We’ve all been duped!

There was a time when Australian broadcast standards, and I’m talking technical standards here, were some of the best in the world.  In standard definition analogue terms, back in the days before we switched to digital, as long as you had a decent TV strength reception, our PAL system outshone our Northern Americal allies NTSC (Never The Same Color) TV standard by miles.

As a content producer, I knew that I could master a program in SD PAL, play it out to a broadcast standard, which at the pinnacle was probably uncompressed Digital-Betacam, and I knew that what I had meticulously edited and colour-graded, would essentially look pretty good once it went through the pipe and ended up on my TV screen.  Yes, it was a little soft, and yes, occasionally it might have a bit of ‘snow’ through the analogue signal, but you know, it wasn’t that bad.

Then came the HD and widescreen revolution.  We were all encouraged and even forced to abandon our nice warm and fuzzy TVs that were huge and bulky and essentially pieces of furniture, for these nice shiny new flat screens.  Prices fell, screens got bigger, and the major broadcasters all had a simulcast channel running HD*.  ABC-HD, SBS-HD, One-HD (Ten), Nine-HD and Seven-HD.  Beautiful.  Content was licensed from abroad and slowly but surely we started to get the HD content that truly made our new LCD and Plasma tellies look like the worthwhile investment we all thought they did.

For the most-part the general public were pretty happy.  However the industry smelled a rat as the standard definition (SD) free-to-air digital channels quality seemed a bit… off…

As flat-screens got bigger, the problems were more noticable.  Fuzzy artefacts around graphics, pixelization, and just general crappy looking pictures… But at least we had the HD channels to fall back on.  Network Ten had the football still, and tuning in to watch the AFL on One-HD in HD was a pleasure to behold.  Even Seven looked alright, even if it was the lower bastard child of the so-called high-definition world.  It’s not even real HD, but more on that late…

In the background, as broadcast and digital content creators, we all upgraded our systems, with sizable investment into the latest video equipment, and the computer upgrades to handle processing and creating motion graphics for the new standard…  Of course we were ina  hybrid world, so even though we were creating everything in widescreen HD, we still had to allow for 4:3 (non-widescreen, you know, the old telly size squarish screen dimensions).  This meant that all of the action, all of the graphics, all had to fall within what we call ‘4:3 safe’ territory.

Why not letterbox for SD, we all cried!  Letterboxing means you take the widescreen 16:9 image and shrink it down to fit a 4:3 telly horizontally, which leaves no signal top and bottom, therefore it is black.  I remember trying to explain to my mother that she wasn’t missing out on anything at the top and bottom.  The black bars werten’t hiding anything, there simply wasn’t anything there.  Ever.  So they compained.  “We want our missing pixels back that were never lost! And bring back the Sullivans!”

So were were stuck in a world of creating for 4:3 with set extensions.  That is, everything had to be bunched into the legacy 4:3 middle of the screen so a ‘centre-cut’ could be taken and broadcast for those that didn’t yet have widescreen tellies.

Now we are talking ASPECT RATIO here, not digital vs analogue or even standard-def vs hi-def.  Just simply the size of the screen and the ratio between width and height.

So then everything changed.  Kerry Stokes and the other free-to-air cronies lobbied the Howard government hard to allow them to change the rule book; to use the bandwidth allocated to them each in the broadcast license, to multicast.  You see each has a certain finite amount of bandwidth, or essentially, data, allocated to them.  Now HD content chews up a lot of bandwidth.  SD not so much.  Originally under the initial digital distribution model, each broadcaster had to send out a certain number of hours a week of HD content, as part of their license.  The consumer was the winner, becasue we could all invest (a LOT in the early days) of money in HD widescreen big tellies to make the most use of the HD signal.

Okay so here’s a big of tech stuff to spell it out – feel free to skip if you get a brain-freeze…

(For the full breakdown check out WIKIPEDIA)

*Here’s what CNET’s Pam Carroll, and Ty Pendlebury have to say:

[blockquote]

The first thing to get your head around is that there are two types of digital TV transmissions, Standard Definition (SD) and High Definition (HD). We’ll fill you in on the basics.

Standard Definition
SD broadcasts provide widescreen picture with DVD equivalent picture quality. The resolution is 576i (576 horizontal lines interlaced). It is broadcast with MPEG digital stereo sound (similar to CD quality) although some programs may be enhanced with Dolby Pro Logic or Dolby Digital surround sound. This is the standard that is now available 24 hours a day and it’s a marked improvement from the analog signal. Most analog sets are capable of displaying 576i when connected to a digital set-top box.

High Definition
HD broadcasts also provide widescreen pictures, but they have an even sharper image with up to twice the horizontal and almost three times the vertical resolution of SD. Due to bandwidth restrictions, there has been some debate by the public broadcasters over what constitutes “high definition”. Australia is one of the only countries in the world to consider a 576p image to be the minimum for HD. This means it is a “progressively scanned” version of the standard definition signal. SBS HD is broadcast in 576p, as is most of ABC HD — although Aunty now broadcasts some content in 720p.

As such, 720p is the universally accepted standard for a minimum HD picture resolution, and consists of a 1280×720 pixels at 50Hz progressive. The maximum resolution that the broadcasters transmit in is 1080i (1080 horizontal lines interlaced). Of course, this differs from the other HD standard 1080p. As flatscreens like LCDs are naturally progressive they won’t display an “i” image anyway, but will instead convert it automatically to “p”. The benefits of HD pictures are particularly noticeable on larger screen sets and when using projection equipment.[/blockquote]

So what does that mean?  We have been left with a crappy digital TV system, and HD is a joke.

Even Foxtel, our only cable/pay TV service’s HD content is pretty bad, but at least you can watch the AFL and figure out where the ball is, rather than a mash of pixels.

So what does it mean for DMC as a business creating content… Well there’s a saying, ‘sh#t-in, sh#t-out’ which means if you start off with crappy content, it’s going to look a hell of a lot worse by the time it gets compressed and re-compressed on its way to your nice shiny 1080p 60″ LCD TV.  So the hear-breaking thing for me is that I work with all this beautiful HD footage that we shoot, edit and dress-up, and then you see what actually ends up on the TV, and you just roll up into foetal position and cry.

Take MPTV – My Property for example.  The very best way to watch that show, even though it goes to air on free-to-air digital 74, is actually on Vimeo or the MPTV website, in 720p HD.  We shoot in 1080p HD on DSLR cameras, and DMC do all the graphics and titles in 1080p, then it is down-scaled to 720p, and finally TV4Me compress the hell out of it and put it to air.  However the show is also uploaded to the MPTV Website via their Vimeo Pro account, and looks great.

I actually watch the show through my Apple-TV or Viera Plasma smart-TV through the Vimeo portal, and then watch it in HD.  It’s the way of the world.

Anyway we will continue to create to the best looking and creative TV standards and beyond, and hope that on any given day, someone has turned the bandwidth pipe up so it looks half-decent.

So what can we do…

Well, unless you really like the rubbish shows and cheap imports that the new extra multicast channels (Mate, Gem, Seven-2, etc) have sprouted up, you could write to the communications minister or your local MP, and try and get the laws changed.  Because the broadcasters are laughing.  They have five times as many commercial spots up for sale than they ever did.  Interestingly, another project that DMC work on have a deal whereby they get the TV commercial spots and can sell them off as part of the deal.  The interesting thing is, that no-one wants TV advertising.  It’s dead.  It’s all about online content.