OT Newer technology not as good as old -new-technology! <rant'ish>

[Clive George]

I quite like having an X+1 channel on the rare occasions I'm watching something I didn't plan to watch.

[Arfa Daily]

Which is pretty much what I said about the difference between STBs like the Sony that was mentioned and 'TescoSonic' TVs with built in Freeview. I agree that the main delays occur whilst waiting for a full data frame to obtain the decoding lock from. However, the tasks of decoding and processing, whilst perhaps being trivial for the likes of a PC processor, are still significant for a poor little TV processor trying to carry out a cartload of tasks all at once. 100mS here and another there, soon add up to something that is noticeable, and when stuck on top of the inherent lock delay, combine to make the whole channel change operation seem very slow. The thing is that whilst the processing delays could probably be reduced by using a bigger better chip with more memory and more efficient code, there's probably not a lot of point, as the lock delay does constitute the major amount, and there's nothing can be done about that one.

Arfa

[Arfa Daily]

Not quite. On one of our DTVs, when navigating the freeview programme guide the TV *does not* always respond instantly. It sometimes queues the commands and then performs 3 or 4 operations quickly after a very noticeable delay. It's clearly because some half wit specified a processor that cannot handle the load under all circumstances and did not test their design properly.

MBQ

Well yes. I guess that there is always going to be *some* shining examples of what is patently bad design. That said, I recently got my mother a Freeview PVR when her old VCR gasped its last, and I have to say that compared to the EPG on my Sky+ box, I find the Freeview one painfully slow and unergonomic to use. The box she has now is her second one. We had so much trouble with the first one locking up until it died completely, that I eventually got my money back, and bought a completely different one. Both have very poor EPG performance, which leads me to believe that the poor reponse when using this feature, is more to do with the guide itself, than the box that it's running on.

Arfa

[John Rumm]

Oh well, worth a shot ;-)

[dennis]

I always notice it when it halfway through the +1 showing. Anyway 20M broadband is fast enough to catch up with anything I missed.

[dennis]

The EPG on windows 7 MCE is pretty good and you get 14 days most of the time. Speed depends on the PC.

[Mark]

Take the disk out and clean it. Then you have to wait 1/2 hour for the logos, copyright messages, accusations of piracy and trailers which you can't skip :-(

[The Natural Philosopher]

take the disk out an clean it, then rip it, remove the adverts and other bollocks, and burn a new DVD..or leave it on your hard drive.

[Mark]

My old analogue TV does this. I can't see the point since there have never been more than 9 analogue TV channels in the UK.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Indeed. Some don't appear to realise just how much original TV costs to make. But you can have a stab from the licence fee. Multiply that by the number of channels on FreeView not provided by the BBC and you'll get an idea. There may be lots of 'tripe' on FreeView, but some must watch it otherwise it wouldn't be there.

[Man at B&Q]

[e-mail]...

It's the box, or rather the firmware running on it, rather than anything freeview. Again I can give shining examples with regard to responsiveness.

Cello DTV with intermittent (enough to be bloody annoying) crap response when using the EPG. Ferguson STB with potentially excellent EPG responsiveness except it keeps getting "upgraded" to a teletext EPG that is visually crap and I have to keep resetting it back to the original. Bush STB with excellent EPG performance.

The UI is also different in each case and may not be to taste.

MBQ

[pete]

Hmm, to get some idea - take the licence fee, as you suggest. Divide it _unequally_ among the BBC's 9 TV channels, 11 national radio channels (incl. their digital only ones) and all their local + Welsh, Scottish & NI content. Then divide by a (large) factor to account for their waste and inefficiency and the cost for a decent hour's telly turns out to be quite modest: even if wildly beyond the means of ITV. Not everything has to be £1million/hour costume drama.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Well, if you can think of original programming that will attract a mass audience and costs peanuts to make, you'd get yourself a fortune. Plenty have ideas for minority progs that they might watch - a good DIY one for example, but conveniently forget those who want to watch a prog selling cheap jewellery are a minority with the same rights...

[pete]

But it doesn't have to be original, just successful. ISTM the biggest difference between UK (i.e. BBC) and american dramas is the sheer amount of stuff they make. F'r instance they seem to commit to a "season" of 18 - 22 episodes, whereas in britain it's a fight to make a series of 6.

At the risk of getting back on topic, another example would be "New Yankee Workshop" wassit? 20+ years of programmes and 20+ episodes per year. Compare that with UK progs, such as "Wood Works" on Discovery, although it was pretty dire (all design/style and aspirational stuff, rather than showing skills & techniques for things a normal person (with £50k of power tools and 1000 sq. ft. of workshop :-) could make for themselves) which managed what? 12? episodes. Maybe showing men doing skilled crafts isn't trendy enough for the beeb?

[NT]

There is, but its not done by choice. One could instead of transmitting a whole frame every 2 seconds transmit 1/4 of these pixels every half second. Now instead of waiting upto 2 seonds the end user must wait upto half a second for the picture, albeit at lower resolution for the first upto 2 seconds. All this stuff is design choices, not dictated by the technology.

One could take it further and use quicker refreshes on the more popular channels, and slower on the less popular, resulting in less average refresh time for end users with no more data transmitted.

Perhaps these will be incoroprated into a future dtv standard.

And of course one can use a faster cpu at the receiving end to minimise added delays. Reality is its decided by cost, consumers dont often purchase based on decoding speed, so the pennies get trimmed there.

NT

[fred]

In article , Arfa Daily writes

Decoding is done in hardware so where's the processor overhead?

[Dave Plowman (News)]

That's because they have more money to spend on production. As well they might given the larger population. Plus the overseas sales. The whole world wants to see CSI Miami or whatever. CSI Bolton doesn't have the same appeal.

All down to costs. Original programming - even something as 'simple' as showing a craftsman at work - costs a lot more than showing an old Murder She Wrote or whatever.

[The Natural Philosopher]

A processor is hardware last time I looked.

[Andy Champ]

I-frames eat bandwidth, and that's a limited resource. Roughly speaking the more I-frames the more efficient the encoding - but you are rapidly into diminishing returns.

TBH I'd rather not sacrifice picture quality for the whole time just to improve channel change speed.

Andy

[R D S]

Aaaargh! The hand! I forgot about the hand which comes up when you try to skip. That's just not right is it?

I can't help but think that when everyone has a Sky plus box, it will make you watch the fekking adverts.