On 23/10/2007, Duncan Barnes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On 23/10/2007, Brian Butterworth <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Let's just get this 100% clear: Sky DO NOT OWN THE ASTRA SATELLITES. > > > > I wasn't suggesting that Sky own the Astra fleet at all, I am quite > aware of this. > > > Surely as the platform provider Sky have a responsibility to > > monitor all the content broadcast through their systems (even > > if they don't own the satellites and just lease bandwidth)? > > It would've seemed a bit pointless to not have the facilities > > to monitor all the channels being broadcast. > > Andrew's got in before me and is right, no Sky arent responsible > directly for every channel (although its still the biggest MCR I've > been in to date so they are monitoring more than they playout). I > suppose the responsibility is between the channel playout center and > whoever is uplinking will also have monitoring of various sorts > although it won't always be people looking at monitors, most of the > time its automatic video and freeze frame detection kit.
When I was at BT Broadcast, we did indeed monitor all these kinds of things, both for Sky and other broadcasters. Whilst putting up some of the channels on screens was one option - it certainly wasn't mosaics - either the picture went onto a dedicated small monitor on a video wall or to an operator's dedicated monitor (using a video switch). We developed some sophisticated kit that can sit at various parts of the broadcast network and detect problems that the human eye wouldn't even be able to detect, especially from a multi screen. For example, any break in the audio (a few second of silence) or problems with the technical nature of the picture would result in an alarm. Depending on where the actual fault originated in the network, you would get a single alarm or the whole network "lighting up red". Sometimes this could have quite humour effects - we had a contract with C4 for delivery of their channel around the UK. The whole annual value of the contract was due to be repaid if thirty-seconds of downtime happened during the year. One day, C4 broadcast an obituary programme and left thirty seconds of silence at the end of the programme - unheard of. We had calibrated our instruments to regard more than five seconds of silence as a systematic failure, so six seconds into the "silence" the monitoring systems, then the Master Control Room and then every automatic escalation notification system went nuts. Thankfully as it didn't really happen, we didn't have to repay the £4m to C4. As Chris mentioned, its a value added sort of thing, its not a direct > money maker but might encourage people to subscribe to channels they > don't have. I do however take Andrews point that it is a lot of > 'pages'. Which equals a lot of expensive equipment to make it happen > for every channel. Even if you had 8 channels on each 'page', which is > about as many as I reckon you'd get away with thats still quite a > large number of pages. And you would get into all the usual arguments about 'prominence'... Added to that the complexities of bringing the channels together to > make the mosaics, for instance we have BBC1, BBC 2, ITV1, C4, Five at > the start of the EPG. Sky don't have access directly to ITV for one, > as it doesnt go through them, it goes from ITV to Arqiva > London->Winchester->Morn Hill so they'd have to bring the video feed > in to make their mosaic for this first page either off air or via an > expensive video circuit. And if you do that for every channel thats > uplinked by someone else thats going to get expensive unless you > reorganise the EPG to fit around the content provider. And here's the problem in a nutshell. Also, BBC1 has 17 UK regions on satellite. BBC2 has four, ITV1 has 24, C4 has six (used for advertising only), so it would be impossible to do a matrix for these channels. http://www.ukfree.tv/helpme.php?faqid=10 http://www.ukfree.tv/maps.php Sorry if that last bit doesnt entirely make sense to some, I've got an > image of the diagrams for a lot of these services in my head but its > difficult to translate onto paper. > > It would be a nice idea tho! > - > Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please > visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. > Unofficial > list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ > -- Please email me back if you need any more help. Brian Butterworth www.ukfree.tv
