In article ,
Arfa Daily wrote:
Does anyone know where in the world the school of half-arsed camerawork
and editing techniques is ? Must be a big place, as it seems that
networks won't take on anyone any more, who hasn't graduated from it
... :-)

It was once thought that any camera work or editing which grabbed your
attention would distract from the story. But nowadays story seems often
less important than the action.
I'm of a generation brought up on radio drama - and still enjoy it.
Luckily in the UK there's still a fair bit. Both film and TV have to work
hard to improve on your own imagination. ;-)

--
*Why is the word abbreviation so long?

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Arfa Daily wrote:
Does anyone know where in the world the school of half-arsed camerawork
and editing techniques is ? Must be a big place, as it seems that
networks won't take on anyone any more, who hasn't graduated from it
... :-)

It was once thought that any camera work or editing which grabbed your
attention would distract from the story. But nowadays story seems often
less important than the action.
I'm of a generation brought up on radio drama - and still enjoy it.
Luckily in the UK there's still a fair bit. Both film and TV have to work
hard to improve on your own imagination. ;-)

--
*Why is the word abbreviation so long?

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

There's a lot of camera and editing techniques employed now, which I think
are the result of arty-farty thinking, and often at least incongruous in a
particular production, if not downright inappropriate. One that seems to
have come in recently, is where a show like for instance "The Hotel
Inspector", has a presenter who needs to present some parts direct to
camera. They used to look at the camera, and the good ones could get the
right 'expression' into their eyes to 'engage' the viewer. You actually felt
like they were talking to you alone. Now, they seem to talk to some unknown
person standing 10 feet behind the camerman's right shoulder. This gives
their eyes a strange 'disconnected' look, and it feels sort of rude of them
to appear to be talking to someone else rather than me.

I also hate the waggling camera shots, the rapid zooms and de-zooms that
leave the focus lagging a couple of seconds behind, and the way that cookery
programmes are shot now, with the camera zooming in on a single tomato seed
in the mixing bowl, before a high speed de-zoom to some arbitrary ingredient
pile or implement, followed by another high speed and defocussed zoom to the
spot on the end of the presenter's nose, followed by a rapid drop back into
the mixing bowl. WTF are they trying to show ? How is that sort of crap
appropriate to that type of programme ?

And now that "The Bill" has got a 9 o'clock slot, they've changed the
shooting medium to something that looks altogether 'wrong', changed the way
it's lit, presumably to try to give it some kind of dark edginess, added the
most inappropriate incidental music, and changed the characters into moody
hard-men. That show had a good format before, and wasn't suffering falling
ratings, so why try to fix what ain't broke ?

And it never starts on time ... :-)

Arfa

Arfa Daily wrote:
"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Arfa Daily wrote:
Does anyone know where in the world the school of half-arsed camerawork
and editing techniques is ? Must be a big place, as it seems that
networks won't take on anyone any more, who hasn't graduated from it
... :-)
It was once thought that any camera work or editing which grabbed your
attention would distract from the story. But nowadays story seems often
less important than the action.
I'm of a generation brought up on radio drama - and still enjoy it.
Luckily in the UK there's still a fair bit. Both film and TV have to work
hard to improve on your own imagination. ;-)

--
*Why is the word abbreviation so long?

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

There's a lot of camera and editing techniques employed now, which I think
are the result of arty-farty thinking, and often at least incongruous in a
particular production, if not downright inappropriate. One that seems to
have come in recently, is where a show like for instance "The Hotel
Inspector", has a presenter who needs to present some parts direct to
camera. They used to look at the camera, and the good ones could get the
right 'expression' into their eyes to 'engage' the viewer. You actually felt
like they were talking to you alone. Now, they seem to talk to some unknown
person standing 10 feet behind the camerman's right shoulder. This gives
their eyes a strange 'disconnected' look, and it feels sort of rude of them
to appear to be talking to someone else rather than me.

I also hate the waggling camera shots, the rapid zooms and de-zooms that
leave the focus lagging a couple of seconds behind, and the way that cookery
programmes are shot now, with the camera zooming in on a single tomato seed
in the mixing bowl, before a high speed de-zoom to some arbitrary ingredient
pile or implement, followed by another high speed and defocussed zoom to the
spot on the end of the presenter's nose, followed by a rapid drop back into
the mixing bowl. WTF are they trying to show ? How is that sort of crap
appropriate to that type of programme ?

And now that "The Bill" has got a 9 o'clock slot, they've changed the
shooting medium to something that looks altogether 'wrong', changed the way
it's lit, presumably to try to give it some kind of dark edginess, added the
most inappropriate incidental music, and changed the characters into moody
hard-men. That show had a good format before, and wasn't suffering falling
ratings, so why try to fix what ain't broke ?

And it never starts on time ... :-)

Arfa



Have you noticed that they've just discovered tilt shifting so that
almost every cop show you watch these days has long shots that look like
lego models and usually quite out of context - they do it cos they can.

Ron

"Ron" wrote in message
...
Arfa Daily wrote:
"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Arfa Daily wrote:
Does anyone know where in the world the school of half-arsed camerawork
and editing techniques is ? Must be a big place, as it seems that
networks won't take on anyone any more, who hasn't graduated from it
... :-)
It was once thought that any camera work or editing which grabbed your
attention would distract from the story. But nowadays story seems often
less important than the action.
I'm of a generation brought up on radio drama - and still enjoy it.
Luckily in the UK there's still a fair bit. Both film and TV have to
work
hard to improve on your own imagination. ;-)

--
*Why is the word abbreviation so long?

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

There's a lot of camera and editing techniques employed now, which I
think are the result of arty-farty thinking, and often at least
incongruous in a particular production, if not downright inappropriate.
One that seems to have come in recently, is where a show like for
instance "The Hotel Inspector", has a presenter who needs to present some
parts direct to camera. They used to look at the camera, and the good
ones could get the right 'expression' into their eyes to 'engage' the
viewer. You actually felt like they were talking to you alone. Now, they
seem to talk to some unknown person standing 10 feet behind the
camerman's right shoulder. This gives their eyes a strange 'disconnected'
look, and it feels sort of rude of them to appear to be talking to
someone else rather than me.

I also hate the waggling camera shots, the rapid zooms and de-zooms that
leave the focus lagging a couple of seconds behind, and the way that
cookery programmes are shot now, with the camera zooming in on a single
tomato seed in the mixing bowl, before a high speed de-zoom to some
arbitrary ingredient pile or implement, followed by another high speed
and defocussed zoom to the spot on the end of the presenter's nose,
followed by a rapid drop back into the mixing bowl. WTF are they trying
to show ? How is that sort of crap appropriate to that type of programme
?

And now that "The Bill" has got a 9 o'clock slot, they've changed the
shooting medium to something that looks altogether 'wrong', changed the
way it's lit, presumably to try to give it some kind of dark edginess,
added the most inappropriate incidental music, and changed the characters
into moody hard-men. That show had a good format before, and wasn't
suffering falling ratings, so why try to fix what ain't broke ?

And it never starts on time ... :-)

Arfa

Have you noticed that they've just discovered tilt shifting so that almost
every cop show you watch these days has long shots that look like lego
models and usually quite out of context - they do it cos they can.

Ron

I hadn't particularly noticed that one, but I shall be looking for it now
....

Arfa

In article ,
Arfa Daily wrote:
And now that "The Bill" has got a 9 o'clock slot, they've changed the
shooting medium to something that looks altogether 'wrong',

It's called HD. ;-)

changed the way it's lit, presumably to try to give it some kind of dark
edginess, added the most inappropriate incidental music, and changed the
characters into moody hard-men. That show had a good format before, and
wasn't suffering falling ratings, so why try to fix what ain't broke ?

Oh, but it was. Rumour has it ITV wanted to pull it totally - but Talkback
Thames threatened to withdraw the other shows they make for ITV if they
did. Hence it changing to only one ep per week - and if the ratings don't
improve it will go by Xmas.

--
*If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends? *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

In article ,
Ron wrote:
Have you noticed that they've just discovered tilt shifting so that
almost every cop show you watch these days has long shots that look like
lego models and usually quite out of context - they do it cos they can.

I'm not familiar with the term and don't know what you mean - can you
expand?

--
*Seen it all, done it all, can't remember most of it*

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On 8/14/2009 6:52 AM Meat Plow spake thus:

On Thu, 13 Aug 2009 23:53:23 -0700, David Nebenzahl
wrote:

Sounds OK to me, except that I just checked and reset my computah's
clock (I use a little Windoze utility called "NIStime" that gets the
time from NIST); it was off by about 5 minutes. Haven't synched it up
for at least 6 months, so I know my RTCC is at least that accurate.
(Running W2K, so I assume that no software process is adjusting my
clock.) Shouldn't most PC clocks be about that accurate? (Older MB,
forget exactly what, can find out if you're interested.)

W2K has an SNTP client built in. Run cmd.exe then type 'net time /?'
for help.

I used to build OEM computers and have seen many different degrees of
inaccuracy both positive and negative.

Thanks; as Johnny Carson used to say, "I did not know that".

So how does NTP work in this case? I'm guessing it must contact some
entity over "the network" (meaning something external to my computer) in
order to determine the actual time, no? How does this work? Who does it
contact? (Short answer will be fine.) I do notice that one of the NTP
commands is

[\\computername] /SETSNTP[:ntp server list]

so I assume my computah keeps a list of servers "out there".

(So I guess if my computer is contacting a time server out there
periodically, but my clock was still off by 5 minutes, then the RTCC
must be *really* inaccurate.)

By the way, you can type "net time ?" to see the "help" info.


--
Found--the gene that causes belief in genetic determinism

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Arfa Daily wrote:
And now that "The Bill" has got a 9 o'clock slot, they've changed the
shooting medium to something that looks altogether 'wrong',

It's called HD. ;-)


Are you sure that's what it is ? Any HD that I've seen is just that. A
perfectly 'normal' looking picture, but with a higher resolution. Why should
a higher res camera change the tonal composition of the picture ? (assuming
that it is being shot on video). Looks more like they've changed from film
to video, or the other way round perhaps. Or are maybe using a video mode
that attempts to simulate film, something like that. I saw it before on the
programme when they did a couple of 'specials'. Didn't like it then, don't
like it now.



changed the way it's lit, presumably to try to give it some kind of dark
edginess, added the most inappropriate incidental music, and changed the
characters into moody hard-men. That show had a good format before, and
wasn't suffering falling ratings, so why try to fix what ain't broke ?

Oh, but it was. Rumour has it ITV wanted to pull it totally - but Talkback
Thames threatened to withdraw the other shows they make for ITV if they
did. Hence it changing to only one ep per week - and if the ratings don't
improve it will go by Xmas.

--
*If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends? *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

Hmmm. Not what I read, but as you are 'in the trade', probably more
accurate. Still, with what they've done to the programme now, I can't see it
picking up many new viewers, and I think that many of the existing ones
won't stick around long either. It has now lost all of its humour and
'feelgood' factor. It was sort of like a latter day Dixon of Dock Green in
some ways. I think it showed quite nicely that sometimes, an average
copper's day is more about helping old ladies cross the road, than screaming
down that road at 80 mph in the area car to get to some pervert's house
before he has a chance to murder the child he's abducted, and wipe his hard
drive. Every storyline now seems to be about a CID operation, with uniform
backing them up. All of the stories seem 'dark' and 'moody'. They've turned
the head of CID into an arsy, sulky, depressive, and Jack Meadows into a
growling grumpy old sod. If this is what the programme makers think is going
to save the programme, then I think it probably will be pulled by Christmas,
and sadly, not really missed.

Arfa

In article ,
David Nebenzahl wrote:

On 8/13/2009 10:34 PM isw spake thus:

In article ,
David Nebenzahl wrote:

On 8/13/2009 4:58 AM root spake thus:

isw wrote:

What the NTP process does is essentially to monitor the local clock
compared to a reference to understand just what its errors are, and
synthesize a "perfect" clock from it. The synthesized clock can remain
within a few microseconds (or better) of a reference timekeeper all the
time.

Maybe that works if you leave the computer on all the time. I started
the ntpd daemon early in the morning and by late afternoon the time
was, once again, way the hell off. Since I only care one time, one
day a week what the time is I have set up crontab entries to do the
job.

I see the problem, that seems to have been missed by those suggesting a
software kluge that periodically stuffs the clock with the right value.

Here's an idea I haven't seen in this thread yet: If you're really
interested in getting to the bottom of this problem, how about trying to
determine whether it's the actual clock (RTCC hardware) that's off, or
whether the OS is missing interrupts or there's some other software
problem?

How about booting the computah under some other OS, say Windoze or even
DOS, and running a utility that checks the RTCC for accuracy? (Don't
know of any, but I'm ass-uming that there are lots of such utilities out
there. Maybe there's even one for Linux.) That way you could know
whether the clock needs to be tweaked (new crystal as suggested by
others), or whether it's an OS problem.

Just an idea.

As I said earlier, if the local clock (crystal, whatever) is
free-running (not synced to a standard reference using e.g. ntpd), it
*will not* stay accurate because it *cannot* be running at precisely the
proper rate all the time. No matter how often you set it. No matter how
often you tweak that little capacitor (which is very likely *not there*
to tweak in the first place. You can *never* get it "right on". The
question is not whether it is ever "correct", but only how fast it
diverges from "correct" whenever you stop messing with it. The
brilliance and elegance of NTP is that it can take that crappy,
imprecise, piece of temperature-sensitive quartz, and from it synthesize
an amazingly precise timekeeper.

Sounds OK to me, except that I just checked and reset my computah's
clock (I use a little Windoze utility called "NIStime" that gets the
time from NIST); it was off by about 5 minutes. Haven't synched it up
for at least 6 months, so I know my RTCC is at least that accurate.
(Running W2K, so I assume that no software process is adjusting my
clock.) Shouldn't most PC clocks be about that accurate? (Older MB,
forget exactly what, can find out if you're interested.)

Most crystals used in computers are within ten or 20 parts per million
of the frequency stamped on the case (you can get a lot more accurate
ones, but computers don't need it). AFAIR, those little cylindrical
"clock" crystals that run at 32,768 Hz are at least ten times poorer,
and far more temperature sensitive to boot. I think the *best* you could
expect from one of those without special treatment would be about a
minute a month.

Isaac

In article ,
Arfa Daily wrote:

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Arfa Daily wrote:
And now that "The Bill" has got a 9 o'clock slot, they've changed the
shooting medium to something that looks altogether 'wrong',

It's called HD. ;-)

It's shot using progressive scan so you get the movement artifacts as on
film. Thompson (Grass Valley) cameras recorded on Panasonic P2 using
solid state memory cards.

Are you sure that's what it is ? Any HD that I've seen is just that. A
perfectly 'normal' looking picture, but with a higher resolution.

Trouble is they use fog filters on the cameras to reduce the resolution -
common on drama even in SD. And use long lenses most of the time to keep
the backgrounds soft.

Why should a higher res camera change the tonal composition of the
picture ? (assuming that it is being shot on video). Looks more like
they've changed from film to video, or the other way round perhaps.

No - it's always been video.

Or are maybe using a video mode that attempts to simulate film,
something like that. I saw it before on the programme when they did a
couple of 'specials'. Didn't like it then, don't like it now.

Tend to agree. But most production people hate video and will do anything
to make it look 'different'. They've also changed most if not all the
Lighting Directors. The Bill used to be known for using available light -
or making it look like it was. It now looks 'lit'.



changed the way it's lit, presumably to try to give it some kind of
dark edginess, added the most inappropriate incidental music, and
changed the characters into moody hard-men. That show had a good
format before, and wasn't suffering falling ratings, so why try to
fix what ain't broke ?

Oh, but it was. Rumour has it ITV wanted to pull it totally - but
Talkback Thames threatened to withdraw the other shows they make for
ITV if they did. Hence it changing to only one ep per week - and if
the ratings don't improve it will go by Xmas.


Hmmm. Not what I read, but as you are 'in the trade', probably more
accurate. Still, with what they've done to the programme now, I can't
see it picking up many new viewers, and I think that many of the
existing ones won't stick around long either.

That's always the problem when you change the style.

It has now lost all of
its humour and 'feelgood' factor. It was sort of like a latter day
Dixon of Dock Green in some ways. I think it showed quite nicely that
sometimes, an average copper's day is more about helping old ladies
cross the road, than screaming down that road at 80 mph in the area car
to get to some pervert's house before he has a chance to murder the
child he's abducted, and wipe his hard drive. Every storyline now seems
to be about a CID operation, with uniform backing them up. All of the
stories seem 'dark' and 'moody'. They've turned the head of CID into an
arsy, sulky, depressive, and Jack Meadows into a growling grumpy old
sod. If this is what the programme makers think is going to save the
programme, then I think it probably will be pulled by Christmas, and
sadly, not really missed.

Sadly the advertisers don't want the older audience. They want youngsters
who they think have more income to spend on their products. Hence them
spending a much lower percentage of their budget on TV than used to be.

Arfa

--
*Microsoft broke Volkswagen's record: They only made 21.4 million bugs.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Arfa Daily wrote:

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Arfa Daily wrote:
And now that "The Bill" has got a 9 o'clock slot, they've changed the
shooting medium to something that looks altogether 'wrong',

It's called HD. ;-)

It's shot using progressive scan so you get the movement artifacts as on
film. Thompson (Grass Valley) cameras recorded on Panasonic P2 using
solid state memory cards.

Are you sure that's what it is ? Any HD that I've seen is just that. A
perfectly 'normal' looking picture, but with a higher resolution.

Trouble is they use fog filters on the cameras to reduce the resolution -
common on drama even in SD. And use long lenses most of the time to keep
the backgrounds soft.

Why should a higher res camera change the tonal composition of the
picture ? (assuming that it is being shot on video). Looks more like
they've changed from film to video, or the other way round perhaps.

No - it's always been video.

Or are maybe using a video mode that attempts to simulate film,
something like that. I saw it before on the programme when they did a
couple of 'specials'. Didn't like it then, don't like it now.

Tend to agree. But most production people hate video and will do anything
to make it look 'different'. They've also changed most if not all the
Lighting Directors. The Bill used to be known for using available light -
or making it look like it was. It now looks 'lit'.


Ah, yes. That's it I think. I was trying to figure just what they had done.
I always try to shoot photos where possible with available light, and always
have both with 35mm film, and latterly, digital. Personally, I think it
gives a more 'natural' look. So in the case of The Bill, it's probably a
two-way thing. Different lighting directors who believe in artificially
lighting the scene, and a desire by the writers / producers / directors (??)
to try to make it look 'edgier' to go with their new post 9pm dark
storylines ...





changed the way it's lit, presumably to try to give it some kind of
dark edginess, added the most inappropriate incidental music, and
changed the characters into moody hard-men. That show had a good
format before, and wasn't suffering falling ratings, so why try to
fix what ain't broke ?

Oh, but it was. Rumour has it ITV wanted to pull it totally - but
Talkback Thames threatened to withdraw the other shows they make for
ITV if they did. Hence it changing to only one ep per week - and if
the ratings don't improve it will go by Xmas.


Hmmm. Not what I read, but as you are 'in the trade', probably more
accurate. Still, with what they've done to the programme now, I can't
see it picking up many new viewers, and I think that many of the
existing ones won't stick around long either.

That's always the problem when you change the style.

It has now lost all of
its humour and 'feelgood' factor. It was sort of like a latter day
Dixon of Dock Green in some ways. I think it showed quite nicely that
sometimes, an average copper's day is more about helping old ladies
cross the road, than screaming down that road at 80 mph in the area car
to get to some pervert's house before he has a chance to murder the
child he's abducted, and wipe his hard drive. Every storyline now seems
to be about a CID operation, with uniform backing them up. All of the
stories seem 'dark' and 'moody'. They've turned the head of CID into an
arsy, sulky, depressive, and Jack Meadows into a growling grumpy old
sod. If this is what the programme makers think is going to save the
programme, then I think it probably will be pulled by Christmas, and
sadly, not really missed.

Sadly the advertisers don't want the older audience. They want youngsters
who they think have more income to spend on their products. Hence them
spending a much lower percentage of their budget on TV than used to be.

Arfa

--
*Microsoft broke Volkswagen's record: They only made 21.4 million bugs.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On 8/14/2009 11:46 PM isw spake thus:

In article ,
David Nebenzahl wrote:

Sounds OK to me, except that I just checked and reset my computah's
clock (I use a little Windoze utility called "NIStime" that gets the
time from NIST); it was off by about 5 minutes. Haven't synched it up
for at least 6 months, so I know my RTCC is at least that accurate.
(Running W2K, so I assume that no software process is adjusting my
clock.) Shouldn't most PC clocks be about that accurate? (Older MB,
forget exactly what, can find out if you're interested.)

Most crystals used in computers are within ten or 20 parts per million
of the frequency stamped on the case (you can get a lot more accurate
ones, but computers don't need it). AFAIR, those little cylindrical
"clock" crystals that run at 32,768 Hz are at least ten times poorer,
and far more temperature sensitive to boot. I think the *best* you could
expect from one of those without special treatment would be about a
minute a month.

Hope I'm not belaboring the point here. I just ran "net time" again and
got the error message "Could not locate a time-server". So I assume that
even if that process is running on my computer, as someone else here
asserted, it's not doing anything to my RTC, as there are no
time-servers to query (that it knows about). Therefore, the time my
computer displays is the actual RTC value. Therefore, it seems to be at
least as accurate as you've stated (about a minute a month), which
actually seems pretty damn good to me. If it gets off by 12 minutes a
year, resetting the thing once annually would yield a clock that should
be close enough for most folks' purposes.


--
Found--the gene that causes belief in genetic determinism

"Meat Plow" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 15 Aug 2009 01:24:19 +0100, "Arfa Daily"
wrote:

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Arfa Daily wrote:
And now that "The Bill" has got a 9 o'clock slot, they've changed the
shooting medium to something that looks altogether 'wrong',

It's called HD. ;-)


Are you sure that's what it is ? Any HD that I've seen is just that. A
perfectly 'normal' looking picture, but with a higher resolution. Why
should
a higher res camera change the tonal composition of the picture ?
(assuming
that it is being shot on video). Looks more like they've changed from film
to video, or the other way round perhaps. Or are maybe using a video mode
that attempts to simulate film, something like that. I saw it before on
the
programme when they did a couple of 'specials'. Didn't like it then, don't
like it now.

My Pana 51" has a different color matrix for SD and HD.

Explain some more ?

Arfa

Ray L. Volts wrote:

root wrote:
The damned thing loses about 20 minutes/day and has
so since the machine was new about 3 years ago.

My guess is that it isn't fixable, but maybe you
have some ideas.

TIA.

This thread reminds me of an old Columbo movie.
As I recall, the murderer had reset his PC clock so that certain data
would be erroneously timestamped while his PC was used during his
absence -- thus providing his alibi later. I don't recall how Columbo
realized this bit of trickery had taken place, but, being Columbo, he
did. Nowadays, the culprit would need to remember to also keep the
machine from syncing with online time servers!

Don't remember that one - do remember a Columbo movie where a VCR is used to
timeshift a programme (football game?) which together with drugging is used
to give the murderer a witness to prove that he was at home at the time of
the murder. Quite a new idea at the time - the movie was made before launch
of Betamax and VHS so was probably either a Umatic or Philips stacked reels
machine.

Jeff Liebermann wrote:

One machine I worked with had a unique problem. When the machine went
into standby, the clock would just stop. When it came out of standby,
it would continue where it left off, losing the time it was in
standby. It was fixed under warranty. I don't recall the vendor.

Oh yeah, check the button battery that backs up the clock. It might
be dead or dying.

I've had machines with faulty (or even missing) CMOS battery causing the
Clock to stop in Standby but still not any loss of setup data.

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.

But then the BBC don't seem to care about viewers anymore - the recent
Wimbledon problems where the schedules for the 2 channels were suddenly
switched at the last second for 2 evenings (causing people recording the
last episode of Robin Hood to miss it, needing it to be rebroadcast a few
weeks later - they switched schedules too late for PVR's to catch the
move).

Quite how they thought that helped anyone is a mystery - anyone recording
Wimbledon would have missed it and had BBC1's normal schedule recorded and
anyone recording the normal BBC1 schedule who would have got home to find a
tape / DVD of wimbledon (or in the case of PVR's nothing at all - the
change made recordings just cancel).

Arfa Daily wrote:


"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Arfa Daily wrote:
And now that "The Bill" has got a 9 o'clock slot, they've changed the
shooting medium to something that looks altogether 'wrong',

It's called HD. ;-)


Are you sure that's what it is ? Any HD that I've seen is just that. A
perfectly 'normal' looking picture, but with a higher resolution. Why
should a higher res camera change the tonal composition of the picture ?
(assuming that it is being shot on video). Looks more like they've changed
from film to video, or the other way round perhaps. Or are maybe using a
video mode that attempts to simulate film, something like that. I saw it
before on the programme when they did a couple of 'specials'. Didn't like
it then, don't like it now.

Oh dear, sounds like the horrible filmic processing - where they reverse the
order of the 2 interlaced half frames to give the picture a juddering
effect which is claimed to look more like film.

In article ,
Nigel Feltham wrote:
Are you sure that's what it is ? Any HD that I've seen is just that. A
perfectly 'normal' looking picture, but with a higher resolution. Why
should a higher res camera change the tonal composition of the picture
? (assuming that it is being shot on video). Looks more like they've
changed from film to video, or the other way round perhaps. Or are
maybe using a video mode that attempts to simulate film, something
like that. I saw it before on the programme when they did a couple of
'specials'. Didn't like it then, don't like it now.

Oh dear, sounds like the horrible filmic processing - where they reverse
the order of the 2 interlaced half frames to give the picture a
juddering effect which is claimed to look more like film.

No - The Bill has never used that. Or rather not in general - it may have
been tried on a 'special'.
The current ones are shot HD using progressive scan.

But IIRC, they suppress one field and repeat the other for this effect?

--
*He who laughs last, thinks slowest.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
Nigel Feltham wrote:
Are you sure that's what it is ? Any HD that I've seen is just that. A
perfectly 'normal' looking picture, but with a higher resolution. Why
should a higher res camera change the tonal composition of the picture
? (assuming that it is being shot on video). Looks more like they've
changed from film to video, or the other way round perhaps. Or are
maybe using a video mode that attempts to simulate film, something
like that. I saw it before on the programme when they did a couple of
'specials'. Didn't like it then, don't like it now.

Oh dear, sounds like the horrible filmic processing - where they reverse
the order of the 2 interlaced half frames to give the picture a
juddering effect which is claimed to look more like film.

No - The Bill has never used that. Or rather not in general - it may have
been tried on a 'special'.
The current ones are shot HD using progressive scan.

But IIRC, they suppress one field and repeat the other for this effect?


Certainly, no one in their right mind would deliberately reverse the
interlace ordering - the result is unwatchable.

Sylvia.

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
Arfa Daily wrote:
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 ... :-\

Depends - the actual ad break times are pretty accurate between some of
the companies - the idea being to prevent channel hopping when the ads
come on. You'll just see ads on the others. Hence the way they crash into
the break on progs not made with this schedule in mind. And most of ITV
comes from just one playout centre, so should be synchronised across the
country.
Start times for progs have never been accurately published. They've always
been approximate - apart from on some data points in the evening.


Here in Australia I got documentary proof that a station was
deliberately running late. See

http://groups.google.com/group/aus.t...a580334e9ff9f2

I had recorded that channel that evening, on a PC that has its clock
synchronized to an accurate clock, and the times given in that schedule
were to within one second of when the material was actually broadcast.

They just weren't the times that had been advertised.

Sylvia.

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.

In article ,
Sylvia Else wrote:
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.

If you give it some thought, it's near impossible to make a prog run 'to
the second', as some seem to want. You could, of course, always make it
shorter and fill the gaps with trails etc - allowing the next one to start
on the second. But that would bring even more complaints. ;-)

--
*Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

David Nebenzahl wrote:

Hope I'm not belaboring the point here. I just ran "net time" again and
got the error message "Could not locate a time-server". So I assume that
even if that process is running on my computer, as someone else here
asserted, it's not doing anything to my RTC, as there are no
time-servers to query (that it knows about). Therefore, the time my
computer displays is the actual RTC value. Therefore, it seems to be at
least as accurate as you've stated (about a minute a month), which
actually seems pretty damn good to me. If it gets off by 12 minutes a
year, resetting the thing once annually would yield a clock that should
be close enough for most folks' purposes.


http://download.cnet.com/Atomic-Cloc...2_4-14844.html


--
You can't have a sense of humor, if you have no sense!

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

In article ,
Sylvia Else wrote:
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.

If you give it some thought, it's near impossible to make a prog run 'to
the second', as some seem to want. You could, of course, always make it
shorter and fill the gaps with trails etc - allowing the next one to start
on the second. But that would bring even more complaints. ;-)

Maybe not with live shows but when shows are pre-recorded the broadcaster
knows the exact length of each show long before broadcast so should be able
to make the published schedule fit what is actually broadcast - like if you
broadcast a pre-recorded show at 8pm and you know the recording is exactly
60 mins long then advertise the next one as 9:02 to allow for trailers not
9:00 and run late.

Why is BBC1's 'ONE SHOW' always broadcast 2 minutes early (both start and
end times) - I know it's live but showing just 1 trailer before the show
would make it run to schedule, surely showing extra trailers would bring in
less complaints than viewers missing the first 2 minutes of every episode.

On 8/16/2009 6:52 AM Meat Plow spake thus:

On Sat, 15 Aug 2009 14:56:05 -0700, David Nebenzahl
wrote:

Hope I'm not belaboring the point here. I just ran "net time" again
and got the error message "Could not locate a time-server". So I
assume that even if that process is running on my computer, as
someone else here asserted, it's not doing anything to my RTC, as
there are no time-servers to query (that it knows about).
Therefore, the time my computer displays is the actual RTC value.
Therefore, it seems to be at least as accurate as you've stated
(about a minute a month), which actually seems pretty damn good to
me. If it gets off by 12 minutes a year, resetting the thing once
annually would yield a clock that should be close enough for most
folks' purposes.

You have to set net time up before you can use it.

Well, duh; that was kinda my point.

So I take it you don't disagree with what I said, or have nothing else
to add?


--
Found--the gene that causes belief in genetic determinism

On 8/16/2009 9:55 AM Michael A. Terrell spake thus:

David Nebenzahl wrote:

Hope I'm not belaboring the point here. I just ran "net time" again and
got the error message "Could not locate a time-server". So I assume that
even if that process is running on my computer, as someone else here
asserted, it's not doing anything to my RTC, as there are no
time-servers to query (that it knows about).

http://download.cnet.com/Atomic-Cloc...2_4-14844.html

Thanks, but I'm happy with the little utility I already use that
contacts NIST (Nat'l Institute of Standards and Technology); see
http://tf.nist.gov/service/its.htm for more info.


--
Found--the gene that causes belief in genetic determinism

In article ,
Nigel Feltham wrote:
If you give it some thought, it's near impossible to make a prog run
'to the second', as some seem to want. You could, of course, always
make it shorter and fill the gaps with trails etc - allowing the next
one to start on the second. But that would bring even more complaints.
;-)

Maybe not with live shows but when shows are pre-recorded the
broadcaster knows the exact length of each show long before broadcast so
should be able to make the published schedule fit what is actually
broadcast - like if you broadcast a pre-recorded show at 8pm and you
know the recording is exactly 60 mins long then advertise the next one
as 9:02 to allow for trailers not 9:00 and run late.

Oh they do know the *exact* length of a pre-recorded show - but even those
won't run on time to the second. And so much is automated these days,
playout wise.

Why is BBC1's 'ONE SHOW' always broadcast 2 minutes early (both start
and end times) - I know it's live but showing just 1 trailer before the
show would make it run to schedule, surely showing extra trailers would
bring in less complaints than viewers missing the first 2 minutes of
every episode.

Do people really switch on at the exact minute? More of a problem with VHS
recorders where you're swapping channels to record two progs. Luckily PVRs
get round this - to some extent. But the one thing you can be sure of is
programme companies not cooperating with one another just for the viewer.
;-)

--
*Warning: Dates in Calendar are closer than they appear.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On 8/16/2009 2:51 PM Meat Plow spake thus:

I agree that for most a minute per month is reasonable but I would
expect the same accuracy as my $29.99 Timex wris****ch which is more
like a second a month.

So that kinda begs the question of why computer mfrs. can't (or won't)
include clocks that are at *least* as accurate as a Timex, no? Wouldn't
a computah be a more compelling reason for a more accurate clock? (I
know, $$$ bottom line, right?)

If you use the NIST SNTP server you'll be as accurate as how
frequently your SNTP client updates.

Of course, it would be nice to know one's computer would maintain
accurate time even if, god forbid, it was somehow disconnected from The
Network ...


--
Found--the gene that causes belief in genetic determinism

On Sun, 16 Aug 2009 17:34:37 -0700, David Nebenzahl
wrote:

On 8/16/2009 2:51 PM Meat Plow spake thus:

I agree that for most a minute per month is reasonable but I would
expect the same accuracy as my $29.99 Timex wris****ch which is more
like a second a month.

So that kinda begs the question of why computer mfrs. can't (or won't)
include clocks that are at *least* as accurate as a Timex, no? Wouldn't
a computah be a more compelling reason for a more accurate clock? (I
know, $$$ bottom line, right?)

Because it's difficult. The right way to have done it would have been
to do a function call from an RTC (real time clock) every time some
application needs the actual time. IBM or MS, in their infinite
wisdom, elected to install an RTC on the mainboard, copy its contents
to the operating system, and then let the OS have the time available
without having to read it from the RTC chip. Great idea in the days
of 4.77MHz CPU's, which don't have too many operations per second. Not
so great an idea with 3GHz processors, where the much larger number of
operations per second will produce far more lost interrupts per
second. The result is clock drift, always in the form of losing time.
Most apps that require accurate time (i.e. SMTPE time code
synchronized NLS editor, SONET, etc) will usually get the time from an
external source, rather than use the OS or even the RTC.

If you use the NIST SNTP server you'll be as accurate as how
frequently your SNTP client updates.

Of course, it would be nice to know one's computer would maintain
accurate time even if, god forbid, it was somehow disconnected from The
Network ...

There are internal GPS receivers that will supply accurate bus timing.
http://www.symmetricom.com/products/gps-solutions/bus-level-timing/

If your worried about losing sync when the internet hickups, you can
go cheap and just use the NMEA-182 time data from the GPS or the 1pps
time ticks. Last resort is a WWVB time receiver, which works quite
well in the middle of the night, when you probably don't need it.

Incidentally, I had an odd experience back in the stone age of PC's. I
was doing work for a local PC dealer. I wrote my first, and almost
last, Turbo Pascal program that displayed an analog clock on the CGA
screen, and planted it on a PC in the window of the store. I knew it
wasn't terribly accurate, but it was tolerable (at about 5 minutes per
day). Shoppers would walk up to the window, look at the computer
screen, and then reset their wrist watches using the PC as a
reference. Of course, the computer MUST be more accurate. I
eventually had to put a sign in the window warning that this was a bad
idea.


--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

In article ,
David Nebenzahl wrote:

So that kinda begs the question of why computer mfrs. can't (or won't)
include clocks that are at *least* as accurate as a Timex, no? Wouldn't
a computah be a more compelling reason for a more accurate clock? (I
know, $$$ bottom line, right?)

Yup. Most of these computers use motherboards which are manufactured
under extreme competitive pressure. Shaving a few pennies off of the
bill-of-materials, per board, can make the difference between getting
the contract and not.

--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Friends of Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!

In article ,
David Nebenzahl wrote:

On 8/16/2009 9:55 AM Michael A. Terrell spake thus:

David Nebenzahl wrote:

Hope I'm not belaboring the point here. I just ran "net time" again and
got the error message "Could not locate a time-server". So I assume that
even if that process is running on my computer, as someone else here
asserted, it's not doing anything to my RTC, as there are no
time-servers to query (that it knows about).

http://download.cnet.com/Atomic-Cloc...2_4-14844.html

Thanks, but I'm happy with the little utility I already use that
contacts NIST (Nat'l Institute of Standards and Technology); see
http://tf.nist.gov/service/its.htm for more info.

You should stay away from NIST (and all other stratum one servers) to
avoid overloading their server unless you have a real need for high
precision -- REALLY high. Otherwise, find a good stratum two server to
connect to; you'll never know the difference. There are a lot; just
google. I use time.apple.com.

Isaac

In article ,
David Nebenzahl wrote:

On 8/16/2009 2:51 PM Meat Plow spake thus:

I agree that for most a minute per month is reasonable but I would
expect the same accuracy as my $29.99 Timex wris****ch which is more
like a second a month.

So that kinda begs the question of why computer mfrs. can't (or won't)
include clocks that are at *least* as accurate as a Timex, no? Wouldn't
a computah be a more compelling reason for a more accurate clock? (I
know, $$$ bottom line, right?)

If you use the NIST SNTP server you'll be as accurate as how
frequently your SNTP client updates.

Of course, it would be nice to know one's computer would maintain
accurate time even if, god forbid, it was somehow disconnected from The
Network ...

Functionally impossible. By adding money, you can reduce the drift rate
but you can't make it zero. Period. Just use NTP. And *stay away* from
the stratum one servers like NIST; they have better things to do than
keep your computer's clock on time.

Isaac

In article ,
Jeff Liebermann wrote:

On Sun, 16 Aug 2009 17:34:37 -0700, David Nebenzahl
wrote:

On 8/16/2009 2:51 PM Meat Plow spake thus:

I agree that for most a minute per month is reasonable but I would
expect the same accuracy as my $29.99 Timex wris****ch which is more
like a second a month.

So that kinda begs the question of why computer mfrs. can't (or won't)
include clocks that are at *least* as accurate as a Timex, no? Wouldn't
a computah be a more compelling reason for a more accurate clock? (I
know, $$$ bottom line, right?)

Because it's difficult. The right way to have done it would have been
to do a function call from an RTC (real time clock) every time some
application needs the actual time.

I don't agree. NO CLOCK, running alone, can be really accurate over the
long term. A much better way is to take the output from a crummy,
inaccurate *but low cost* clock and using an external time reference,
synthesize from it a local clock of simply amazing accuracy.

NTP solves the problem completely, and at a very low cost (processing
cycles instead of expen$ive hardware). NTP works even if the computer
it's running on has *no RTC* (in the hardware sense) at all. All it
needs is some sort of interrupt generated every N cycles of the
processor clock (N is any integer that produces regular interrupts a few
times a second; the actual interval is not important).

Isaac

In article ,
Sylvia Else wrote:

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
Nigel Feltham wrote:
Are you sure that's what it is ? Any HD that I've seen is just that. A
perfectly 'normal' looking picture, but with a higher resolution. Why
should a higher res camera change the tonal composition of the picture
? (assuming that it is being shot on video). Looks more like they've
changed from film to video, or the other way round perhaps. Or are
maybe using a video mode that attempts to simulate film, something
like that. I saw it before on the programme when they did a couple of
'specials'. Didn't like it then, don't like it now.

Oh dear, sounds like the horrible filmic processing - where they reverse
the order of the 2 interlaced half frames to give the picture a
juddering effect which is claimed to look more like film.

No - The Bill has never used that. Or rather not in general - it may have
been tried on a 'special'.
The current ones are shot HD using progressive scan.

But IIRC, they suppress one field and repeat the other for this effect?


Certainly, no one in their right mind would deliberately reverse the
interlace ordering - the result is unwatchable.

But recording only odd (or even -- doesn't matter) fields is a very
functional low-quality sort of "compression"; VCR's have been using it
for years.

Isaac

In article ,
Nigel Feltham wrote:

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

In article ,
Sylvia Else wrote:
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.

If you give it some thought, it's near impossible to make a prog run 'to
the second', as some seem to want. You could, of course, always make it
shorter and fill the gaps with trails etc - allowing the next one to start
on the second. But that would bring even more complaints. ;-)

Maybe not with live shows but when shows are pre-recorded the broadcaster
knows the exact length of each show long before broadcast

Live or recorded, it is perfectly possible for broadcasters to maintain
program timing to the nearest second; we used to do it back in the
sixties, when nationwide network switching was synchronized by people
watching Western Union clocks on the walls of broadcast stations all
over the country. What has happened is that broadcasters either don't
care any more, or there is some commercial advantage to playing fast and
loose with the timing. My bet is on the latter.

Isaac

In article ,
"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote:

In article ,
Nigel Feltham wrote:
If you give it some thought, it's near impossible to make a prog run
'to the second', as some seem to want. You could, of course, always
make it shorter and fill the gaps with trails etc - allowing the next
one to start on the second. But that would bring even more complaints.
;-)

Maybe not with live shows but when shows are pre-recorded the
broadcaster knows the exact length of each show long before broadcast so
should be able to make the published schedule fit what is actually
broadcast - like if you broadcast a pre-recorded show at 8pm and you
know the recording is exactly 60 mins long then advertise the next one
as 9:02 to allow for trailers not 9:00 and run late.

Oh they do know the *exact* length of a pre-recorded show - but even those
won't run on time to the second.

Yes, they do. Timing is based on the number of frames in the entire
show, and the frame rate is very, very, accurately controlled by major
broadcasters -- figure on something better than one part in a hundred
million from any major network. You can use the frame rate, line rate,
or color subcarrier frequency as at least a stratum two timebase if you
refer to any major network's signals.

And so much is automated these days, playout wise.

That just makes the switching times more precise -- IF the operator
cares to be...

Isaac

In article ,
David Nebenzahl wrote:
I agree that for most a minute per month is reasonable but I would
expect the same accuracy as my $29.99 Timex wris****ch which is more
like a second a month.

So that kinda begs the question of why computer mfrs. can't (or won't)
include clocks that are at *least* as accurate as a Timex, no? Wouldn't
a computah be a more compelling reason for a more accurate clock? (I
know, $$$ bottom line, right?)

Wonder if it's because a wrist watch is kept at a pretty constant
temperature via the skin?

--
*I'm pretty sure that sex is better than logic, but I can't prove it.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

In article ],
isw wrote:
Oh they do know the *exact* length of a pre-recorded show - but even those
won't run on time to the second.

Yes, they do. Timing is based on the number of frames in the entire
show, and the frame rate is very, very, accurately controlled by major
broadcasters -- figure on something better than one part in a hundred
million from any major network. You can use the frame rate, line rate,
or color subcarrier frequency as at least a stratum two timebase if you
refer to any major network's signals.

I know the length won't vary as transmitted, but all one hour progs etc
ain't *exactly* the same length.

--
*Pride is what we have. Vanity is what others have.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

"isw" wrote in message
]...
In article ,
Nigel Feltham wrote:

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

In article ,
Sylvia Else wrote:
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.

If you give it some thought, it's near impossible to make a prog run
'to
the second', as some seem to want. You could, of course, always make it
shorter and fill the gaps with trails etc - allowing the next one to
start
on the second. But that would bring even more complaints. ;-)

Maybe not with live shows but when shows are pre-recorded the broadcaster
knows the exact length of each show long before broadcast

Live or recorded, it is perfectly possible for broadcasters to maintain
program timing to the nearest second; we used to do it back in the
sixties, when nationwide network switching was synchronized by people
watching Western Union clocks on the walls of broadcast stations all
over the country. What has happened is that broadcasters either don't
care any more, or there is some commercial advantage to playing fast and
loose with the timing. My bet is on the latter.

Isaac

That's my feeling too. It definitely used to be much better here in the UK,
than it is now. If a programme was billed to start at 8pm, then it pretty
much did. Now, it is often several minutes late, after they have finished
showing genuine commercials, and then long trailers for forthcoming
programmes. Even the BBC is now poor, and they only have their own trailers
to factor into the equation. I really don't think that they care too much
these days, as the 'networks' are no longer formed from independant regional
stations, each with their own control centre, which had to synchronise, and
jump on and off the network, as the programming and commercial breaks
dictated. It probably is just a combination of 'no need', someone's
smart-arsed thinking about channel surfing, and the general 'don't really
care' attitude that's pervading everything we do now ...

Arfa

In article ,
Arfa Daily wrote:
That's my feeling too. It definitely used to be much better here in the
UK, than it is now. If a programme was billed to start at 8pm, then it
pretty much did.

Pretty much sums it up. But in those days few had dead accurate clocks
which are so common now.

If you'd said 9 o'clock you'd have been right - that was one data point
for the network, the 9 o'clock news.

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Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.