On 19 Apr 2007, at 01:48, Christopher Woods wrote:
I bet your siblings don't watch downloaded media on a big, high-
quality
television set. YouTube and even broadband-bitrate streaming
formats just
look shockingly bad on a TV screen - the old interlaced sets of
yore, whose
method of display helped to mask the encoding artefacts to a
degree, are
increasingly relegated to bedrooms and lofts, with big, flatscreen
LCD and
plasma sets taking centre stage - and they don't hide _anything_ in
the
source image. Even when I hook up my laptop via DVI to my parents'
modest
22" Samsung LCD (720p, HD Ready) in the kitchen, and sit a few feet
away,
things like BBC News streams look pretty ugly.
Freeview looks even worse, especially on HD-ready flatscreens - but
that's
another bugbear of mine. If the BBC _REALLY_ cared about quality,
they'd
encode to H264 (or my favourite at the moment, x264) - full-blown H.
264/AVC
as used for BBC HD would be overkill because you need a BEAST of a
machine
to even play big resolutions back without it falling into a
complete heap,
but whilst x264 would be great for any HD content (we can only
hope!) x264
can also give comparable quality to any of the ASP codecs like xvid
or divx
and bring in slightly smaller filesizes.
And, as there's things like the CCCP codec pack and freely available
filters, the BBC could create a simple codec bundle - the BBC
Playback Pack,
which contained the filters, splitters and codecs necessary and
maybe an
automated update mechanism which would run whilst you were watching
a BBC
video to check for updates or additional codecs down the line. And,
as a
bonus, the more skilled PC users could keep their own codec
installs if they
already had them set up perfectly, and then just be able to view the
high-quality content without having to have the BBC pack installed.
It'd be a crying shame - and a missed opportunity - if the BBC
don't think
of doing something like this and encoding with an AVC codec, at
least for
any HD content that's planned to be offered eventually via the
platform.
</2p>
Well here's the kicker: they are all using their computers, which
have a resolution at least as high as the new flashy flat screen TVs.
So yeah, they see the artifacts... and don't care that much. (that
said - free to students is obviously much more valuable than great
quality... )
I agree- I don't think this is any harder than trying to push it via
real. I accept it's early days, but this is vital if the BBC wants to
get this right - picking good quality codecs and running with them.
that said, don't forget - the source material for stuff like jeeves
and wooster et al isn't that great to begin with -- so there's only
so much you can do.
I can't wait to see if i have been accepted- really looking forward
to being able to call up the great content that exists -- as and
when. And hoping very much that it doesn't go the way of 4OD: Windows
only!
- James
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