Now that everything BBC is in HD on satellite I sometime see BBC
Parliament in HD for a while as I flick through the channels.

Why are the text overlays at the bottom sometimes so poor?
I think perhaps it's coverage of the House of Lords where it's bad while
the House of Commons is done properly. But I'm not sure.
It's like they are extremely crudely upscaled SD. Nearest pixel of
something really dumb like that. If I watch the SD version my TV does a
much better job of upscaling.

I'm not sure if the actual video is upscaled, they look a little sharper
on the HD version but perhaps they're also upscaled. If they are I think
they're upscaled properly.

--
Brian Gregory (in England).

Would not know, but I do remember the days of analogue video, and both
betamax and VHS had fuzzy captions due to the attempt to sharpen the images.
It looked OK on pictures but decidedly undecided on captions.
Several of the video formats started to use some form of digital processing
to try to get around the 'ringing' analogue sharpeners, but although better,
they still did not look right.
Brian

--

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briang1@blueyonder.co.uk
Blind user, so no pictures please
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"Brian Gregory" <void-invalid-dead-dontuse@email.invalid> wrote in message
news:k6cpllFq3b2U1@mid.individual.net...
> Now that everything BBC is in HD on satellite I sometime see BBC
> Parliament in HD for a while as I flick through the channels.
>
> Why are the text overlays at the bottom sometimes so poor?
> I think perhaps it's coverage of the House of Lords where it's bad while
> the House of Commons is done properly. But I'm not sure.
> It's like they are extremely crudely upscaled SD. Nearest pixel of
> something really dumb like that. If I watch the SD version my TV does a
> much better job of upscaling.
>
> I'm not sure if the actual video is upscaled, they look a little sharper
> on the HD version but perhaps they're also upscaled. If they are I think
> they're upscaled properly.
>
> --
> Brian Gregory (in England).

When BBC Parliament HD first started a few weeks ago, I looked and found
that they were upscaling what looked like sub-SD 544x576 to HD (the ultimate
in turd-polishing!), with captions to match (ie captions were added to the
544x576 then the whole thing was upscaled, rather than HD captions on
upscaled pictures.

A few days later they seemed to be showing full HD pictures and captions. If
some people are seeing low-def picture and captions at times, that suggests
that some chambers / committee rooms still have sub-SD feed and matching
caption generators; the fact that captions are sometimes fuzzy suggests that
they are added locally to the room, rather than at a central mixing desk
where HD captions could be added even to sub-SD pictures.

I remember the days of captions on analogue TV when multi-path reception was
a problem: the sharper contrast between the white lettering and the black
background (or vice versa) showed up defects that were much less obvious on
a real picture. And then if you recorded that on VHS and played it back you
got all the added defects of VHS and any over-sharpening that it may
introduce.

"Brian Gaff" <brian1gaff@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:ttsf5q$jq2v$1@dont-email.me...
> Would not know, but I do remember the days of analogue video, and both
> betamax and VHS had fuzzy captions due to the attempt to sharpen the
> images. It looked OK on pictures but decidedly undecided on captions.
> Several of the video formats started to use some form of digital
> processing to try to get around the 'ringing' analogue sharpeners, but
> although better, they still did not look right.
> Brian
>
> --
>
> --:
> This newsgroup posting comes to you directly from...
> The Sofa of Brian Gaff...
> briang1@blueyonder.co.uk
> Blind user, so no pictures please
> Note this Signature is meaningless.!
> "Brian Gregory" <void-invalid-dead-dontuse@email.invalid> wrote in message
> news:k6cpllFq3b2U1@mid.individual.net...
>> Now that everything BBC is in HD on satellite I sometime see BBC
>> Parliament in HD for a while as I flick through the channels.
>>
>> Why are the text overlays at the bottom sometimes so poor?
>> I think perhaps it's coverage of the House of Lords where it's bad while
>> the House of Commons is done properly. But I'm not sure.
>> It's like they are extremely crudely upscaled SD. Nearest pixel of
>> something really dumb like that. If I watch the SD version my TV does a
>> much better job of upscaling.
>>
>> I'm not sure if the actual video is upscaled, they look a little sharper
>> on the HD version but perhaps they're also upscaled. If they are I think
>> they're upscaled properly.
>>
>> --
>> Brian Gregory (in England).
>
>

Ah! Fried selenium rectifiers and caption buzz.

Those were the days.

:) Alan

On Fri, 3 Mar 2023 12:32:50 -0000
"NY" <me@privacy.invalid> wrote:

> When BBC Parliament HD first started a few weeks ago, I looked and found
> that they were upscaling what looked like sub-SD 544x576 to HD (the ultimate
> in turd-polishing!), with captions to match (ie captions were added to the
> 544x576 then the whole thing was upscaled, rather than HD captions on
> upscaled pictures.
>
> A few days later they seemed to be showing full HD pictures and captions. If
> some people are seeing low-def picture and captions at times, that suggests
> that some chambers / committee rooms still have sub-SD feed and matching
> caption generators; the fact that captions are sometimes fuzzy suggests that
> they are added locally to the room, rather than at a central mixing desk
> where HD captions could be added even to sub-SD pictures.
>
> I remember the days of captions on analogue TV when multi-path reception was
> a problem: the sharper contrast between the white lettering and the black
> background (or vice versa) showed up defects that were much less obvious on
> a real picture. And then if you recorded that on VHS and played it back you
> got all the added defects of VHS and any over-sharpening that it may
> introduce.
>
>
>
> "Brian Gaff" <brian1gaff@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:ttsf5q$jq2v$1@dont-email.me...
> > Would not know, but I do remember the days of analogue video, and both
> > betamax and VHS had fuzzy captions due to the attempt to sharpen the
> > images. It looked OK on pictures but decidedly undecided on captions.
> > Several of the video formats started to use some form of digital
> > processing to try to get around the 'ringing' analogue sharpeners, but
> > although better, they still did not look right.
> > Brian
> >
> > --
> >
> > --:
> > This newsgroup posting comes to you directly from...
> > The Sofa of Brian Gaff...
> > briang1@blueyonder.co.uk
> > Blind user, so no pictures please
> > Note this Signature is meaningless.!
> > "Brian Gregory" <void-invalid-dead-dontuse@email.invalid> wrote in message
> > news:k6cpllFq3b2U1@mid.individual.net...
> >> Now that everything BBC is in HD on satellite I sometime see BBC
> >> Parliament in HD for a while as I flick through the channels.
> >>
> >> Why are the text overlays at the bottom sometimes so poor?
> >> I think perhaps it's coverage of the House of Lords where it's bad while
> >> the House of Commons is done properly. But I'm not sure.
> >> It's like they are extremely crudely upscaled SD. Nearest pixel of
> >> something really dumb like that. If I watch the SD version my TV does a
> >> much better job of upscaling.
> >>
> >> I'm not sure if the actual video is upscaled, they look a little sharper
> >> on the HD version but perhaps they're also upscaled. If they are I think
> >> they're upscaled properly.
> >>
> >> --
> >> Brian Gregory (in England).
> >
> >

--
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