On 23/10/2007, Brian Butterworth <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > 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). >
Ahh, your ex BT, I was wondering...! > 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". > Yes I've seen a few of the current incarnations around the place, 1U units with a load of twinkling LED's, ASI/SDI inputs and network outs. We've got various similar bits, mainly in house built as well. > 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'... > Yes, I guess you'd have to have it the same as the EPG. > > 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. > Yes the regions would make it even more difficult to justify the expense! Its possible at a user end to implement but only for the technically minded, a chap I know had a linux box with a couple of DVB-T cards which was multicasting the transport streams around the house network, you could then in theory make up a mosaic on whichever PC you were using, but thats not practical or a more widely applicable solution. It would be possible for individual broadcasters to do something like this in the form of an interactive application but not really feasible for Sky to do it directly. If you were sending a video stream containing say 12 channels as a single split screen you then use the set-top box to mask off the ones which aren't specific to the users region and to resize the other ones to fit. The set-top boxes can do this processing, the NHS direct application which was played out from where I use to work relied upon this to work. - 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/
