Video bitrates for digital TV stations – October 2010

Posted on October 13, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

Back in March this year I set out a list of the video and audio bitrates for digital TV. Since then new channels have been added and some of the stations have reallocated the balance of their available bandwidth.

To gather this data, over the last few days I have recorded at least six hours, in three separate chunks, from each station onto a Topfield PVR. Then I whacked the minutes and megabytes into a spreadsheet, did the division and subtracted the audio bitrate. These figures probably overstate things a little, depending how much extra the Topfield adds into its recording stream (not much, I imagine, because they are standard MPEG files), and the presence of subtitles. So, really, only the first two significant figures of the video bitstream should be considered.

Also, remember, this is in Canberra. The figures may well be quite different elsewhere. Our commercial stations still broadcast their HD as 1,440 x 1,080, for example.

If anyone would like to repeat the process in a major capital city, I’d be happy to email through the spreadsheet on condition that you provide the information back for publication here in due course.

Station Ch Audio
format		 Audio
bitrate
(kbps)		 Video
resolution		 Average
video bitrate (Mbps)
ABC1 2 MPEG 2.0 256 720 x 576i 4.97
ABC2 22 MPEG 2.0 256 720 x 576i 3.91
ABC3 23 MPEG 2.0 256 720 x 576i 3.95
ABC News 24 24 DD 2.0 448 1280 x 720p 7.95
SBS ONE 3 MPEG 2.0 192 720 x 576i 4.19
SBS TWO 32 MPEG 2.0 192 720 x 576 3.77
SBS HD 30 MPEG 2.0 192 1280 x 720p 9.48
SC10 Canberra 5 MPEG 2.0 256 720 x 576i 6.03
One HD Canberra 50 DD 2.0 448 1440 x 1080i 14.40
PRIME Canberra 6 MPEG 2.0 256 720 x 576i 5.07
7TWO on PRIME 62 MPEG 2.0 256 720 x 576i 4.81
7mate on PRIME 63 DD 2.0 256 1440 x 1080i 10.04
WIN Canberra 8 MPEG 2.0 384 720 x 576i 4.97
Canberra GO 88 MPEG 2.0 384 720 x 576i 4.52
GEM Canberra 80 DD 2.0 192 1440 x 1080i 9.63

Interesting change: When switching to GEM Canberra, WIN reduced the Dolby Digital two channel audio bitrate from 448kbps to 192kbps. If they are going to persist with 2.0, then that makes sense. But perhaps they should also reduce the MPEG2 audio stream in their other channels from from 384kbps to 192kbps. That would allow a few more bits for the video.

ABC3 only runs a static logo (with music) after about 9pm until the next morning. The video bitrate at these times is just 1.98Mbps.

Posted in Codecs, DTV, HDTV | 5 Comments

Quality TV

Posted on October 13, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

The recent proliferation of second and third TV stations for the major broadcasters has brought some interesting material back to our TV screens. There are a lot of broadcast hours to fill up, and low cost content must be especially welcome.

Yesterday I stumbled across one. ‘7Mate on Prime’ — the third Channel 7 affiliate station — was showing the 1969 Australian TV show, ‘Riptide‘ (the episode ‘One Way to Nowhere‘ to be specific). For some reason the title was extremely familiar to me, although I have no recollection of having seen it. It turns out to be a waterside action drama, or at least that describes the episode that was on yesterday.

As it happens, it was filmed (and clearly it was film) in colour, even though Australia wasn’t to have colour TV for another six years. Perhaps they were hoping to sell it overseas.

The film clearly hasn’t aged well. Here’s one frame:

Okay, I picked one with a particularly bad splotch on it, but there are scratches throughout, and that appalling colour balance, and a very soft look, and green tinges around the edges of many objects.

Presumably being shown on a TV station’s third channel isn’t lucrative enough to justify any restoration work at all. Even if that third station is a HD one!

Posted in DTV, HDTV | 1 Comment

Undisclosed Bass

Posted on October 8, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

I’m reviewing a shiny new Denon home theatre receiver that, amongst other things, features the ability to play Internet radio. Making sure I cover everything, I explore its menus and confirm that it also plays podcasts. To test, I usually go to the Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast. Not a problem, there it is under the Science genre within the Podcasts section. To double check, I start playing it back.

Now this is episode number 272 — the most recent one as I write — and I have listened to every one of them. The last 250 or so have opened with a musical theme, followed by a woman with an English accent saying: ‘You’re listing to the skeptic’s guide to the universe, your escape to reality.’

But this time it is different. Why would that be? Something is going on only as she is talking, between about four seconds and ten seconds into the podcast. Why, in this area right here:

What you can see there is the waveform for the first 19 seconds of this episode of SGU, low pass filtered at 20 hertz. As you can see, there is virtually no infra-20 hertz content in this, except for that section, where there is masses of it. How much? Look here at this frequency spectrum showing the bottom few octaves of that six second segment:

That peak is at 11.5 hertz, and the shoulder to its right is at 14 hertz. The flattening out after the descent is achieved at about 17 hertz.

And that’s what I felt. During those few seconds, there were palpable low frequency compressions of air in the room. Somewhat audible, which I put down to the harmonic distortion components being up in the audible band. But most of the energy would be, by my guess, at the originally recorded frequencies. And look at that energy: it’s a full 18dB above the average energy level in the 40 to 1,000 hertz band!

This was a total surprise. I pulled up the podcast for episode 213 and played it, with the same problem. It has likely always been there, and I have likely failed to notice it some 250 previous times. So why now?

Why now is the Paradigm Sub2 I am testing, with its six ten inch drivers and its claimed 7 (seven) hertz at -3dB.

I have previously pointed out that sometimes unintended bass noise makes its way onto recordings due to the inability of the monitoring equipment to reproduce it. This subwoofer threatens to reveal a whole new category of unintended noise on recordings.

—

It has been a while since I’ve given anything away, so how about the Blu-ray of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Details on the disc here, including Blu-ray vs DVD comparison. No proper box, and no proper disk label, but the data content of the disc is identical to a bought one. Ask for it in comments. Australian addresses only (the disc is locked to Region B).

Posted in Audio, Giveaway | 3 Comments

Just what you want to see on parcel tracking

Posted on October 7, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

My youngest daughter is waiting for a new iPod Nano, ordered on-line. This is the tracking page for the item from TNT International:

SZ1 is somewhere in China. It took one day to get from there to Hong Kong. Three more days to get from Hong Kong to Sydney. Then four days to make the last 300km from Sydney to Canberra (okay, one was Sunday and one was a public holiday).

But, I assured my daughter, it was on the truck this morning for delivery, so it’d most likely turn up in the AM. All day I assured here that there would be no problems. Come 4:45pm I rang TNT, and they assured me that it would get here. After all, the guy wouldn’t be finishing his run until 5pm. At 5:15pm I updated the tracking screen, which then displayed as above: ‘Time Constraint Prevented Delivery. Delivery At First Opportunity’.

I’ve just driven over to the depot, with 30 seconds to spare before they locked up, and managed to retrieve it.

There were supposed to be two deliveries today and one pickup. Only one of the three happened the way it was supposed to.

Update: This morning I see that they’ve added a new line to the status list: ’07 Oct 2010, 17:36:00, Canberra, Shipment Delivered In Good Condition.’ No. Shipment picked up by dissatisfied customer.

Posted in Admin, Rant | Leave a comment

Audio Return Channel – a complication too far?

Posted on October 7, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

The latest version of HDMI — 1.4 — provides for, amongst other things the Audio Return Channel. You have a HDMI cable from your home theatre receiver to feed video to the TV. ARC allows this very same cable to carry sound from the TV back to the home theatre receiver.

To make use of this you need a TV and a home theatre receiver which both support the feature, and then to switch on all the HDMI control stuff. In general, if you have the home theatre receiver on, then when you select the built in tuner on your TV to watch TV, the receiver will automatically switch to the ‘TV’ input and receive the audio signal. No sound will come out of the TV’s speakers. When you use the TV’s volume control, it remains silent but the command is sent through to the home theatre receiver, and its volume changes.

Sounds good, eh?

Except for the side effects. Generally, switching off the TV also switches off the receiver — even if it isn’t switched to the TV input. If you were listing to a CD and decided that you didn’t want the TV on, then off goes the receiver as well and your music stops. With some equipment, when you switch the receiver on it is always set to the TV input.

And right now, I’ve just switched on the system and here’s the situation: the TV is showing the picture from a PVR plugged directly into it on HDMI 3. The TV is also connected to the receiver on HDMI 2, which supports ARC. The receiver is switched to the DVD input, into which a Blu-ray player is plugged. The sound coming out of the main speakers is that from a movie playing in the Blu-ray player.

I pointed the TV’s own remote control at the TV to turn it up so I could hear what was on playing on the PVR. The TV took that volume command and sent it down the other HDMI cable to the receiver, turning up its volume so that the Blu-ray was playing louder.

Switching off all these control features may be the only way to make the system work at all predictably.

Posted in Equipment, HDMI | 3 Comments

More government crap

Posted on October 6, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

The Australian Bureau of Statistics has selected me to undertake its ‘Economic Activity Survey 2009-10’. Bugger it.

That means I have to fill it its twenty page form. Have to.

Or do I?

I have been carefully ignoring it for the past few weeks. Just as I carefully ignored the reminder letter. The one that stated a little more forcefully that I should comply with the request. But I’m not ignoring the one that arrived today saying that ‘businesses face penalties of up to $110 per day for failure to complete and return a form when directed to do so by the Australian Statistician or his delegate’. Quite a threat.

Except that so far I’ve only been requested to complete the form. That’s how I read what looks to be the relevant section. Failing to comply with a direction under ss.10(4) is an offence under s.14, but this is silent on complying with a request under ss.10(3).

Which makes me wonder: Does the Australian Bureau of Statistics employ any competent lawyers?

Here’s a paragraph from the letter I’m writing in response:

I am amazed that it requires a mere freelance writer to inform you of your legal requirements. Do you not have legal staff? Or have I entirely missed some hidden part of your Act? As I sit here, writing this letter, I still have a nagging feeling that I must have missed something. Surely, I think, an organisation as large as yours, with the weight of the Government of Australian behind it, couldn’t be so utterly dumb in this part of its activities? If I am in error, I will require you to explicitly specify the authority that you are actually using, and to comply with the terms of that authority.

Well,  I’m certainly hoping I haven’t missed something important here. Could get expensive!

Posted in Admin, Rant | 3 Comments

20 Years of IMDB

Posted on October 4, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

I just noticed that the Internet Movie Database is claiming that it will be celebrating its 20th anniversary on 17 October this year. That surprised me. Back then, the Web was still some ten months in the future.

Anyway, it turns out that it had started as some lists on Usenet the previous year, and that date marked the first availability of tools allow the by then enormous combined list to be conveniently queried. It hit the web in 1992, which is incredibly early in Internet terms.

Meanwhile, the Wikipedia article mentions that you can change how movie titles are displayed on IMDB, and indeed you can. If you are registered, click on your name at the top right and then choose ‘Update your site preferences’. You can leave it on default or choose English or Original title.

Posted in Cinema, Computer | 1 Comment

Porting complete

Posted on September 30, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

Finally, I’ve finished porting all the posts in my old, hand-marked-up blog, into this one, all the way back to July 2003.

WordPress tells me that this will be the 703rd post.

Here’s one of interest: an analysis of the cannons on Telarc’s original recording of the 1812 Overture.

Posted in Admin | Leave a comment

New Theme

Posted on September 30, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

Now that, I think, is a nicer look. It would be totally happy if only I could:

  1. replace the ‘tags’ with ‘categories’, and
  2. insert the posting time.

Unfortunately, editing these things eludes me. I search the entire theme for the word ‘tags’, and this text apparently does not exist anywhere in a usable context!

Posted in Admin | Leave a comment

DVD Audio lives on!

Posted on September 29, 2010 by Stephen Dawson

Because I bought a King Crimson CD from Amazon once, today I got an email from them advising that In the Wake of Poseidon, KC’s second album, is due to be released in mid October. Of course, it was actually released about forty years ago, and I was about to delete the email since in the last few years I’ve purchased remastered HDCD versions of all of Crimson’s oeuvre from Red, back to the beginning.

But I read on to find that it is a double disc: CD plus DVD Audio with a lossless MLP surround mix. The CD is a remix performed by Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree fame and Robert Fripp. On the DVD Audio disc in addition to the MLP 5.1 mix there is a DTS 5.1 mix, the original mix in ‘High Resolution Stereo’ and the new mix in ‘High Resolution Stereo’ plus some other bits and pieces.

Excited, I went a-searching on Amazon, to find that the same treatment has already been given to In the Court of the Crimson King, Islands, Lizard, and Red. Only Larks Tongue in Aspic and Starless and Bible Black are missing from early Crimson. The latter is one of my all-time favourites.

Golly it’s hard to find DVD Audio on Amazon, though. The place is dreadful at labelling. Search on DVD Audio and you’ll get four pages containing just one of the King Crimson titles, and a bunch of stuff which is not at all DVD Audio.

Posted in Audio, DVD, Music | 4 Comments