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No Sound on BBC 1 HD


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Old 27-12-2016, 00:32
d'@ve
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So what I can tell BBC One HD in England and Scotland went silent at the start of Match of the Day when the sound mode is changed to 5.1

Scotland got sound back I assume by switching back to 2ch stereo.

BBC One HD in Wales, NI and iplayer don't carry 5.1 sound so were OK.

Audio resumed in England at 0006 in 2ch stereo.
If that's all it was, it's surprising that it took more than a few minutes to do the audio switch, which ought to have been possible pretty well immediately if they had the kind of control viewers are entitled to expect. So I wonder if there was more to it than that?
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Old 27-12-2016, 08:42
Inkblot
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Gon be some very pissed off folks come the morning when they go to watch what they recorded!
And the pissed off folk like me who tried to watch MOTD time shifted on Sky+ by half an hour. Saw here that there was sound on SD but of course I couldn't switch to SD without missing a huge chunk of the show.

Not sure why they needed to change the sound mode for that show. Do many people watch football for the sound effects?
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Old 27-12-2016, 10:05
jazzydrury3
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They could have put a banner up saying Sorry for the loss of sound.
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Old 27-12-2016, 10:11
Mickey_T
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Gon be some very pissed off folks come the morning when they go to watch what they recorded!
Yes, me!

Thought it was my freesat box playing up, but it was the same when I checked the Freeview recording upstairs. Boooo.
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Old 27-12-2016, 10:12
gomezz
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My guess is that the all the regular sound engineers were at home enjoying Christmas with their families leaving their well-meaning manager to cover but whose technical skills are now sadly out of date for the equipment now being used. Took them a few phones call to find an engineer who was sober enough to tell them which buttons to press.
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Old 27-12-2016, 10:16
dlmccabe
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My guess is that the all the regular sound engineers were at home enjoying Christmas with their families leaving their well-meaning manager to cover but whose technical skills are now sadly out of date for the equipment now being used. Took them a few phones call to find an engineer who was sober enough to tell them which buttons to press.
Luckily, it was MOTD, where the pundits add no insight and commentary is an irrelevance for any televised football game tell you what you are watching and nothing more, which is pointless, so it didn't ruin it all.
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Old 27-12-2016, 10:17
commseng
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If that's all it was, it's surprising that it took more than a few minutes to do the audio switch, which ought to have been possible pretty well immediately if they had the kind of control viewers are entitled to expect. So I wonder if there was more to it than that?
As you say a simple switch would have happened very quickly - which suggests the problem was a little more complex than that.
Alarms would have been raised that all was not well on BBC 1 sound by a combination of staff monitoring, automatic alarms and calls from viewers.

I work with various bits of encoding and decoding kit, and it is not always as reliable as you may wish. If something needs a reboot, as so often happens, then you need to consider what the knock on will be to other systems around it.

The fact that it knocked out sound on different platforms makes it unlikely to be a single encoder on the distribution, but maybe something on playout, possibly downstream from the network continuity point. I don't know the current configuration, but as several different companies are involved it can be more tricky.

I bet there is already a flurry of emails going on.
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Old 27-12-2016, 10:20
Sluger
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My guess is that the all the regular sound engineers were at home enjoying Christmas with their families leaving their well-meaning manager to cover but whose technical skills are now sadly out of date for the equipment now being used. Took them a few phones call to find an engineer who was sober enough to tell them which buttons to press.
A manager working over Christmas! Probably left the tea boy in charge.
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Old 27-12-2016, 10:26
commseng
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My guess is that the all the regular sound engineers were at home enjoying Christmas with their families leaving their well-meaning manager to cover but whose technical skills are now sadly out of date for the equipment now being used. Took them a few phones call to find an engineer who was sober enough to tell them which buttons to press.
As Roy Walker would have said, "It's a good guess, but it's not right."
There would be usual staff and freelancers working to a shift pattern, which includes nights, weekends and public holidays. It is common in all industries that work continuously.
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Old 27-12-2016, 10:45
gomezz
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But which version would make a funnier half-hour comedy programme?
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Old 27-12-2016, 12:06
kevin58
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Ive lost Audio on BBC 1 HD for the past 20 mins. Freeview and SKY !!
First 39 minutes of Match Of The Day was Silent in the HD recording
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Old 27-12-2016, 12:33
wilson500
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If that's all it was, it's surprising that it took more than a few minutes to do the audio switch, which ought to have been possible pretty well immediately if they had the kind of control viewers are entitled to expect. So I wonder if there was more to it than that?
I assume the tricky bit was switching the encoder to go back to outputting 2ch stereo and taking a 2ch stereo input instead of outputting Dolby 5.1 encoded from a silent / faulty Dolby E input.

This probably required coordination between Ericsson (formerly Red Bee) and Siemens.

I head once from a ex Siemens engineer that if the meta data in the Dolby E is wrong it can all go bad.
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Old 27-12-2016, 13:11
Mark C
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Someone made a large boo boo when the swap to 5.1 on BBC One HD Eng & BBC One HD Scot.
As mentioned, BBC One HD Wales & BBC One HD NI don't use 5.1 at all so were fine.
Gon be some very pissed off folks come the morning when they go to watch what they recorded!
The switch back to 2.0 should have kicked in within a minute!
Certainly indicates Ericsson need to put in place far more effective alarm and monitoring systems. Certainly Glasgow playout were all the ball ( no pun intended)
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Old 27-12-2016, 13:29
sat-ire
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If you have a recording on a SKy or Freesat box it should be possible to switch to Audio Description which was working perfectly up until about 40 minutes in.
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Old 27-12-2016, 13:32
sat-ire
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They could have put a banner up saying Sorry for the loss of sound.
There was only a loss of sound in England.
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Old 27-12-2016, 13:57
Mark C
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There was only a loss of sound in England.
True, but as it was a London playout problem, they still could have probably done that,
as Scot/Wa/NI all receive a clean feed of network programmes. Failing that, what would have been wrong with a caption saying ; 'Apologies for loss of sound on BBC 1 HD in England' ?
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Old 27-12-2016, 14:04
sat-ire
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True, but as it was a London playout problem, they still could have probably done that,
as Scot/Wa/NI all receive a clean feed of network programmes. Failing that, what would have been wrong with a caption saying ; 'Apologies for loss of sound on BBC 1 HD in England' ?
Fair points.

They could also have advised a switch to the Audio Description feed (I'm struggling to understand why that also went down midway through the programme - there's been no explanation for that) or a retune to SD.
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Old 27-12-2016, 14:17
Mark C
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Fair points.

They could also have advised a switch to the Audio Description feed (I'm struggling to understand why that also went down midway through the programme - there's been no explanation for that) or a retune to SD.
I suspect most people wouldn't know how to select that, only folk who are actually visually impaired, and then of course they run the risk of having thousands of punters stuck in AD mode for days, and all the phone calls complaining !

I get the impression no one on duty had the knowledge or perhaps authority to fix the problem, or stick up a caption
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Old 27-12-2016, 14:28
sat-ire
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I suspect most people wouldn't know how to select that, only folk who are actually visually impaired, and then of course they run the risk of having thousands of punters stuck in AD mode for days, and all the phone calls complaining !
That makes sense, I forget that tv remotes are operated on a 'need to know' basis for most
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Old 27-12-2016, 15:15
rmc57
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Luckily, it was MOTD, where the pundits add no insight and commentary is an irrelevance for any televised football game tell you what you are watching and nothing more, which is pointless, so it didn't ruin it all.
They make more sense than the Sky-obsessed DS loudmouths.
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Old 27-12-2016, 15:27
hyperstarsponge
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More people were talking about the sound issues then the actual Boxing Day football matches.
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Old 27-12-2016, 16:19
Bandspread199
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I was at a match and had to endure 90 minutes of play with no commentary. Oddly enough I could SEE what was happening!

And isn't it amazing how many technical experts are on digital spy? They tell us what should have happened, being totally unaware of what the problem was! Takes my breath away!
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Old 27-12-2016, 18:13
Mark C
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And isn't it amazing how many technical experts are on digital spy? They tell us what should have happened, being totally unaware of what the problem was! Takes my breath away!
Two contributors to this thread are broadcast engineers, and one of them builds playout systems (amongst other facilities) for a living.

Just saying
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Old 27-12-2016, 18:24
Antbox
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If you have a recording on a SKy or Freesat box it should be possible to switch to Audio Description which was working perfectly up until about 40 minutes in.
Not on a Sky box - for some bizarre reason the box only records the audio that your box was set to at the time of the recording, so even though it appears to give you the option to turn audio description on and off during playback (like subtitles) it actually doesn't change the replayed audio at all.
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Old 27-12-2016, 18:44
Antbox
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I bet there is already a flurry of emails going on.
Doubtless along the lines of "As we have previously discussed, under the terms of the contract we only monitor outgoing stereo audio and Dolby soundtracks are not a part of the agreement. If you require Dolby monitoring we can offer this service for £xxx,xxx per channel per annum and I am copying in your account manager for reference if you wish to take this further."

(I'm guessing here.)
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