[opendtv] Re: A view from the UK
- From: "John Willkie" <jmwillkie@xxxxxxx>
- To: <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 16 Apr 2004 18:16:11 -0700
Alan;
Congratulations on your retirement from the Beeb, and I look forward to your
contributions to OpenDTV.
In an email exchange we had off list several months ago, you mentioned that
the BBC was saving production costs by acquiring in HDTV.
I subsequently learned from other list members that you had been lurking on
the list for some time, and that you certainly know of what you speak.
Most people seem to think that HDTV increases production costs, and those
people distribute in HDTV, unlike the BBC (for the present time.)
Would you now be able to talk on list about this? Where are the savings?
Are they current, or projected?
John Willkie
-----Original Message-----
From: opendtv-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:opendtv-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Alan Roberts
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2004 10:14 AM
To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [opendtv] A view from the UK
Gents,
I've been monitoring this list for some time (years) but have not yet posted
because I didn't want my affiliation to mar discussions. I've just retired
from 36 years working for the BBC in R&D, much of it in developing DTV and
HDTV.
The reluctance to take up DTV in the UK is an interesting one. I was one in
he "not interested" group until the programme content enticed me, and that
was the BBC4 content. Until then, there simply wasn't enough interesting
extra programming to make me take the step. The cost was always irrelevant,
but the catalyst was in buying a new, 16:9 tv set 18 months ago. At that
point, buying into a 16:9 service made sense, but not before.
The reason for my reluctance was that, having worked in this field for many
years, I knew that the picture quality that I would get from digits is
easily worse than I would get from DTV. I can see the top of Crystal Palace
mast from my home, have a good aerial, and get 21mV of signal, so no noise
in PAL. Digits make inferior pictures for me, so the enticement had to be
the content of the extra channels, and filling the new wide tv picture, and
it wasn't until we noticed that BBC4 was showing lots of non-English
language films that we bought the new tv and box. In fact, we immediately
bought 2 boxes so we can watch/record in 2 places.
I suspect I'm typical of many of the late/never uptakers who have no
interest in the extra channels and therefore won't go to digits until
analogue as actually switched off. My wife's parents bought a box on my
recommendation, and have it connected to the 16" tv in their bedroom. They
use it about twice a week, watching the vast majority of programming on a
20" 4:3 tv in their lounge. They simply are not interested in the extra
channels/programmes, I don't think they're untypical of the refuseniks.
I'm not really interested in arguing any of these points, I simply state
them as being typical of many of my contacts here in the UK.
Alan Roberts
----------------------------------------------------------------------
You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways:
- Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at
FreeLists.org
- By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word
unsubscribe in the subject line.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways:
- Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at
FreeLists.org
- By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word
unsubscribe in the subject line.
Other related posts:
