD there is sharper detail in their hair & faces- even the sweat on William's forehead looks more realistic! More detail in the uniform and veil, the jewellery, buttons and medals looks more brilliant

Will & Kate vows 2 - STV HD vs BBC One HD - as above, and more detail on Harry's uniform and Mr. Middleton's hair

All at the alter- STV HD vs BBC One HD - more detail in clothes of main figures, esp. look at the embellishments on William & Harry's uniform, detail on front of Kate's dress & Mr. Middleton's tie

Richard Chartres - STV HD vs BBC One HD - on STV HD there is clearly more detail in his beard, much sharper. Gold leaf detail is sharper & more brilliant, gold fabric detail on lectern is sharper.

Elton John & David Furnish STV HD vs BBC One HD - vertical detail in Furnish's tie completely lost in BBC One HD

TBH looking at the alter shots, I don't think its anything to do with saturation, it looks like a colour balance difference to me. STV has a cooler balance and BBC a warmer balance.

Well on Paint.NET if I increase saturation on the STV HD shot from 100 default to 101 (on a scale of 0-200) levels it pretty much matches BBC One HD.

I do prefer STV's cooler colour balance - it looks a lot more natural. I usually turn my monitor's colour temperature down as soon as I get them, as they are mostly far too blue - BBC HD from those pictures looks like it has the opposite problem, of it being too red...

On all levels I would vastly prefer to watch the STV picture than the BBC one, judging by those stills at least.

Indeed it does- another thing I just noticed on my first comparison of Will & Kate singing, you almost completely lose the colour & brilliance of the red and green jewels in Kate's tiara on BBC One HD due to lost detail, the sooner BBC switch to 1920 the better.

GRRRR annoying invisipost leading to a double post.

I think some of you are seeing what you want to see, I really do.

I picked the above comparisons at random and have examined both closely at 100% in two overlapping browsers, without knowing which was which. In view of your comments, I tried to identify the STV version, which I eventually thought I could do, with great difficulty, eyes to the screen. I thought i detected one tiny difference in the hat detail where I thought it was slightly greater, and the contrast was slightly greater too. But no, it turned out to be the BBC version!

The long and short of it is that on those two screen shots, at 100% size, there is no significant difference between the two and at that point, I have given up. Maybe I just picked the wrong screenshot pair.

Why only look at one- it took me a few hours to do these comparisons, maybe if you really want to be objective you should look at the others too? The difference is pretty clear to be honest, particularly in the things I point out, the simple fact is there are details that are completely lost in 1440x1080 vs 1920x1080. I'm not sure which hat you are referring to, but Camilla's hat clearly has a lot of detail in the fine lattice structure that completely disappears in the BBC version.

Fair enough, there may be a slight detail advantage on the hat you mentioned, I'll have a look at the other pics tomorrow (later today if this posts after midnight).

However, I noticed several things that seem to me to be more natural and more pleasing on the BBC screenshot, which is why I wondered if some of you are looking for those parts of images where ITV/STV comes out best and not looking for the converse.

For example, I see the detail and objects on Princess Anne's hat as slightly more natural looking and having slightly more "sparkle" on the BBC version. And on the guy with the red tunic (Duke of Kent?) the material looks smoother and more natural on BBC than STV, which clearly has a bit of what reminds me of background sensor noise on a digital camera. On the BBC screenshot, this is barely if at all discernable.

I think both screenshots have minor plus and minus points, but overall, I think the differences are insignificant. It isn't all about absolute resolution, as i know you know. By the way, I should mention that I am viewing the images on a CRT monitor, not sure if that would make any difference or not.

As a still it looks cleaner. I would imagine in video form though the fortunes would be reversed and BBC HD would look richer.

I think that you'll find this is a much cleaner picture, to illustrate the point:

(You can get it larger by clicking the magnifying glass icon):

http://img7.imageshack.us/f/stvhdthe...eddingadj.jpg/

I've adjusted it to make it far more neutral and cooler. However, the "richness" has been lost.

In fact, on further examination of that screenshot pair STV http://i535.photobucket.com/albums/e...2911-11-04.jpg and BBC http://i535.photobucket.com/albums/e...9_20110430.jpg I can now say unequivocally that I prefer the BBC version. You only have to examine the Duke's red sleeve and the Duchess's face where it overlaps his sleeve - STV looks simply awful in comparison even at 100%, and this really jumps out at you under magnification of 2 to 4 times. I'd gladly exchange STV's slightly greater detail (in some places) for the more natural and digital noise/artifact-free BBC screenshot.

I'll have a look at the other screenshots later on Monday.

Not wishing to sound flippent or anything, but I think the quality of all channels were the same, more or less.

TBH, I think you have missed my point a little. I simply made the screenshots to demonstrate that 1920 shows more fine and sharper detail than 1440, which I think they show it does. It may well be that STV HD images are slightly more compressed through jpg compression or from the actual stream, unfortunately I can't check that as I made the screenshots live, I understand mwardy may have an ITV1 HD 1920 sample so perhaps he wouldn't mind uploading this?


See above Re the noise which is probably compression related. Anne's hat doesn't really have fine detail so the difference isn't much between the images. Many things do have finer detail on the STV HD image, detail on the Duke of Kent's collar, their hair, Camilla's hat, Eugenie's dress. Have a look at the other images as these show the detail difference to a better extent. Re: sparkle I think you may just find the increased saturation/warmer colour balance more pleasing.

I'm wondering if those are actually artefacts or if that's how his sleeve actually looks...

You have pm.

OK I have started doing some comparisons with mwardy's ITV1 HD Granada sample (will post tomorrow), it does look like my STV HD samples have suffered from jpeg artifacts compared to the few lossless png grabs of ITV1 HD Granada I've done, although BBC One HD still has less artifacts, probably because it has more bits per pixel, i.e. it was around 9.4Mbps on the Charles & Camilla shot, which would equate to around 12.5Mbps @ 1920, but as we know ITV1 HD/STVHD are fixed at 10Mbps. So as suggested before, you do you get more detail with ITV1 HD Granada/STV HD but slightly more artifacts.

I would readily agree with that.

The big question is, which is more important, slightly more detail or slightly less artifacts?

I think the answer will very much depend on who you ask. As you may have guessed, I would choose less (fewer?) artifacts as that is what I find to be the single most annoying thing about SD TV broadcasts in the UK - by a long way - and I tend to notice it on HD broadcasts too, if it's there to see.

@jzee that would be consistent with the higher resolution. As I've said before if you increase the resolution you increase the number of pixels and so to fit it into the same transmission space you have to compress it harder which in turn then tends to make it softer and introduce more artefacts.

That sounds very much like what you've observed.

I think if STV were to increase bit rate, then in turn you'd end up with a far superior shot with more detail, more sharpness and less artefacing.

Agreed BBC one HD seemed to me to be as good as I remember the pre bitrate reduction HD and the DD sound was magnificent!

I guess when the BBC switches to 1920x1080 and allows an average bitrate of up to 16Mbps using the current encoders then they'll be nothing left to complain about.



I guess in reality they're playing the same game as they've done for the last decade on various digital platforms: looking at the increase in quality they could deliver, and deciding to (reserve space to) launch new services instead.

I think they're also cared that the idiots at a certain accountancy firm (who sometimes are called upon to assess the BBC's services) would describe using sufficient bitrate to avoid coding artefacts as "wasteful", their argument being that no commercial station feels the need to do so, therefore the BBC isn't maximising value by doing so.

(I'm not joking - I've lost the link, but there was a scathing review of the BBC's wasteful use of 256kbps for mp2 audio and 720x576 for MPEG-2 video on Freeview, when other channels used 192kbps 544x576 - the review suggested that BBC Three and Four should switch to this immediately to stop wasting capacity).

Cheers,
David.