[geeks] 1080p TV broadcasts?

[gsm at mendelson.com]

On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 03:15:12PM -0400, Joshua Boyd wrote:
>One reason why 24p is often chosen is because it is believed to give the
>material recorded a more "filmic" look.  That is obviously an over
>simplification but, as you observed, 24p does have different motion
>characteristics than 60p.  24p also allows you to use 1/48th of a second
>exposure times, which will give more motion blurring then you can get
>with 60p.

My generation was brought up on films being something you saw in a theater,
TV was something that was on the air once and gone. By the time Star Trek
came on programs were recorded, but they were shown 26 episodes in a row,
with no interuptions, and repeated ONCE in the summer. 

The BBC faced with tiny budgets even erased and reused video tapes. Many of the
Doctor Who episodes from that era were destroyed and lost forever. In the 1980s
when they became popular in the US, people started searching vaults in Canada 
and Oz for them. 

They were often found on film because in the 1960's the only reliable
way to convert the old system video (440 line?) to US (525 line) or the
new UK standard (625 line) was via film.

It was not until the 1970's when UHF TV took off in the US and hungry for 
programing, they bought the rights to old shows and showed them over and
over again.

My children have no concept of the difference, except for a handful of 
VHS tapes which get played at the rate of 1 a year or so, all of the
video they (and I) watch is digital. Most of it is MP4 compressed video
downloaded off the internet, but they also watch DBS programs and 
DVDs.

Besides the occasionaly news program, the only thing I watch on TV is
Jay Leno, which is converted from ATSC 16:9 to "PAL" 4:3 digital and broadcast
over satellite. The local DBS company bought an exclusive contract for
his shows when they started 10 years ago and the cable company does not
have them.

There also is a mater of patience. Leno's shows being time sensitive are
shown here 3 days after they are broadcast (actually 2 and half due to the
time difference). Popular shows are shown 6 weeks or so after the later of
when they are shown in the US or UK, and things like House, CSI, and Sex in
the City take about 2 years to get on the "free" TV after being shown 4
or 5 times on the DBS and cable systems.

There is a third commercial channel which used to be cable/DBS only
and they started just after Enterprise was first aired. So the crown of
their lineup was Enterprise almost as it was broadcast in the US.

The second season took 2 years to show and the third and fourth were 
DBS/cable premium channel only. 

Note that I put "free" in quotes, we pay about $14 a month in TV tax.

Geoff.

-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm at mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM
I do multitasking. If that bothers you, file a complaint and I will start 
ignoring it immediately.