Nigel Feltham wrote:
Arfa Daily wrote:
If you are the
telephone company, or a television broadcaster, though, things really do
work a lot better when the digital signals carried by your network all
are at precisely the same bitrate, no matter where they come from.
Right. At one time TV stations etc had their own accurate pulse generator
referenced to the national standard. Here in the UK it was IIRC from the
National Physics Laboratory.
Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.
I reckon that TV companies must now use these laptops with very rough RTCs
! Have you noticed that now programme material is not networked from one
region into some or all of the others, and adverts are no longer 'local',
there is not any need for accurate cueing points around the network, so
advertised starting times are not even nodded at ? I checked the starting
times of about half a dozen programmes tonight, using the teletext clock,
which I believe to be accurate, and not a single one started within 1
minute of the correct time, and a couple of them were off by several
minutes. Just another manifestation of declining standards throughout the
civilised world ... :-\
It's not just between broadcasters, the BBC does it between their channels
as well. Their 'Points Of View' viewer complaints show have done a few
reports on viewers complaining about different times on BBC1 and BBC2, at
least one of which had one of their presenters switching between the 2
channels at programme change to demonstrate the problem.
The problem (which they actually proved was real - surprised they were
allowed to show that on BBC1) is that BBC1 often runs 2 minutes early and
BBC2 is 2 minutes late. Switch one way and you have to wait 4 mins for
programme start, switch the other and you miss the start.
Much as I'd like to be able to support the view that the BBC's standards
are falling, I have to advise that I was already being frustrated by the
BBC's apparent inability to keep to its published schedules back in the
early 1980s. This is nothing new.
Australia's counterpart, the government funded ABC which also doesn't
carry advertisements, is also apparently unable, or unwilling, to
broadcast things when they say they will.
I suspect that, as with the commercial stations, it's deliberate. I'm
just less than clear what the motivation would be for a non-commercial
station.
Sylvia.