TV Broadcast Quality

[johnnywb]

Just watching Channel 4 news and the quality of the pictures from the US are awful. I've noticed it before, anyone know why? We seem to be able to broadcast top quality from the middle of a battlefield in the middle of knowhere, but stuff from the US looks all fuzzy?

[jmorgan]

Depends on a lot of things. What it was filmed on, data rate, fibre or satellite feed, satellite bandwidth.

[miniman]

Well their basic TV resolution is much lower than ours - in fact I'm pretty sure that their "HD" is not much higher resolution than our standard TV picture. So presumably they film with equipment that is geared up to providing that level of quality and not much more.

[E31Shrew]

Seem to recall NTSC [American] operates at 480 whereas PAL [UK] transmits at 576. Hence the take up for HD in the US has been a lot higher than UK.
Same as watching any USA programme filmed at their normal resolution eg Friends. Always looks pretty ropey

[Davi]

E31Shrew said:

Seem to recall NTSC (American) operates at 480 whereas PAL [UK] transmits at 576. Hence the take up for HD in the US has been a lot higher than UK.
Same as watching any USA programme filmed at their normal resolution eg Friends. Always looks pretty ropey

Sounds about right.

I think they do it to match the visual quality with the programming quality.

Edited by Davi on Monday 3rd November 20:10

[Simpo Two]

E31Shrew said:

Seem to recall NTSC American operates at 480 whereas PAL UK transmits at 576.

PAL is 625 lines, NTSC 575 lines. Or possibly 525.

Edited by Simpo Two on Monday 3rd November 20:23

[E31Shrew]

Simpo Two said:

E31Shrew said:

Seem to recall NTSC American operates at 480 whereas PAL UK transmits at 576.

PAL is 625 lines, NTSC 575 lines. Or possibly 525.

Edited by Simpo Two on Monday 3rd November 20:23

Knew there was a 100 difference somewhere. Its 525 and 625!

[Simpo Two]

E31Shrew said:

Simpo Two said:

E31Shrew said:

Seem to recall NTSC American operates at 480 whereas PAL UK transmits at 576.

PAL is 625 lines, NTSC 575 lines. Or possibly 525.

Edited by Simpo Two on Monday 3rd November 20:23

Knew there was a 100 difference somewhere. Its 525 and 625!

You were thinking of 'PAL resolution', which is 720 x 576px...

(Quite how horizontal lines blend with pixels, I have no idea!)

[Mr. Potato Head]

The quality of the pictures from the US depends primarily on the quality of the NTSC -> PAL converter.

High-end broadcast quality standards converters are eye-wateringly expensive.

[Morningside]

I thought all studios were digital now. Speaking to someone the other night I was told that even the NTSC companies work internally using PAL standards but transmit in NTSC as you cannot sync/wipe to NTSC signals.

[Hedders]

Davi said:

I think they do it to match the visual quality with the programming quality.

[theboyfold]

Morningside said:

I thought all studios were digital now. Speaking to someone the other night I was told that even the NTSC companies work internally using PAL standards but transmit in NTSC as you cannot sync/wipe to NTSC signals.

The last American Outside Broadcast i worked on (Super Bowl back in Feb) all the American broadcasters were working NTSC, i imagine they wouldn't work PAL and then convert to NTSC. As for the channel 4 issue i imagine the biggest issue with the picture is the standards and frame rate conversion which is being done on the fly as it's a live broadcast.

[Mr. Potato Head]

Morningside said:

I thought all studios were digital now. Speaking to someone the other night I was told that even the NTSC companies work internally using PAL standards but transmit in NTSC as you cannot sync/wipe to NTSC signals.

Most are, quite a few still aren't. I've been out of the game for 2 years now, but because my last permanent job had top quality standards converters I very rarely sent anything stateside in PAL, so I doubt that they use PAL internally when they'd already paid extra for conversion to NTSC. You can convert video both ways btw.

[welshbikerduck]

NTSC - PAL is going to make the picture look worse than it is, but the NTSC is a lower resolution than PAL to begin with anyways. When ever i am in the states i always feel the need to "tune in" the TV properly because the picture is not very crisp.

[dutchgray]

theboyfold said:

Morningside said:

I thought all studios were digital now. Speaking to someone the other night I was told that even the NTSC companies work internally using PAL standards but transmit in NTSC as you cannot sync/wipe to NTSC signals.

The last American Outside Broadcast i worked on (Super Bowl back in Feb) all the American broadcasters were working NTSC, i imagine they wouldn't work PAL and then convert to NTSC. As for the channel 4 issue i imagine the biggest issue with the picture is the standards and frame rate conversion which is being done on the fly as it's a live broadcast.

But Super Bowl is live and basically only watched by Americans, so really no reason not to film NTSC, but anything pre recorded with digital cameras that they would aim to sell internationally, it makes sense to do it PAL, which is better quality and convert to NTSC for their TV, so long as its not to difficult and costly.

[Mr. Potato Head]

theboyfold said:

i imagine the biggest issue with the picture is the standards and frame rate conversion which is being done on the fly as it's a live broadcast.

I agree.
The converter may be anywhere in the chain. If it's in the sng/ob it won't be as good as a studio based one.

[Plotloss]

Why would it make sense to do it PAL?

There are five formats of PAL for a start, used in various different territories and France and a number of other countries are on SECAM.

I'd expect any production company to record by default in their home broadcasting standard.

[dilbert]

The trouble is that the two television systems are different but broadly similar levels of quality. The consequences for transfer are always to reduce the picture quality significantly.

If you go from a very much higher quality system like 35mm film or the digital movie systems, down to either US or UK TV systems the final picture is of much better, and comparable between the US and UK systems. Obviously the picture quality is poorer than the pictures you would get in a cinema.

When you see good pictures on your telly, what you may not realise is that those are the very best pictures that it could ever produce. Both the UK and US systems, like most TV systems, are fairly cheap and nasty. It only looks good because the pictures are carefully prepared to be just right for your telly.

HDTV goes some way to retrieve this situation, but it's still only medium quality compared with good quality old fashioned chemical film.

I've never seen it, but pictures taken with a UK TV camera, almost certainly look crap on a US TV set too.

ETA;
Although there are many formats for PAL, the differences are fairly minor. Much less to than for PAL vs SECAM vs NTSC, where the encoding scheme differs.

For PAL the basic encoding is the same, but there are variants with 4.2, 5.0, 5.5 and 6.0 MHz video bandwidth. Then there are variations in the audio carrier centre frequency.

Edited by dilbert on Monday 3rd November 23:39

[theboyfold]

dutchgray said:

theboyfold said:

Morningside said:

I thought all studios were digital now. Speaking to someone the other night I was told that even the NTSC companies work internally using PAL standards but transmit in NTSC as you cannot sync/wipe to NTSC signals.

The last American Outside Broadcast i worked on (Super Bowl back in Feb) all the American broadcasters were working NTSC, i imagine they wouldn't work PAL and then convert to NTSC. As for the channel 4 issue i imagine the biggest issue with the picture is the standards and frame rate conversion which is being done on the fly as it's a live broadcast.

But Super Bowl is live and basically only watched by Americans, so really no reason not to film NTSC, but anything pre recorded with digital cameras that they would aim to sell internationally, it makes sense to do it PAL, which is better quality and convert to NTSC for their TV, so long as its not to difficult and costly.

I just doubt they would produce anything in PAL internally and then convert to NTSC for the sake of broadcast quality. Although 99% of my experience has been with uk broadcasters and logic would dictate that you produce the feed in the same format that it's broadcast. Any type of coversion introduces issues, which although aren't insurmountable generate issues that don't need to be there.
With regards to the Super Bowl, we were working for the BBC and had to work NTSC as there was no PAL feed available.
I'll have a chat with some techie guys at work who have recently worked on american shows over here to see what they know...

[PJ S]

PAL is 540, NTSC is 480, of vertical picture resolution - the rest is overheads and teletext, timecodes, etc.
So, there's not that much difference on the resolution front. NTSC is just a lousy colour reproduction compared to PAL (SECAM - French)
Their HD is available in 4:3 aka 1440x720p and 1080i - the latter if deinterlaced and processed properly is better for our system, but the bulk of output is 720p, but the frame conversion from 30 -25 Hz can still be a bit of a stumbling block if the pulldown isn't done - often times they run the footage slower (26-27 frames/sec).

So, that and the lower bandwidth given to the broadcast results in the various artefacts you see on screen.