The one who calls himself rabbitsfriendsandrelations wrote:

Jan Panteltje wrote:

Eeyore wrote
Jan Panteltje wrote:
Spurious Response wrote

Right, I turned in a portable TV last week.
This one was about 30 years old (seventies), and was still working OK,
but no analog transmissions here anymore, all you get is nice equal
distributed noise when tuning in to a digital station.

There are SEVERAL HDTV set top tuners out there that will pipe the
finished signal into a standard TV.

The boxes that are sold here are equipped with a SCART connector, a waste.

I imagine you haven't looked very hard in that case. Many have UHF outputs.

Graham

If you had as much as a clue, did not cut half the posting

I wasn't replying to the bits I trimmed.

Graham

To enlighten the others: to buy anything with any sort of analog output sucks,
as analog is dead at least here in the Netherlands (except for audio).
Buying a settop box with USB output, if you have a laptop with USB, creates the
portable TV with much better quality and recording possibility.
The USB settop box I bought runs from a 12 V adapter, so also from a car battery.
I researched quite a bit to get the best deal, and SCART was not part of that,
let alone a horrible interference prone, PAL coding artefacts decorated
UHF analog output.
ftp://panteltje.com/pub/dvb-t-nl.txt

"Jan Panteltje" wrote in message
...
The one who calls himself rabbitsfriendsandrelations wrote:

Jan Panteltje wrote:

Eeyore wrote
Jan Panteltje wrote:
Spurious Response wrote

Right, I turned in a portable TV last week.
This one was about 30 years old (seventies), and was still working
OK,
but no analog transmissions here anymore, all you get is nice equal
distributed noise when tuning in to a digital station.

There are SEVERAL HDTV set top tuners out there that will pipe the
finished signal into a standard TV.

The boxes that are sold here are equipped with a SCART connector, a
waste.

I imagine you haven't looked very hard in that case. Many have UHF
outputs.

Graham

If you had as much as a clue, did not cut half the posting

I wasn't replying to the bits I trimmed.

Graham

To enlighten the others: to buy anything with any sort of analog output
sucks,
as analog is dead at least here in the Netherlands (except for audio).
Buying a settop box with USB output, if you have a laptop with USB,
creates the
portable TV with much better quality and recording possibility.
The USB settop box I bought runs from a 12 V adapter, so also from a car
battery.
I researched quite a bit to get the best deal, and SCART was not part of
that,
let alone a horrible interference prone, PAL coding artefacts decorated
UHF analog output.
ftp://panteltje.com/pub/dvb-t-nl.txt

You must have some rubbish kit over there then. A good PAL analogue TV set,
with a decent signal going in, beats a crappy highly compressed digital
signal, hands down, every time. If you want to talk about a picture
decorated in artefacts however, then digital is the hands down winner every
time in that category ...

Anyways, although your analogue terrestrial *transmissions* may have ceased,
I think it is unlikely that everyone in Holland has just thrown all of their
analogue-input ( both RF and composite ) portable TV sets and such in the
bin, and as long as that is the case, there will still be a need for
analogue outputs on other equipment such as STBs. Bear in mind also that an
analogue signal does not need to be UHF modulated, to be PAL encoded. One of
the default modes of the SCART standard is good old PAL-encoded analogue
composite video, both input and output.

Arfa

On a sunny day (Thu, 26 Jul 2007 16:35:53 GMT) it happened "Arfa Daily"
wrote in :

To enlighten the others: to buy anything with any sort of analog output
sucks,
as analog is dead at least here in the Netherlands (except for audio).
Buying a settop box with USB output, if you have a laptop with USB,
creates the
portable TV with much better quality and recording possibility.
The USB settop box I bought runs from a 12 V adapter, so also from a car
battery.
I researched quite a bit to get the best deal, and SCART was not part of
that,
let alone a horrible interference prone, PAL coding artefacts decorated
UHF analog output.
ftp://panteltje.com/pub/dvb-t-nl.txt

You must have some rubbish kit over there then. A good PAL analogue TV set,
with a decent signal going in, beats a crappy highly compressed digital
signal, hands down, every time.

Well, maybe you do not have digital yet.
And for sure you have not seen the HDTV tests on satellite like those from France.
I am not denying mpeg2 compression has artefacts, but those very much depend on
bandwidth (bitrate), and bitrate is a bit less then 4000 kbps on digital here.
(non HD).
Although that is less then DVD max, it is absolutely enough for a stunning
_noise free_, _moire free_ (PAL & NTSC composite), _easy to record_ (as .ts),
_no loss editing_ (digital), _space saving_ (both on disk and in the ether),
allowing as many sub-channels as you like (more languages, more subtitles,
teletext, other services, timecode, all in the same stream).

It seems to me you do not _HAVE_ digital yet.
I have had digital sat now for about 7 years, and terrestrial for about a year.
As to range an signal to noise, I can get stations that I could only get
with a lot of noise and some reflections too in analog, now as clear as glass.
Really, only an inexperienced person would claim that composite PAL
in _whatever way_ was better.
And I know composite PAL better then many of you here, as I worked many years
at the source,
Even studio quality (directly from a PAL camera) has all sorts of artefacts,
just where the right striped shirt.

I say: Just buy a good digital set :-)

On Thu, 26 Jul 2007 17:10:00 GMT, in sci.electronics.design Jan
Panteltje wrote:


Even studio quality (directly from a PAL camera) has all sorts of artefacts,
just where the right striped shirt.

I say: Just buy a good digital set :-)


Hmm, all the pro cameras I know come out in RGB or YUV.

Nobody in the professional world should be using PAL/NTSC in the
studio's primary signal chain today


martin

martin griffith wrote:

On Thu, 26 Jul 2007 17:10:00 GMT, in sci.electronics.design Jan
Panteltje wrote:

Even studio quality (directly from a PAL camera) has all sorts of artefacts,
just where the right striped shirt.

I say: Just buy a good digital set :-)

Hmm, all the pro cameras I know come out in RGB or YUV.

Nobody in the professional world should be using PAL/NTSC in the
studio's primary signal chain today

Interesting you should say that. There must be tons of gear out there that's
'legacy' so-to-speak PAL.

Graham

On Thu, 26 Jul 2007 20:51:59 +0100, in sci.electronics.design Eeyore
wrote:



martin griffith wrote:

On Thu, 26 Jul 2007 17:10:00 GMT, in sci.electronics.design Jan
Panteltje wrote:

Even studio quality (directly from a PAL camera) has all sorts of artefacts,
just where the right striped shirt.

I say: Just buy a good digital set :-)

Hmm, all the pro cameras I know come out in RGB or YUV.

Nobody in the professional world should be using PAL/NTSC in the
studio's primary signal chain today

Interesting you should say that. There must be tons of gear out there that's
'legacy' so-to-speak PAL.

Graham
I think you can still buy toy composite mixers, try BHphoto etc and
the camera control units (CCU) all had the usual PAL ScH and timing
adjustments, but rarely used, and don't forget that the (almost
obselete) Betacam SP format recorded in YUV anyway.

The PAL outputs are great for preview monitors, ie non critical, and
less wiring.

PAL is a very robust transmission format, but absolutely sucks in a
production setting


martin

martin griffith wrote:

Eeyore wrote:
martin griffith wrote:
Jan Panteltje wrote:

Even studio quality (directly from a PAL camera) has all sorts of artefacts,
just where the right striped shirt.

I say: Just buy a good digital set :-)

Hmm, all the pro cameras I know come out in RGB or YUV.

Nobody in the professional world should be using PAL/NTSC in the
studio's primary signal chain today

Interesting you should say that. There must be tons of gear out there that's
'legacy' so-to-speak PAL.

I think you can still buy toy composite mixers, try BHphoto etc and
the camera control units (CCU) all had the usual PAL ScH and timing
adjustments, but rarely used, and don't forget that the (almost
obselete) Betacam SP format recorded in YUV anyway.

The PAL outputs are great for preview monitors, ie non critical, and
less wiring.

PAL is a very robust transmission format, but absolutely sucks in a
production setting

You would perhaps (or not) be amazed how much critical stuff like editing (for
feature films even- and I mean some really serious ones) is - or certinly was - done
from rushes that arrive on Beta SP tapes.

Given the huge investment in such kit I'd not be surprised if it's still quite
common.

Graham

On Thu, 26 Jul 2007 22:35:45 +0200, martin griffith
wrote:

On Thu, 26 Jul 2007 20:51:59 +0100, in sci.electronics.design Eeyore
wrote:



martin griffith wrote:

On Thu, 26 Jul 2007 17:10:00 GMT, in sci.electronics.design Jan
Panteltje wrote:

Even studio quality (directly from a PAL camera) has all sorts of artefacts,
just where the right striped shirt.

I say: Just buy a good digital set :-)

Hmm, all the pro cameras I know come out in RGB or YUV.

Nobody in the professional world should be using PAL/NTSC in the
studio's primary signal chain today

Interesting you should say that. There must be tons of gear out there that's
'legacy' so-to-speak PAL.

Graham
I think you can still buy toy composite mixers, try BHphoto etc and
the camera control units (CCU) all had the usual PAL ScH and timing
adjustments, but rarely used, and don't forget that the (almost
obselete) Betacam SP format recorded in YUV anyway.

The PAL outputs are great for preview monitors, ie non critical, and
less wiring.

PAL is a very robust transmission format, but absolutely sucks in a
production setting


Spot on.

It is akin to a high end HD digital video card also carrying a composite
output jack.

On Thu, 26 Jul 2007 20:51:59 +0100, Eeyore
wrote:



martin griffith wrote:

On Thu, 26 Jul 2007 17:10:00 GMT, in sci.electronics.design Jan
Panteltje wrote:

Even studio quality (directly from a PAL camera) has all sorts of artefacts,
just where the right striped shirt.

I say: Just buy a good digital set :-)

Hmm, all the pro cameras I know come out in RGB or YUV.

Nobody in the professional world should be using PAL/NTSC in the
studio's primary signal chain today

Interesting you should say that. There must be tons of gear out there that's
'legacy' so-to-speak PAL.



Read it again. He said PROFESSIONAL, and NEWER equipment is inferred.

Spurious Response wrote:

Eeyore wrote:
martin griffith wrote:
Jan Panteltje wrote:

Even studio quality (directly from a PAL camera) has all sorts of artefacts,
just where the right striped shirt.

I say: Just buy a good digital set :-)

Hmm, all the pro cameras I know come out in RGB or YUV.

Nobody in the professional world should be using PAL/NTSC in the
studio's primary signal chain today

Interesting you should say that. There must be tons of gear out there that's
'legacy' so-to-speak PAL.

Read it again. He said PROFESSIONAL, and NEWER equipment is inferred.

Since when did PROFESSIONALS not use PAL ?

Don't talk about stuff you have no experience of. It makes you look even more
retarded than normal. I was the technical manager for an editing equipment hire
company some years back. I do know what I'm talking about.

Broadcast TV isn't as wealthy as it once was and don't expect equipment to be
'upgraded' on a whim.

PAL (and especially UK PAL) produces a far superior picture to NTSC btw just in case
you're getting confused.

Graham

Jan Panteltje wrote:

On a sunny day (Thu, 26 Jul 2007 16:35:53 GMT) it happened "Arfa Daily"
wrote in
:

To enlighten the others: to buy anything with any sort of analog output
sucks,
as analog is dead at least here in the Netherlands (except for audio).
Buying a settop box with USB output, if you have a laptop with USB,
creates the
portable TV with much better quality and recording possibility.
The USB settop box I bought runs from a 12 V adapter, so also from a car
battery.
I researched quite a bit to get the best deal, and SCART was not part of
that,
let alone a horrible interference prone, PAL coding artefacts decorated
UHF analog output.
ftp://panteltje.com/pub/dvb-t-nl.txt

You must have some rubbish kit over there then. A good PAL analogue TV
set, with a decent signal going in, beats a crappy highly compressed
digital signal, hands down, every time.

Well, maybe you do not have digital yet.
Of course there is DVB-T in the UK, that's why we know from personal
experience that it looks worse than the old UK PAL system, that admittedly
does have a wider video bandwidth than what you would have been used to.

And for sure you have not seen the HDTV tests on satellite like those from
France. I am not denying mpeg2 compression has artefacts, but those very
much depend on bandwidth (bitrate), and bitrate is a bit less then 4000
kbps on digital here. (non HD).
Perhaps they have throttled down the bitrate per channel in the UK to less
than they use where you are. I would like to see the numbers.

Although that is less then DVD max, it is absolutely enough for a stunning
_noise free_, _moire free_ (PAL & NTSC composite), _easy to record_ (as
.ts), _no loss editing_ (digital), _space saving_ (both on disk and in the
ether), allowing as many sub-channels as you like (more languages, more
subtitles, teletext, other services, timecode, all in the same stream).

It seems to me you do not _HAVE_ digital yet.
I have had digital sat now for about 7 years, and terrestrial for about a
year. As to range an signal to noise, I can get stations that I could only
get with a lot of noise and some reflections too in analog, now as clear
as glass. Really, only an inexperienced person would claim that composite
PAL in _whatever way_ was better.
Or just someone who has seen both pictures and then tells the truth. I
suspect that many people who have just spent a couple of grand on a new TV
feel that they have to say it looks better, because otherwise that would
make them stupid - so it's like the emperor's new clothes.

And I know composite PAL better then many of you here, as I worked many
years at the source,
Even studio quality (directly from a PAL camera) has all sorts of
artefacts, just where the right striped shirt.
The more recent PAL TVs have fancy FIR comb filters that fix most of that
stuff. It is certainly less intrusive than the DVB-T artefacts, like noise
that freezes and then jumps and then freezes again.

I say: Just buy a good digital set :-)
And then buy another one when they switch to MPEG-4, which they have already
proposed doing. Well by then it will have failed from tin whiskers anyhow.

Chris

On a sunny day (Thu, 26 Jul 2007 23:06:19 +0100) it happened Chris Jones
wrote in :

Well, maybe you do not have digital yet.
Of course there is DVB-T in the UK, that's why we know from personal
experience that it looks worse than the old UK PAL system, that admittedly
does have a wider video bandwidth than what you would have been used to.

Well, tehre are some channels 9I can tell you as ican get all UK stuff here too
via satellite, tha tis ITV1-4 BBC- Parliament (if that is a channel), many more,
and soem of teh FTA Ky.

I have __***NEVER***__ seen 'noise stop', that is actually a sign of your
decoder not keeping up, I have noticed that some Sky channels transmit in
352x288 (the set will scale it to full) so at 1/4 the bandwidth, but you
cannot blame that on the digital system!!!!!! Blame it on Rupert!!!
You are not talking about a f*cking Skybox no?????????????????


And for sure you have not seen the HDTV tests on satellite like those from
France. I am not denying mpeg2 compression has artefacts, but those very
much depend on bandwidth (bitrate), and bitrate is a bit less then 4000
kbps on digital here. (non HD).
Perhaps they have throttled down the bitrate per channel in the UK to less
than they use where you are. I would like to see the numbers.

Exactly, there is, if you have a PCI card, some Linux program that shows
all the bitrates for the various streams in the transponders.
Cannot remember the name of the program, there are hundreds of utilities.


Or just someone who has seen both pictures and then tells the truth.

Sure, I do not question the observation, but I do say you need to compare
GOOD digital with GOOD PAL composite, else comparing makes no sense.

I
suspect that many people who have just spent a couple of grand on a new TV
feel that they have to say it looks better, because otherwise that would
make them stupid - so it's like the emperor's new clothes.

Yes those pople may exist, but normal people would return the set.

I say: Just buy a good digital set :-)
And then buy another one when they switch to MPEG-4, which they have already
proposed doing. Well by then it will have failed from tin whiskers anyhow.

That is why I am using a PC, no matter how they encode it, I will find
some decoder.

The public will keep buying new stuf fevery standard change say maybe even
more often then the lead-free requires.

"Jan Panteltje" wrote in message
...
On a sunny day (Thu, 26 Jul 2007 16:35:53 GMT) it happened "Arfa Daily"
wrote in
:

To enlighten the others: to buy anything with any sort of analog output
sucks,
as analog is dead at least here in the Netherlands (except for audio).
Buying a settop box with USB output, if you have a laptop with USB,
creates the
portable TV with much better quality and recording possibility.
The USB settop box I bought runs from a 12 V adapter, so also from a car
battery.
I researched quite a bit to get the best deal, and SCART was not part of
that,
let alone a horrible interference prone, PAL coding artefacts decorated
UHF analog output.
ftp://panteltje.com/pub/dvb-t-nl.txt

You must have some rubbish kit over there then. A good PAL analogue TV
set,
with a decent signal going in, beats a crappy highly compressed digital
signal, hands down, every time.

Well, maybe you do not have digital yet.
And for sure you have not seen the HDTV tests on satellite like those from
France.
I am not denying mpeg2 compression has artefacts, but those very much
depend on
bandwidth (bitrate), and bitrate is a bit less then 4000 kbps on digital
here.
(non HD).
Although that is less then DVD max, it is absolutely enough for a stunning
_noise free_, _moire free_ (PAL & NTSC composite), _easy to record_ (as
.ts),
_no loss editing_ (digital), _space saving_ (both on disk and in the
ether),
allowing as many sub-channels as you like (more languages, more subtitles,
teletext, other services, timecode, all in the same stream).

It seems to me you do not _HAVE_ digital yet.
I have had digital sat now for about 7 years, and terrestrial for about a
year.
As to range an signal to noise, I can get stations that I could only get
with a lot of noise and some reflections too in analog, now as clear as
glass.
Really, only an inexperienced person would claim that composite PAL
in _whatever way_ was better.
And I know composite PAL better then many of you here, as I worked many
years
at the source,
Even studio quality (directly from a PAL camera) has all sorts of
artefacts,
just where the right striped shirt.

I say: Just buy a good digital set :-)

Of COURSE I have digital, foolish person. That is how I am able to comment
on this. I have had analogue satellite since it was first available as DBS,
and I changed over to digital as soon as that became available. I also still
take analogue from the terrestrial transmissions, and carry out repairs to
digital terrestrial STBs as part of my living, so I am able to compare all
standards at all times. I feed signals around my house at UHF, and have
perfectly clean signals at every TV - and there are a lot of them. As far
as HDTV signals go, they just about manage to get back up to the standard of
a *good* analogue transmission. As far as your opinion of my being
inexperienced goes, I have been directly involved with this stuff from the
service angle for 37 years. If that makes me 'inexperienced' in your eyes,
sobeit.

As for beat interference atrifacts from tweed jackets and loud ties, this
has not been much of a problem for years, since people in studios were
dressed properly for the job. Even so, I would still rather see a 'busy' tie
on a newsreader, than motion artifacts - both edge pixelation and motion
blur - any day of the week.

It's all very well saying that compression artifacts are a product of
available bandwidth, but that bandwidth is much limited with terrestrial
digital, if you want to pack in the number of channels that they seem to
want to. This allows for a perfectly satisfactory picture so long as it is
standing still, but does not if the bitrate needs to go up high enough to
prevent motion artifacts. For the most part, however, I would agree with you
that this is not an issue with the satellite transmissions, where the
limiting factor becomes how good a transponder, bit rate-wise, the station
can afford to lease.

Make no mistake, I am not trying here to compare a good digital signal - say
Sky Movies Premiere - with a poor noisy anlogue signal. What I am saying is
that the general public is being 'sold a pup' with the digital terrestrial
channels, where even the best quality transmissions, struggle to produce a
picture subjectively as good as that produced on a *good* analogue TV with a
*good* analogue PAL signal going in.

Arfa

Arfa Daily wrote:

Make no mistake, I am not trying here to compare a good digital signal - say
Sky Movies Premiere - with a poor noisy anlogue signal. What I am saying is
that the general public is being 'sold a pup' with the digital terrestrial
channels, where even the best quality transmissions, struggle to produce a
picture subjectively as good as that produced on a *good* analogue TV with a
*good* analogue PAL signal going in.

I agree with you.

The same holds for DAB too.

Graham

On Thu, 26 Jul 2007 23:31:48 GMT, "Arfa Daily"
wrote:

It's all very well saying that compression artifacts are a product of
available bandwidth, but that bandwidth is much limited with terrestrial
digital,


Both terrestrial broadcast, as well as satellite uplinks are 6MHz wide
STANDARD channel slots and transponder slots. That was one of the rules
of the game back when all this started.

So, on "terrestrial", one can expect the best picture, as it is "single
channel per carrier" (SCPC), whereas a satellite uplink from a service
provider is going to be a "multiple channel per carrier" (MCPC)
implementation, in 99.9999% of the cases.

Artifacts are a product of bit error rate. If the bit error rate of
your reception in zero, you WILL get ALL of the data.

The other source of artifacts are pre transmission compression.

In the old MCPC setup, only 6 or 10 channels per carrier could be
pumped, and it was an MPEG-2 compression schema and a 480i schema.

Now, they put up to 12 channels per carrier (per transponder) into the
uplink for 24 or 64 channels per transponder total.

With HDTV, much more data per frame needs to be dealt with. FEC is
your friend.

On Thu, 26 Jul 2007 23:31:48 GMT, "Arfa Daily"
wrote:

For the most part, however, I would agree with you
that this is not an issue with the satellite transmissions,


Bull****. That is EXACTLY where the multiple channel per carrier thing
gets implemented.

In terrestrial schemes, it is only ONE channel per 6MHz wide carrier.

Your tuner may say that there are 3 PBS channels on the number 15, but
the actual frequencies of those channels are all on separate 6MHZ wide
slots with MAYBE only one which as actually on the channel 15 assigned
frequency.

Spurious Response wrote:

"Arfa Daily" wrote:

For the most part, however, I would agree with you
that this is not an issue with the satellite transmissions,

Bull****. That is EXACTLY where the multiple channel per carrier thing
gets implemented.

In terrestrial schemes, it is only ONE channel per 6MHz wide carrier.

Your tuner may say that there are 3 PBS channels on the number 15, but
the actual frequencies of those channels are all on separate 6MHZ wide
slots with MAYBE only one which as actually on the channel 15 assigned
frequency.

'Arfa' is in the UK. There is no 'PBS' here.

We do have the BBC though, although it's been degraded terribly in the last few
years on the cross of 'political correctness'.

Graham

On Thu, 26 Jul 2007 23:31:48 GMT, "Arfa Daily"
wrote:

Make no mistake, I am not trying here to compare a good digital signal - say
Sky Movies Premiere - with a poor noisy anlogue signal. What I am saying is
that the general public is being 'sold a pup' with the digital terrestrial
channels, where even the best quality transmissions, struggle to produce a
picture subjectively as good as that produced on a *good* analogue TV with a
*good* analogue PAL signal going in.


You must be in a different multiverse location.

Satellite service gives you 300 plus channels by putting up to 12 6MHz
wide "channels" into each 6MHz wide slot.

http://www.tech-faq.com/mcpc.shtml

http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/M/MCPC.html

On a sunny day (Thu, 26 Jul 2007 23:31:48 GMT) it happened "Arfa Daily"
wrote in :


"Jan Panteltje" wrote in message
...
On a sunny day (Thu, 26 Jul 2007 16:35:53 GMT) it happened "Arfa Daily"
wrote in
:

To enlighten the others: to buy anything with any sort of analog output
sucks,
as analog is dead at least here in the Netherlands (except for audio).
Buying a settop box with USB output, if you have a laptop with USB,
creates the
portable TV with much better quality and recording possibility.
The USB settop box I bought runs from a 12 V adapter, so also from a car
battery.
I researched quite a bit to get the best deal, and SCART was not part of
that,
let alone a horrible interference prone, PAL coding artefacts decorated
UHF analog output.
ftp://panteltje.com/pub/dvb-t-nl.txt

You must have some rubbish kit over there then. A good PAL analogue TV
set,
with a decent signal going in, beats a crappy highly compressed digital
signal, hands down, every time.

Well, maybe you do not have digital yet.
And for sure you have not seen the HDTV tests on satellite like those from
France.
I am not denying mpeg2 compression has artefacts, but those very much
depend on
bandwidth (bitrate), and bitrate is a bit less then 4000 kbps on digital
here.
(non HD).
Although that is less then DVD max, it is absolutely enough for a stunning
_noise free_, _moire free_ (PAL & NTSC composite), _easy to record_ (as
.ts),
_no loss editing_ (digital), _space saving_ (both on disk and in the
ether),
allowing as many sub-channels as you like (more languages, more subtitles,
teletext, other services, timecode, all in the same stream).

It seems to me you do not _HAVE_ digital yet.
I have had digital sat now for about 7 years, and terrestrial for about a
year.
As to range an signal to noise, I can get stations that I could only get
with a lot of noise and some reflections too in analog, now as clear as
glass.
Really, only an inexperienced person would claim that composite PAL
in _whatever way_ was better.
And I know composite PAL better then many of you here, as I worked many
years
at the source,
Even studio quality (directly from a PAL camera) has all sorts of
artefacts,
just where the right striped shirt.

I say: Just buy a good digital set :-)

Of COURSE I have digital, foolish person. That is how I am able to comment
on this. I have had analogue satellite since it was first available as DBS,
and I changed over to digital as soon as that became available. I also still
take analogue from the terrestrial transmissions, and carry out repairs to
digital terrestrial STBs as part of my living, so I am able to compare all
standards at all times. I feed signals around my house at UHF, and have
perfectly clean signals at every TV - and there are a lot of them. As far
as HDTV signals go, they just about manage to get back up to the standard of
a *good* analogue transmission. As far as your opinion of my being
inexperienced goes, I have been directly involved with this stuff from the
service angle for 37 years. If that makes me 'inexperienced' in your eyes,
sobeit.

As for beat interference atrifacts from tweed jackets and loud ties, this
has not been much of a problem for years, since people in studios were
dressed properly for the job. Even so, I would still rather see a 'busy' tie
on a newsreader, than motion artifacts - both edge pixelation and motion
blur - any day of the week.

It's all very well saying that compression artifacts are a product of
available bandwidth, but that bandwidth is much limited with terrestrial
digital, if you want to pack in the number of channels that they seem to
want to. This allows for a perfectly satisfactory picture so long as it is
standing still, but does not if the bitrate needs to go up high enough to
prevent motion artifacts. For the most part, however, I would agree with you
that this is not an issue with the satellite transmissions, where the
limiting factor becomes how good a transponder, bit rate-wise, the station
can afford to lease.

Make no mistake, I am not trying here to compare a good digital signal - say
Sky Movies Premiere - with a poor noisy anlogue signal. What I am saying is
that the general public is being 'sold a pup' with the digital terrestrial
channels, where even the best quality transmissions, struggle to produce a
picture subjectively as good as that produced on a *good* analogue TV with a
*good* analogue PAL signal going in.

Arfa

A very interesting posting.
Indeed.
Sure, we must see that the 'aim of the game' is to sell new stuff to the
customers.
In many case 'new' is not 'better', as we see for example with mp3 on
portable players and even being played via HiFi, but then Vinyl was
better then 44100 CD LOL hahahahahaha
Well according to some anyways.
In the same way MPEG2 (or H264) or whatever compression is not a lossless
compression and YES has artefacts, BUT these are (the system is designed
that way) not normally percieved as anying.

The truth for me is that movies I have seen in the past on VHS do not touch
me more then movies I see in HD, or normal digital.

So 37 years, that puts you back to 1970, I started in professional broadcasting
in 1968....
Almost a year after color started here.
I have seen it all, from iconoscope camera upwards...

So, anyways, stuff needs to be sold, the madness started with widescreen,
stretching people so they became really short and fat, and the consumer
bought it...
LOL

And even that still goes on.
In the early color days transmisisons were closely guarded by many specialized capable
engineers with years of experience and training.
Thse days anyone can but a digital camera and produce quality that is better.
Or quality that is worse.

I have my house wired with cat, RJ45 is the connector, no UHF cables here,
except form an antenne in the attick for long range digital terrestial.

I absolutely have to disagree about the quality of HD satellite versus
analog PAL, you must be joking right?

At a resolution of 1980x1080i there is NO WAY analog can compare.
I wanted to show you a screenshot, so I tuned to Astra HD promo,
shows National Geograhics Channel, I have to agree no HD material :-)
just flipper in the water etc....

The French had much better high detail demos.....

Of course if you watch 1920x1080 progressive downscaled via UHF on a PAL TV
in the other room it will not be better then than PAL TV's say 6MHz
bandwidth, but I am sure you know that, SAME for settop box on a SCART with
50MHz bandwidth video amps, you need 200MHz pixel clock at least.

I can only repeat: real HDTV you must see it to believe it, and the conclusion
is that perhaps you only ever watched BBC and astra flipper stuff without
any details.

"Jan Panteltje" wrote in message
...
On a sunny day (Thu, 26 Jul 2007 23:31:48 GMT) it happened "Arfa Daily"
wrote in
:


"Jan Panteltje" wrote in message
...
On a sunny day (Thu, 26 Jul 2007 16:35:53 GMT) it happened "Arfa Daily"
wrote in
:

To enlighten the others: to buy anything with any sort of analog
output
sucks,
as analog is dead at least here in the Netherlands (except for audio).
Buying a settop box with USB output, if you have a laptop with USB,
creates the
portable TV with much better quality and recording possibility.
The USB settop box I bought runs from a 12 V adapter, so also from a
car
battery.
I researched quite a bit to get the best deal, and SCART was not part
of
that,
let alone a horrible interference prone, PAL coding artefacts
decorated
UHF analog output.
ftp://panteltje.com/pub/dvb-t-nl.txt

You must have some rubbish kit over there then. A good PAL analogue TV
set,
with a decent signal going in, beats a crappy highly compressed digital
signal, hands down, every time.

Well, maybe you do not have digital yet.
And for sure you have not seen the HDTV tests on satellite like those
from
France.
I am not denying mpeg2 compression has artefacts, but those very much
depend on
bandwidth (bitrate), and bitrate is a bit less then 4000 kbps on digital
here.
(non HD).
Although that is less then DVD max, it is absolutely enough for a
stunning
_noise free_, _moire free_ (PAL & NTSC composite), _easy to record_ (as
.ts),
_no loss editing_ (digital), _space saving_ (both on disk and in the
ether),
allowing as many sub-channels as you like (more languages, more
subtitles,
teletext, other services, timecode, all in the same stream).

It seems to me you do not _HAVE_ digital yet.
I have had digital sat now for about 7 years, and terrestrial for about
a
year.
As to range an signal to noise, I can get stations that I could only get
with a lot of noise and some reflections too in analog, now as clear as
glass.
Really, only an inexperienced person would claim that composite PAL
in _whatever way_ was better.
And I know composite PAL better then many of you here, as I worked many
years
at the source,
Even studio quality (directly from a PAL camera) has all sorts of
artefacts,
just where the right striped shirt.

I say: Just buy a good digital set :-)

Of COURSE I have digital, foolish person. That is how I am able to comment
on this. I have had analogue satellite since it was first available as
DBS,
and I changed over to digital as soon as that became available. I also
still
take analogue from the terrestrial transmissions, and carry out repairs to
digital terrestrial STBs as part of my living, so I am able to compare all
standards at all times. I feed signals around my house at UHF, and have
perfectly clean signals at every TV - and there are a lot of them. As far
as HDTV signals go, they just about manage to get back up to the standard
of
a *good* analogue transmission. As far as your opinion of my being
inexperienced goes, I have been directly involved with this stuff from the
service angle for 37 years. If that makes me 'inexperienced' in your eyes,
sobeit.

As for beat interference atrifacts from tweed jackets and loud ties, this
has not been much of a problem for years, since people in studios were
dressed properly for the job. Even so, I would still rather see a 'busy'
tie
on a newsreader, than motion artifacts - both edge pixelation and motion
blur - any day of the week.

It's all very well saying that compression artifacts are a product of
available bandwidth, but that bandwidth is much limited with terrestrial
digital, if you want to pack in the number of channels that they seem to
want to. This allows for a perfectly satisfactory picture so long as it is
standing still, but does not if the bitrate needs to go up high enough to
prevent motion artifacts. For the most part, however, I would agree with
you
that this is not an issue with the satellite transmissions, where the
limiting factor becomes how good a transponder, bit rate-wise, the station
can afford to lease.

Make no mistake, I am not trying here to compare a good digital signal -
say
Sky Movies Premiere - with a poor noisy anlogue signal. What I am saying
is
that the general public is being 'sold a pup' with the digital terrestrial
channels, where even the best quality transmissions, struggle to produce a
picture subjectively as good as that produced on a *good* analogue TV with
a
*good* analogue PAL signal going in.

Arfa

A very interesting posting.
Indeed.
Sure, we must see that the 'aim of the game' is to sell new stuff to the
customers.
In many case 'new' is not 'better', as we see for example with mp3 on
portable players and even being played via HiFi, but then Vinyl was
better then 44100 CD LOL hahahahahaha
Well according to some anyways.
In the same way MPEG2 (or H264) or whatever compression is not a lossless
compression and YES has artefacts, BUT these are (the system is designed
that way) not normally percieved as anying.

The truth for me is that movies I have seen in the past on VHS do not
touch
me more then movies I see in HD, or normal digital.

So 37 years, that puts you back to 1970, I started in professional
broadcasting
in 1968....
Almost a year after color started here.
I have seen it all, from iconoscope camera upwards...

So, anyways, stuff needs to be sold, the madness started with widescreen,
stretching people so they became really short and fat, and the consumer
bought it...
LOL

And even that still goes on.
In the early color days transmisisons were closely guarded by many
specialized capable
engineers with years of experience and training.
Thse days anyone can but a digital camera and produce quality that is
better.
Or quality that is worse.

I have my house wired with cat, RJ45 is the connector, no UHF cables here,
except form an antenne in the attick for long range digital terrestial.

I absolutely have to disagree about the quality of HD satellite versus
analog PAL, you must be joking right?

At a resolution of 1980x1080i there is NO WAY analog can compare.
I wanted to show you a screenshot, so I tuned to Astra HD promo,
shows National Geograhics Channel, I have to agree no HD material :-)
just flipper in the water etc....

The French had much better high detail demos.....

Of course if you watch 1920x1080 progressive downscaled via UHF on a PAL
TV
in the other room it will not be better then than PAL TV's say 6MHz
bandwidth, but I am sure you know that, SAME for settop box on a SCART
with
50MHz bandwidth video amps, you need 200MHz pixel clock at least.

I can only repeat: real HDTV you must see it to believe it, and the
conclusion
is that perhaps you only ever watched BBC and astra flipper stuff without
any details.



Well, I have a friend who runs a large Sky installation company, and he has
the latest dog's ******** HD Sky box, and the latest dog's ******** Sony all
singing and dancing LCD widescreen TV and home cinema system, all hooked
together HDMI, and when he showed me it on a Sky HD demo (and presumably Sky
have hand picked this content to be the best available, unless the Frogs
know something that they don't) I have to say that I was a little
disappointed. Yes, when you get right up to the screen, you can see the
hairs on the bee's legs - very impressive - but when you sit far enough back
for the viewing of that size of TV to be 'comfortable', the resolution of
your eyes is not good enough to pick out that level of detail anyway.

I would have to be stupid to maintain that on paper at least, the digital
satellite broadcasts in HD are not better than analogue PAL transmissions,
but subjectively, as I have been maintaining from the start, on a good
analogue TV with a good analogue signal going in, there is not a lot to
choose, and unless you are talking top-notch digital as in satellite HD, in
many cases, I still maintain that subjectively (there's that word again...)
the PAL analogue solution wins out over the average digital one. There are
also, of course, undeniable advantages to digital TV, but I really don't
think at this stage, that picture quality is one of them.

Of course, the artifacts placed on the picture by the digital display device
only serve to exacerbate the situation, but that's another story ...

Arfa

On a sunny day (Fri, 27 Jul 2007 14:10:53 GMT) it happened "Arfa Daily"
wrote in :

Well, I have a friend who runs a large Sky installation company, and he has
the latest dog's ******** HD Sky box, and the latest dog's ******** Sony all
singing and dancing LCD widescreen TV and home cinema system, all hooked
together HDMI, and when he showed me it on a Sky HD demo (and presumably Sky
have hand picked this content to be the best available, unless the Frogs
know something that they don't) I have to say that I was a little
disappointed. Yes, when you get right up to the screen, you can see the
hairs on the bee's legs - very impressive - but when you sit far enough back
for the viewing of that size of TV to be 'comfortable', the resolution of
your eyes is not good enough to pick out that level of detail anyway.

I would have to be stupid to maintain that on paper at least, the digital
satellite broadcasts in HD are not better than analogue PAL transmissions,
but subjectively, as I have been maintaining from the start, on a good
analogue TV with a good analogue signal going in, there is not a lot to
choose, and unless you are talking top-notch digital as in satellite HD, in
many cases, I still maintain that subjectively (there's that word again...)
the PAL analogue solution wins out over the average digital one. There are
also, of course, undeniable advantages to digital TV, but I really don't
think at this stage, that picture quality is one of them.

Of course, the artifacts placed on the picture by the digital display device
only serve to exacerbate the situation, but that's another story ...

Arfa

OK, that is a good argument, how far away you are from the screen.
I am getting old and near-sighted, I need glasses to see small detail
close up, so that does require me to sit close in front of a big monitor with
glasses, or get a projection screen of huge size..... without glasses.
I am close to the monitor, close to the TV.
I can still see pixels on the 1680x1050 screen, so I am not too worried.
Finally managed to grap some sort of HD content from SkyPromo:
ftp://panteltje.com/pub/00000300.ppm

1920x1088 Now how about PAL composite ;-)

This is how I grabbed it in Linux:
xdipo -c 1 -g '10.5 E' -f 12610.5 -p v -s 22000 -a 133 134 -o q1.ts

The 10.5 replace it where you see the satellite,
the recording is transport stream q1.ts
I wrote xdipo.


Then I let it run for a few seconds, and converted all frames to pnm
pictures with the magic command:
mplayer -vo pnm q1.ts
This generated
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6266897 2007-07-27 16:50 00000001.ppm
.....
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6266897 2007-07-27 16:50 00000300.ppm
.......

300 had at least some detail.

Now you need a 1980x10808 monitor.....

More then 6MB for a screenshot.... :-)

Jan Panteltje wrote:

I absolutely have to disagree about the quality of HD satellite versus
analog PAL, you must be joking right?

Most posters seemed to be comparing the 'normal' signal that's readily available to us via
terrestrial broadcast, cable or satellite. Certainly not any HD ones.


Graham

Arfa Daily wrote:


"Jan Panteltje" wrote in message
...
The one who calls himself rabbitsfriendsandrelations wrote:

Jan Panteltje wrote:

Eeyore wrote
Jan Panteltje wrote:
Spurious Response wrote

Right, I turned in a portable TV last week.
This one was about 30 years old (seventies), and was still working
OK,
but no analog transmissions here anymore, all you get is nice
equal distributed noise when tuning in to a digital station.

There are SEVERAL HDTV set top tuners out there that will pipe
the
finished signal into a standard TV.

The boxes that are sold here are equipped with a SCART connector, a
waste.

I imagine you haven't looked very hard in that case. Many have UHF
outputs.

Graham

If you had as much as a clue, did not cut half the posting

I wasn't replying to the bits I trimmed.

Graham

To enlighten the others: to buy anything with any sort of analog output
sucks,
as analog is dead at least here in the Netherlands (except for audio).
Buying a settop box with USB output, if you have a laptop with USB,
creates the
portable TV with much better quality and recording possibility.
The USB settop box I bought runs from a 12 V adapter, so also from a car
battery.
I researched quite a bit to get the best deal, and SCART was not part of
that,
let alone a horrible interference prone, PAL coding artefacts decorated
UHF analog output.
ftp://panteltje.com/pub/dvb-t-nl.txt

You must have some rubbish kit over there then. A good PAL analogue TV
set, with a decent signal going in, beats a crappy highly compressed
digital signal, hands down, every time.

Actually I think you may be speaking some truth there. In the UK, the video
bandwidth of the analogue PAL signal is wider than in other PAL countries,
which is why they had to move the sound subcarrier further from the vision
carrier, and which is why TVs couldn't be taken to/from the UK from/to
other PAL countries without some re-tuning, until multi-standard chipsets
were introduced. It is very likely that he has never seen a PAL signal
with as much resolution as we get in the UK.

If you want to talk about a
picture decorated in artefacts however, then digital is the hands down
winner every time in that category ...

Yes, I borrowed a digital PVR from a friend and was not at all impressed. I
don't like it when the numerical noise sometimes stays still and sometimes
moves. If they had not tried to cram so many channels of crap into the
bandwidth then they could have made it as good as the analogue system.
It's not like they have enough worthwhile programmes to fill even the
analogue channels, so they could have afforded the bandwidth.

Chris

On a sunny day (Thu, 26 Jul 2007 22:55:42 +0100) it happened Chris Jones
wrote in :

You must have some rubbish kit over there then. A good PAL analogue TV
set, with a decent signal going in, beats a crappy highly compressed
digital signal, hands down, every time.

Actually I think you may be speaking some truth there.

No it is crap.

In the UK,

YUK


the video
bandwidth of the analogue PAL signal is wider than in other PAL countries,
which is why they had to move the sound subcarrier further from the vision
carrier, and which is why TVs couldn't be taken to/from the UK from/to
other PAL countries without some re-tuning,

Yea, well known, BBC, before it went brain dead, used to make nice pictures,
even had in the very old ages 4 tube cameras, I have been there, touched them,
had some interesting discussions with their techies.

Whatever you may think, compared to digital it sucks.
And that is digital done the right way, it makes no sense to
compare bad digital to HQ studio analog PAL as you do here when you talk
about some cheapo unspecified piece of consumer quality, about
some unspecified channels, sure you can get it as bad as you like.



until multi-standard chipsets
were introduced. It is very likely that he has never seen a PAL signal
with as much resolution as we get in the UK.

Idiot.


If you want to talk about a
picture decorated in artefacts however, then digital is the hands down
winner every time in that category ...


Yes, I borrowed a digital PVR from a friend and was not at all impressed.

Now that sure counts as a professional test.

Morons.

BYE

Jan Panteltje wrote:

On a sunny day (Thu, 26 Jul 2007 22:55:42 +0100) it happened Chris Jones
wrote in
:

You must have some rubbish kit over there then. A good PAL analogue TV
set, with a decent signal going in, beats a crappy highly compressed
digital signal, hands down, every time.

Actually I think you may be speaking some truth there.

No it is crap.

In the UK,

YUK


the video
bandwidth of the analogue PAL signal is wider than in other PAL countries,
which is why they had to move the sound subcarrier further from the vision
carrier, and which is why TVs couldn't be taken to/from the UK from/to
other PAL countries without some re-tuning,

Yea, well known, BBC, before it went brain dead, used to make nice
pictures, even had in the very old ages 4 tube cameras, I have been there,
touched them, had some interesting discussions with their techies.

Whatever you may think, compared to digital it sucks.
And that is digital done the right way, it makes no sense to
compare bad digital to HQ studio analog PAL as you do here when you talk
about some cheapo unspecified piece of consumer quality, about
some unspecified channels, sure you can get it as bad as you like.

Well I agree that there is no theoretical reason why the fact that the
signal is digital necessarily makes it look bad, for example the PAL
pictures that I have been watching were probably processed in the digital
domain through most of the signal chain before transmission.

What I am comparing is the end-user experience of watching a consumer grade
DVB-T receiver (in my case a Pioneer decoder), when compared to a
consumer-grade PAL receiver. In the end, if the picture quality is worse
USING THE EQUIPMENT AVAILABLE TO CONSUMERS, then that is all that counts.
I realise that a digital system with 300Mbits per second could be much
better than PAL, but what is being given to us is NOT better than PAL. By
all means they could build a good digital system, but that is not what this
is about. It is about freeing up as much spectrum as possible for auction,
whilst enabling the maximum number of channels of adverts to be transmitted
with a quality that is just good enough not to cause a backlash that would
result in people just turning off and watching a DVD.

until multi-standard chipsets
were introduced. It is very likely that he has never seen a PAL signal
with as much resolution as we get in the UK.

Idiot.
But surely you don't dispute that the channel bandwidth here is wider than
what you used to get?

If you want to talk about a
picture decorated in artefacts however, then digital is the hands down
winner every time in that category ...
Yes, I borrowed a digital PVR from a friend and was not at all impressed.

Now that sure counts as a professional test.
Well you just go and sit in your studio and watch your test cards then.
What actually matters is the picture quality that people (don't) get in
their homes.


Morons.

BYE
Whatever.

On a sunny day (Thu, 26 Jul 2007 23:41:12 +0100) it happened Chris Jones
blind_mousewrote:

Well you just go and sit in your studio and watch your test cards then.
What actually matters is the picture quality that people (don't) get in
their homes.

Here is a screenshot of a testcard from satellite:
ftp://panteltje.com/pub/testcard-2.png
So what is wrong?
767x576 png, how you have a monitor with that resolution ;-)

Now this picture travelled 40000 km.

On Fri, 27 Jul 2007 10:15:16 GMT, Jan Panteltje
wrote:

On a sunny day (Thu, 26 Jul 2007 23:41:12 +0100) it happened Chris Jones
blind_mousewrote:

Well you just go and sit in your studio and watch your test cards then.
What actually matters is the picture quality that people (don't) get in
their homes.

Here is a screenshot of a testcard from satellite:
ftp://panteltje.com/pub/testcard-2.png
So what is wrong?
767x576 png, how you have a monitor with that resolution ;-)

Now this picture travelled 40000 km.


The best purchase you can make for examining such things:

http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Video-...003634&sr=1-12

http://www.videoessentials.com/

I cannot do a capture from the HD DVD output, but I'd bet that even my
Std DVD (it's a combo disc) side would look quite good coming though the
computer, and I could post it in a.b.s.e.

This oughtta be good... ;-]

On a sunny day (Fri, 27 Jul 2007 10:15:16 GMT) it happened Jan Panteltje
wrote in :

On a sunny day (Thu, 26 Jul 2007 23:41:12 +0100) it happened Chris Jones
blind_mousewrote:

Well you just go and sit in your studio and watch your test cards then.
What actually matters is the picture quality that people (don't) get in
their homes.

Here is a screenshot of a testcard from satellite:
ftp://panteltje.com/pub/testcard-2.png
So what is wrong?
767x576 png, how you have a monitor with that resolution ;-)

Now this picture travelled 40000 km.

Actually there is something wrong in that testcard due to 16:10 aspect
translation, here is the one from a normal 4:3 screen:
ftp://panteltje.com/pub/testcard.png

This one is 1:1 pixel for pixel as it is received, the previous one
was rescaled to 767x576, this one is as it comes in here in 720x576 PAL.
Now that is a lot better!

Jan Panteltje wrote:

Chris Jones blind_mousewrote:

Well you just go and sit in your studio and watch your test cards then.
What actually matters is the picture quality that people (don't) get in
their homes.

Here is a screenshot of a testcard from satellite:
ftp://panteltje.com/pub/testcard-2.png
So what is wrong?
767x576 png, how you have a monitor with that resolution ;-)

Now this picture travelled 40000 km.

Have you considered a brain transplant ?

A stationary picture is no way to evaluate the quality of a compressed signal.
It eliminites the most offensive aspect of compression, motion artifacts.

Graham

"Jan Panteltje" wrote in message
...
On a sunny day (Thu, 26 Jul 2007 22:55:42 +0100) it happened Chris Jones
wrote in
:

You must have some rubbish kit over there then. A good PAL analogue TV
set, with a decent signal going in, beats a crappy highly compressed
digital signal, hands down, every time.

Actually I think you may be speaking some truth there.

No it is crap.

In the UK,

YUK


the video
bandwidth of the analogue PAL signal is wider than in other PAL countries,
which is why they had to move the sound subcarrier further from the vision
carrier, and which is why TVs couldn't be taken to/from the UK from/to
other PAL countries without some re-tuning,

Yea, well known, BBC, before it went brain dead, used to make nice
pictures,
even had in the very old ages 4 tube cameras, I have been there, touched
them,
had some interesting discussions with their techies.

Whatever you may think, compared to digital it sucks.
And that is digital done the right way, it makes no sense to
compare bad digital to HQ studio analog PAL as you do here when you talk
about some cheapo unspecified piece of consumer quality, about
some unspecified channels, sure you can get it as bad as you like.



until multi-standard chipsets
were introduced. It is very likely that he has never seen a PAL signal
with as much resolution as we get in the UK.

Idiot.


If you want to talk about a
picture decorated in artefacts however, then digital is the hands down
winner every time in that category ...


Yes, I borrowed a digital PVR from a friend and was not at all impressed.

Now that sure counts as a professional test.

Morons.

BYE

I fear it is you who is the moron, my friend. It makes absolute sense to
compare a crap digital signal to a good analogue one, for the ones provided
by digital terrestrial are, for the most part, crap. This is in stark
contrast to the analogue terrestrial signals, which have always been of the
highest quality. The opinion of the poster on what he saw on a PVR, was not
intended to be seen as a 'professional' test, rather it was a subjective
test, which is what we have been talking here all along ...

Arfa