BBC News HD no longer available on Freeview from 30th June 2022

jpaul said:
4K distribution bandwidth seems the main obstacle, and reading this (2019) many of usa studios (and probably uk now) already have the cameras..
4k can be driven by live event broadcasts, but evidently neither olympic/glastonbury are delivering that material even if you would pay,
as I watched the F! silverstone coverage I wondered whether the SKy 4k stream was much better and had better camera angles/editing, which I thought were poor on the C4/fhd coverage.

e: last time I looked sky 4k live sport used ~25Mb/s, considering current hardware available for real-time hevc image compression
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Probably wont happen then until everything moves to IPTV.

Wasn't Sky planning to move everyone off satellite over the next 10 years?
 
darkgen said:
Has this been confirmed that Freesat remains unchanged?
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Why would they change it? Freeview removals are to free up frequency for 5G theres nothing to be gained from removing from satellite?

BowdonUK said:
I think the simple setting up of Freeview and the easily to upgrade transmitters was why it was used, and of course the ability to increase the number of channels that are available.

Though with the copper line phone service being turned off eventually, the first mile stone is 2025, everyone will have to have cable or full fibre installed even if they aren't using broadband.

On the full fibre side at the moment the aim is to give people the option of 1GB connections. But the technology is already there to increase this to 10GB connections once the full rollout of the 1GB service is completed.

According to the freeview website: https://www.freeview.co.uk/help/broadband-speed
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Full fibre? As in FTTH? I'll believe it when I see it only have a miserable 36mbps and virgin won't even cable up these flats for whatever reason i imagine OR will have similar issues
 
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LuckyBenski said:
Why?

A huge proportion of content that goes on TV isn't even filmed/produced in 4k. It's just not needed for the news, or serials like EastEnders. Do you honestly think that cartoons and kids shows need to be 4k, and kids will notice/care?

I get frustrated with some of the lower quality SD channels (yes compression and quality are variable on SD broadcast in order to preserve bandwidth for "more important" services). But most of what's on normal TV either doesn't need to be mega quality, or isn't available beyond HD even at source.
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I didn’t mean cartoons specifically sorry it came across like that, but yea I think 4k should become the norm. HD came about in the 90s was it and the majority of channels are still SD. Skip HD now and move to 4k.
 
Vanquish-Storm said:
I didn’t mean cartoons specifically sorry it came across like that, but yea I think 4k should become the norm. HD came about in the 90s was it and the majority of channels are still SD. Skip HD now and move to 4k.
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Honestly I'm very surprised that my point is falling broadly on deaf ears in this thread, so I'm gonna repeat it because I'm genuinely keen to hear people's reasoning.

Why? Why do we need to go to 4k?

Nothing to do with technology in TVs, bandwidth, or what's available at the studio/source end. I'm saying why do people think we need to go beyond HD and into 4k for broadcast TV? More than half of it is simply not the kind of stuff that benefits from that level of fidelity. It's just not a necessary end goal in my opinion. For clarity I'm not sheltered, I test a lot of the latest TVs before release, I play PC and console games, I watch broadcast TV and stream movies from lots of sources.

Even if we all get 1Gbps fibre connections, the extra bandwidth for 4k is a ****-ton of extra, often wasted, capacity. This is real stuff here, I'm not talking about pixels you won't see without a 77" TV - bandwidth has an energy cost and an environmental impact. Good quality, well-encoded HD will be more than plenty for a huge amount of broadcast content. Remember that broadcast HD right now is something like 5-7Mbps maximum (can be less, see the cheap movie channels). Whereas you can up that to 10-15Mbps and get much better image quality still at HD. There's more left on the table so to speak.

Yes going to 4k is more than the cameras, it's the storage, editing machines, encoders, the entire pipeline.

I'm not saying that current broadcast doesn't need improving in quality, but I'm saying that there is a lot more to be done with HD/current SD first (like cleaning up the vast range of quality on broadcast from fuzzy rubbish right up to reasonable 1080i HD). So again technology aside... Why 4k?
 
Bear in mind there is a in between, 1080p is fine, but non SD channels tend to have really crappy bitrates so make things look worse than what they would look on analogue. I think shifting news to 4k is ott, I think bbc regional isnt even able to handle 720p yet, given that iplayer 720p only works on london broadcasts.
 
malachi said:
Wasn't Sky planning to move everyone off satellite over the next 10 years?
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yes good point - they don't want to continue to support expensive/exclusive home boxes/dishes & satellite feeds - so the future of quest/bbcnewshd on freesat becomes academic,
Do the satellites get usefully re-tasked for commercial use.

Vanquish-Storm said:
I didn’t mean cartoons specifically sorry it came across like that, but yea I think 4k should become the norm. HD came about in the 90s was it and the majority of channels are still SD. Skip HD now and move to 4k.
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does seem an irony with all the marketting effort years back for 4k/hdr sets (oleds etc) when it might have been cheaper to keep the larger/cheaper(better yield) 1080 pixel size with hdr colorspace.
I haven't seen the new top-gun - whether, even that, had a digital intermediary/vfx at 4K, otherwise only sony seem to be delivering via IP films at a bandwidth close to 4K original content at 50Mb/s+
 
LuckyBenski said:
Honestly I'm very surprised that my point is falling broadly on deaf ears in this thread, so I'm gonna repeat it because I'm genuinely keen to hear people's reasoning.

Why? Why do we need to go to 4k?

Nothing to do with technology in TVs, bandwidth, or what's available at the studio/source end. I'm saying why do people think we need to go beyond HD and into 4k for broadcast TV? More than half of it is simply not the kind of stuff that benefits from that level of fidelity. It's just not a necessary end goal in my opinion. For clarity I'm not sheltered, I test a lot of the latest TVs before release, I play PC and console games, I watch broadcast TV and stream movies from lots of sources.

Even if we all get 1Gbps fibre connections, the extra bandwidth for 4k is a ****-ton of extra, often wasted, capacity. This is real stuff here, I'm not talking about pixels you won't see without a 77" TV - bandwidth has an energy cost and an environmental impact. Good quality, well-encoded HD will be more than plenty for a huge amount of broadcast content. Remember that broadcast HD right now is something like 5-7Mbps maximum (can be less, see the cheap movie channels). Whereas you can up that to 10-15Mbps and get much better image quality still at HD. There's more left on the table so to speak.

Yes going to 4k is more than the cameras, it's the storage, editing machines, encoders, the entire pipeline.

I'm not saying that current broadcast doesn't need improving in quality, but I'm saying that there is a lot more to be done with HD/current SD first (like cleaning up the vast range of quality on broadcast from fuzzy rubbish right up to reasonable 1080i HD). So again technology aside... Why 4k?
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I see what you are saying but if the tech is there why not? I’m purely talking idealist world I know it’s not going to happen. They didn’t get HD out can’t see them rolling 4K out
 
if you build it, with the appropriate marketing, they will come
to wit. 4k set demand(perhaps a fait accompli) , coca-cola, brexit ... this widget will make your life complete.
 
Isn't the primary purpose of the BBC to provide news?

The whole point of the licence fee is to fund things which aren't otherwise commercially viable but important.

Stop making expensive shows, get the news channels, website and local radio stations right. Just have BBC 1 and local variants. Show some kids tv after school and that is it. Far too bloated now.
 
muon said:
Isn't the primary purpose of the BBC to provide news?

The whole point of the licence fee is to fund things which aren't otherwise commercially viable but important.

Stop making expensive shows, get the news channels, website and local radio stations right. Just have BBC 1 and local variants. Show some kids tv after school and that is it. Far too bloated now.
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Yet people complain a lot about how much of the stuff on the news channel is repeated...

They've not stopped doing news, and the better picture is usually of relatively low importance compared to the actual content, and it's worth remembering you can still get HD news via cable, satellite and IPTV.
 
Werewolf said:
Yet people complain a lot about how much of the stuff on the news channel is repeated...

They've not stopped doing news, and the better picture is usually of relatively low importance compared to the actual content, and it's worth remembering you can still get HD news via cable, satellite and IPTV.
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I completely disagree it is of low importance, 480i images of video and images is absurd and not fit for most accurately presenting the news. What is of relatively low importance will be what they are reallocating the money and bandwidth towards.
 
muon said:
I completely disagree it is of low importance, 480i images of video and images is absurd and not fit for most accurately presenting the news. What is of relatively low importance will be what they are reallocating the money and bandwidth towards.
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Well the bandwidth has been reallocated to mobile networks. Budget I'm not sure, there's probably very little change. The content was already being produced and distributed to multiple paths anyway. So the only budget saved would have been with the carrier (multiplex operator).
 
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