BBC TV Transmitting UHD

Hi Mike, I am not aware of BBC transmitting uhd, but they are streaming uhd over the web that you can see via iPlayer and including by many smart TVs... and if you have the bandwidth it’s quite good. It would be good if the Beeb could transmit/broadcast UHD,, but not holding by breath..., it would require to much specific cooperation with ISPs, but session based UHD streaming is a reasonably effective albeit inefficient alternative. 

Simon

....   err that what my post says Simon  .... Anyone watching or aware of BBC iPlayer transmitting all England games in UHD.  

It's not just England matches, it's others too. The resolution is good, but other details like the grass are absolutely garbage. Interesting though.

I have to agree on the colour, takes a while to get used to it, but like you say, interesting.    I suspect it might do better with Wimbledon with the more complex crowd & courtside detail.   It will be interesting to see how it resolves the bright sun & shadow contrast that the later afternoon matches suffer with.

Mike-B posted:

....   err that what my post says Simon  .... Anyone watching or aware of BBC iPlayer transmitting all England games in UHD.  

Mike sorry it’s the word ‘transmitting’... those in the biz the word ‘transmitting’ often means real-time multicast in the IP world, ie like TV broadcasts, but the Beeb as far as I am aware are not trialing multicast. IPTV providers like BT use multicast over their internet access network, and these allows the transmission of real time UHD data channels that the hosts can opt into receiving. However with the Beeb’s iPlayer the media is streamed. These streams are session based... ie each stream is a unicast data stream setup for each client. It’s massively inefficient for real time data... but is easier to do... but ultimately very inefficient in scale on the access IP network... hence why my curiosity was piqued by your thread title... as I had only seen the Beeb offer UHD by session based means via iplayer, not multicast transmissions. But session based streams should be accessible via VPNs for those on their travels  

OK Simon, the title is not correct,  I thought the text had the iPlayer & screen instructions covered.

That aside,  I understand BBC is ready to go with UHD TV terrestrial transmission.  I was at a friends house in the Manchester area a while ago & they were getting UHD test transmissions from Winter Hill.    I read last year that BBC is rumoured to be planning to start a UHD service this year.    I know they used UHD TV camera's at last years Wimbledon as I saw the camera's & spent a while talking to some BBC people.  It was not publically transmitted as UHD as far as I know,  but it was recorded as such.          Looking around www this morning there is not much new news;   BBC neither confirms or denies,   might have to wait for the new BBC Charter,   funding has to be approved,   & of course the current political situation tends to put this stuff on the back burner.    

Mike, interesting if you could share more info on the possible Beeb terrestrial uhd transmissions.. would this be on free view?

It’s good, but great. The Wimbledon coverage has been quite dark, especially at the weekend.

Keith

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

Mike, interesting if you could share more info on the possible Beeb terrestrial uhd transmissions.. would this be on free view?

Hi Simon,  sorry I missed your post, been up country doing other stuff.   I really don't know much more than my post other looking at the test transmissions.  Obviously I'm always keeping a watch & if & when I see/hear/read something I will post,  but expect auntie Beeb or the news media will be first to make any announcement,  

On these World Cup and Wimbledon UHD transmissions, the picture is very different to my other inputs (HD, set-top). It's dark, flat and generally seems harder to achieve a good picture. I have a LG B6. Is anyone else seeing this on their tv and how are your settings being changed to compensate for this?

Yes the BBC UHD streaming trials are HDR (high dynamic range) by using hybrid log gamma profiling, invented by NHK,  which provides the best usable dynamic range on most modern UHD TVs. If your TV is older you may need to adjust the gamma setting if your picture is flat and/or dark when there is a high dynamic range in the picture.. ie strong light and shadows. My recent LG TV works very well with it.

And remember because these are not broadcast transmissions, but streamed sessions, the World Cup and Wimbledon streams will be on a limited first come first served basis according to the Beeb.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacent...018/uhd-vr-world-cup 

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

Yes the BBC UHD streaming trials are HDR (high dynamic range) by using hybrid log gamma profiling, invented by NHK,  which provides the best usable dynamic range on most modern UHD TVs. If your TV is older you may need to adjust the gamma setting if your picture is flat and/or dark when there is a high dynamic range in the picture.. ie strong light and shadows. My recent LG TV works very well with it.

And remember because these are not broadcast transmissions, but streamed sessions, the World Cup and Wimbledon streams will be on a limited first come first served basis according to the Beeb.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacent...018/uhd-vr-world-cup 

...so reduce gamma and wack up the brightness?

Keith

Simon, what settings do you have for your uhd channel, compared to the other inputs?

Mike-B posted:

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

Mike, interesting if you could share more info on the possible Beeb terrestrial uhd transmissions.. would this be on free view?

Hi Simon,  sorry I missed your post, been up country doing other stuff.   I really don't know much more than my post other looking at the test transmissions.  Obviously I'm always keeping a watch & if & when I see/hear/read something I will post,  but expect auntie Beeb or the news media will be first to make any announcement,  

Some more info I found from www albeit probably a bit out of date by now.  BBC is providing Ultra HD via iPlayer (as we know)   This is ahead of other TV platform as distribution of UHD via terrestrial TV (Freeview) will be very difficult (per Andy King, Technology Controller at BBC)   its not clear where the capacity for a UHD channel on Freeview would come from (compounded more so with the 700MHz band clearance) until the band space taken up by SD/HD simulcasts ends.  It looks like BBC is working on an internet first strategy for regular Ultra HD and High Dynamic Range (HDR) content.

Also, BBC UHD is not being transmitted (?) in Dolby Digital 5.1 as this is apparently very difficult 

count.d posted:

Simon, what settings do you have for your uhd channel, compared to the other inputs?

Hi, firstly I need to say I have had my LG 55E6V professionally calibrated on one of my ISF modes. For Sky UHD I use gamma 2.2, and with hybrid gamma I use gamma BT.1886 which works well with the wide dynamic range from the OLED display. If I need to tweak it’s with the black level. I guess if you have LCD technology this might not work as well because of  their limited dynamic range.

Simon, my B6 is basically the same as your tv. 

What contrast, oled light, brightness and if dynamic contrast is used, what level?

Could you give me the above 4 figures for hd and uhd bbc transmissions?

count.d posted:

It's not just England matches, it's others too. The resolution is good, but other details like the grass are absolutely garbage. Interesting though.

I tried to watch some 4k tennis streams the other day (80/20 FTTC connection) and grass/net looked rubbish, and the frame rate seemed slower and stuttery compared to broadcast terrestrial HD which I switched back to, so for now I'm not convinced.

How predictable. Push someone for facts on the Naim forum and nothing. Only here, only here.

count.d posted:

Simon, my B6 is basically the same as your tv. 

What contrast, oled light, brightness and if dynamic contrast is used, what level?

Could you give me the above 4 figures for hd and uhd bbc transmissions?

 

Hi,  been away, sorry for delay. I don’t use dynamic contrast.

OLED 85

Brightness 53 

Contrast 85

ISF Dark (calibrated)

I standardise across my inputs.

good luck.

Interesting, well it is to me, I have just discovered the BBC are broadcasting UHD via the Sky platform... watching Wimbledon Ladies final... very good it is too.

the only drawback is that there is rather large and intrusive (despite being in a watermark  style) ‘BBC UHD’ logo in the top right of the screen

Thanks Simon. I've had my normal hd inputs on ISF Dark for coming up to 2 years and they look fine, but this UHD transmission is much darker and slightly less colour. I've put the contrast up to 100, oled 100 and find switching on dynamic contrast (med) works the best atm.

This may be of interest to the readers of this thread:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/...finition-uhd-viewing

Great link, thanks Peterv.