[opendtv] HD retransmission of Jean-Michel Jarre's concert in Pekin
- From: Olivier Houot <olho_avatar_i@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 12 Oct 2004 00:20:17 +0200
It occurred last Sunday and was retransmitted by Alfacam on both their
HD-e and HD1 channels.
HD-e aims at large venues. The only theater listed for that event in
France, though, was situated at Longwy, a city in the east of France,
best known for its past mining activity. A little too far for me as i
was in the west that week-end.
HD1 is supposed to be for the home, but as the decoders are only
scheduled to be available since September, currently only HD geeks
playing with high-end PCs and DVB cards are able to receive it.
I regularly visit a french forum dedicated to those subjects, and the
reactions were rather positive (those people usually feast on
experimental feeds available on various european satellites since at
least one year, and also on Wm9 and .ts files available from the
internet). Some were watching it on plasma, some on Tri-tubes. One
person had the official Quali-TV receiver.
There were some technical problems during the first 15-20mn, but after
that it was OK. The quali-TV STB apparently saw problems longer than the
PCs did.
After 15 mn, though, the stream became encrypted, which lost some of
those scarce viewers. Some were equipped with the official smartcard ,
nevertheless, and managed to carry on.
Later at night, a shortened version of the concert was transmitted on
one of the usual channels, cropped to 4/3, in SD, and with stereo sound
(the original was 5.1). This is the only version i managed to see.
There were indeed some short glitches at the beginning, but it did go away.
The HD cameras (Thomson LDK 6000 MK II worldcam, i believe) appeared to
handle the low light levels (it was night) with no obvious problems,
except maybe for the movements of the white-clad wrist of the conductor
of the orchestra against a dark background that showed a touch of smearing.
It has been said on this forum that eureka95 cameras had problems with
low-light. Apparently there has been progress since that time.
I am sure the technical problems won't remain for long (after all that
was a live HDTV retransmission from China), but you have to question
their commercial strategy. I am sure they could have pushed for more
large venue installations to be available in France and other european
countries, and encryption is not likely to draw people at a time when
europe still has to boot the hole "HD for the masses" business up.
As for the events i am missing, i suppose the recorded version will be
re-broadcasted at a later time, given the relative scarcity of HD
programming. As this is digital, it should be every bit as good as the
original, so i need not despair.
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