HD Channels

dJOS · July 14, 2006, 08:56:21 AM

Quote from: poedgirl on July 14, 2006, 12:04:41 AM
If shows are broadcast on the HD channels, the EPG should know what they are. Also, the SD channels shouldn't show HD when those channels don't do HD.

I completely agree!

philzgr8 · July 18, 2006, 09:46:33 AM

Personally I think the HD logo question and the question of how listings are displayed on HD channels when programs are broadcast as SD is an interesting one. It took me a little while after switching over from FreeXMLTV and BladeRunner to get used to the notion that the HD channels will not have a listing if the program is only shown in SD. It now actually makes more sense to me than what I had before because with the previous solution I couldn't actually trust that what was shown on the SD channel would be also broadcast on its HD equivalent. For example ABCHD and Channel 7 frequently had different content on HD to their SD equivalents. If you think about it there is really no need to see an entry for the HD channel if it is only the same content that is shown on the SD channel and it is shown in SD. Why would I record the HD channel if it isn't HD content? As for the logo, well I find the fact that it shows up on the SD channel to be quite helpful. The truth is that I may actually have missed the fact that the program is also broadcast in HD format and seeing the logo there alerts me to it. I think in the end it's just a question of getting your head around a different way of thinking and personally I'm quite happy with it the way it is now.

In the longer term I have to wonder wouldn't it be nice if MCE allowed you to group channels and show only the highest quality content for each channel group (ie. ABC/ABCHD). Now that would really be something worthwhile!
Cheers,

Phil

Jason W · July 18, 2006, 07:52:02 PM

Quote from: philzgr8 on July 18, 2006, 09:46:33 AM
In the longer term I have to wonder wouldn't it be nice if MCE allowed you to group channels and show only the highest quality content for each channel group (ie. ABC/ABCHD). Now that would really be something worthwhile!

That would be a neat way of doing things (grouping LCNs).

I run MythTV on my network and the channel priority feature allows me to preference HD showings over SD when using "record on any channel" as I mentioned on theNo ABC HD guide listing thread. It will be interesting to see what Microsoft does here.

poedgirl · July 18, 2006, 09:12:36 PM

Quote from: philzgr8 on July 18, 2006, 09:46:33 AM
For example ABCHD and Channel 7 frequently had different content on HD to their SD equivalents.

The problem we are talking about is channels like 9 and 10 that don't have demo loops and the show is in fact broadcast. The problem is that it is shown as "Unknown" in the guide.

I feel that the data should be shown if the channel is broadcasting it.

Russell at IceTV · July 19, 2006, 03:43:49 AM

Hi guys,

I agree that this is an interesting (and difficult) problem. Phil made several good points, most of which were the basis behind why we chose to do it they way we do. One of the biggest problems at the time we researched this was that there was no consistency for what the various channels showed when a program wasn't available in HD. Some of them showed the SD version upscaled to HD, some showed a demo loop of HD programming, and some showed a logo. And to make it worse, they weren't even consistent about their rules -- sometimes they'd change depending on the time of day or day of week. We decided that the absolute worst case would be if we said a program would be on at a certain time and someone ended up recording an hour's worth of logo, when they could have recorded it on on the SD channel instead. For that reason, we felt the only safe thing to do was to only tell you about shows on the HD channel when we were certain they'd be shown. And showing the HD logo on the SD channels was also as Phil said, just to give you an indication that it was also available on the HD channel if you wanted to record it there instead (in case you spent most of your time in the guide on the SD channels).

The MythTV feature of it automatically picking which channel to record based on whether it's an SD or HD channel is very interesting. Maybe this type of thing could be done in PIMP -- we'll have to investigate.

But I wonder if the rules the stations are using are a bit more consistent now. Does anyone watch enough HD programming that they know for sure what the rules are for the various channels when the HD version isn't available?

Russell

philzgr8 · July 19, 2006, 07:55:45 AM

Unfortunately I watch just enough to know that I have no idea what they are doing. >:(

Personally I'd love a feature in PIMP (which I set up this morning before coming to work,) which allows me to prioritise HD content over SD but to take that a step further it might be worth considering a user setting in pimp where the guide only shows the HD content if it is broadcast on both HD and SD. That might actually be the way to implement it.
Cheers,

Phil

poedgirl · July 19, 2006, 05:42:23 PM

I know for a fact that 9 and 10 always broadcast the same shows on the HD channel as they do on the SD channel. 7 broadcasts the same as SD on their HD channel after 5pm on weekdays, not sure about weekends tho. As for the other channels, I don't really know. I can't get ABC at all here and I don't watch much SBS.

poedgirl · August 22, 2006, 04:37:13 PM

Is anyone actually going to do anything about this or is it just going to fade away into the distance?

philzgr8 · August 24, 2006, 08:04:55 AM

Quote from: poedgirl on August 22, 2006, 04:37:13 PM
Is anyone actually going to do anything about this or is it just going to fade away into the distance?

I think that this will probably fade into oblivion because not everyone agrees on what, if anything should be done. Unless the networks were to actually publish their policy on this IceTV would put themselves at risk if they implemented it since there is no guarantee it would be correct and subscribers rely on the info they get from their EPG.

nac6 · September 05, 2006, 10:57:49 AM

Not sure if this has been noticed.

A friend noticed that when an SD program has the HD logo MCE thinks it's HD so it allocates twice as much disk space required. He therefore often gets warnings that there isn't the disk space available to complete the recording.

Shane · September 05, 2006, 04:14:43 PM

Quote from: nac6 on September 05, 2006, 10:57:49 AM
Not sure if this has been noticed.

A friend noticed that when an SD program has the HD logo MCE thinks it's HD so it allocates twice as much disk space required. He therefore often gets warnings that there isn't the disk space available to complete the recording.

REALLY interesting. I'm going to check this out as I have had messages come up like this in the past with plenty of HDD space for an SD program.

If this is the case - Ice are going to have to change it so that HD flags are only on the HD channel content, not the SD.

Thanks,
Shane.

impact · September 06, 2006, 10:57:37 AM

I had always noticed the time / disk space to be inaccurate from day one. I put it down to the fact that as MCE does not officially support dvb-t that the calculations were based on an analogue setup recording....

Having never bothered to build an analogue tv card MCE system, I am guessing that the recordings were smaller in size or a different scale than what I have always experienced with SD / HD. Thus the calculations were always far out!

Just my thoughts - as I have never bothered with the estimates.... My MCE rig has 300Gb for its recordings, and if I cant watch it in that time, then its probably not important enough for me anyway.... (Of course I use crunchie to keep the stuff I want to keep - but then move that stuff over to my 3Tb File Server.....)