[opendtv] Re: Finally anamorphically compressed 480i

  • From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2011 14:57:56 -0600

John Shutt wrote:

> As I have tried to explain to you at least twice, and this
> makes three times, not all of the "SD" programming we receive
> arrives at our station pillarboxed in an HD wrapper.

And as I have tried to get across time and time again also, what SD programming 
is *not* being provided to the station in a 16:9 HD wrapper, *should* then 
either be provided in a 16:9 SD wrapper, or the station should be given the 
tools necessary to make it so just before transmission. I know things aren't 
done that way now, John. I'm saying, broadcasters or congloms, it' time to fix 
it.

> Stretched is the wrong word, but yes, most receivers are
> incapable of zooming or cropping an image in HD.

From the standpoint of my TV's post-processing tools, "stretched" is exactly 
what is going on. I can set the TV to "4:3" when viewing HD, and it crunches it 
down to skinny and tall. I can set to "16:9," and it stretches it to look 
correct. Precisely the same effect I see when I watch SD anamorphic squeezed 
programs.

> You keep saying "pan and scan."  Please explain what you
> perceive "pan and scan" to be.  In my world, "pan and scan"
> is spelled AFD.

Yes, I'm sure I don't use the correct terminology. What I'm saying is, MPEG has 
a way of directing the 4:3 receiver to center on the action. Spell like you 
want, but as long as 4:3 sets are around, wide screen material should be given 
that info for use by 4:3 sets. Then, if you transmit the 4:3 material in 16:9 
containers always, with pillars coded in as part of the data, the 4:3 receiver 
will trivially crop out the pillars.

> We physically cannot economically do what you suggest, and even if
> we did, we would be lowering the horizontal resolution of the SD
> material by 25% by pillarboxing a 480i 16:9 frame.

I think it is now far worse to be lowering the resolution of wide screen SD 
material drastically, by postage stamp transmissions, than it is to lower the 
resolution of SD 4:3 material to legacy 4:3 sets. On 16:9 sets, the 4:3 
pillarboxed image will end up having exactly the same resolution as the central 
part of a 16:9 SD image, so it's no big loss. There's little to excuse the fact 
that the very worst resolution occurs now when 16:9 SD images are viewed on 
16:9 sets. (Except for Euronews.)

I understand what you're saying about costs. What I'm saying, as a consumer, 
is: it's high time the content creators/congloms/broadcasters begin optimizing 
their SD products for 16:9 sets. If done at the source, this can't cost any 
more than what they are doing now. But you have to start sometime, right?

> But there are still 3 times as many SD screens as there are HD
> screens out there.

Perhaps, John, but the numbers are clear. The vast majority of those sets are 
analog sets. The vast majority of them cannot possibly see a quality loss when 
horizontal res is equiv 526 pixels.

Bert
 
 
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