TEN HD is not full HD
2007-11-04 21:20:07
It bugs me that there are _so many_ lies and misleading statements in the
advertising for the upcoming TEN HD channel (channel 1, switching on in
December).
Most of the ad content is duplicated in this
press release, if you're not the
sort to watch commercial TV.
First, the repeated use of the term "full HD" to describe their 1080i
signal. Since 1080p televisions have appeared in Australia, the convention has
been to describe 768p/1080i as "HD" and 1080p as "full HD".
TEN is misleading any customer who shells out the extra money for a "full
HD" TV after seeing one of the TEN HD ads, when an "ordinary" HD
TV will suffice for the signal they're putting out.
From the press release: "TEN is the only Australian network transmitting
the globally-recognised pinnacle HD broadcast standard: 1920 pixels by 1080 lines
interlaced (1080i) and 5.1 Dolby Surround Sound.". As I write this (9 PM on
a Sunday night), all three of the commercial stations 7, 9 and 10 are
broadcasting in 1080i in Dolby surround.
"Bringing the cinema into the lounge room; movies have never looked better
at home". Yes they have. Anyone with a 1080p video player, such as a
Blu-ray or HD-DVD drive, or a PS3, or a home computer has seen a better-looking
movie at home.
"TEN remains the only Australian network broadcasting major live sport in
HD". Even though I never watch sport, I can see this is pox. SBS, ABC2 and
7 regularly broadcast HD sport.
"The ABC broadcasts in 720 progressive (720p), which is superior to 576 but
of lower resolution than 1080i." That 1080i is higher-quality than 720p is
debatable (in fact, it often is debated; it's just not a very interesting
debate).
"The SBS transmits in 576p." This is untrue, movies and the news are
broadcast in 720p.
"With TEN-HD, TEN becomes Australia's first television broadcaster to break
away its HD signal [from the simulcast transmissions alongside SD and
analogue]". No, ABC2 and SBS News beat them to it by several years, both
providing alternative and, in ABC2's case, timeshifted content from ABC and SBS.
ABC-HD also occasionally broadcasts different or timeshifted shows than ABC, not
counting the weather and music broadcasts, though these do not appear in any TV
guide.
TEN: the only way you can improve your signal above the other networks is to
reduce the number of in-program ads, eliminate the TEN logo during movies and
serials, run the _entire_ content of a show without removing subplots to fit in
more advertising time, and broadcast TV shows within 24 hours of their US
screening if you are advertising that you are (not two weeks later).
Underpinning philosophical differences?
2007-10-26 19:55:32
Observation I wish I\'d never made: the oscilloscope in the iTunes visualiser
rotates anti-clockwise, whereas the Media Player one runs clockwise. Theories?
Ad stats
2007-09-23 20:42:10
I watched a lovely French film on SBS last night called \"Je
préfère qu\'on reste amis\".
Recall that recently SBS introduced advertisements that interrupt the program in
order to supplant their income, which I suppose has been neglected by this
government.
*Every single* ad break featured a workplace reform ad. Every second break
*also* contained that money-for-rich-pensioners ad. One of the ad breaks (all 4
minutes of it) consisted *entirely* of workplace reform propaganda. No kidding.
That break didn\'t even have a station promo.
I have two things to say about this.
Firstly, I have to point out the irony of having the government-owned station
supplanting its income with government-provided ads. Brilliant! Isn\'t this the
economically-frugal government? Shouldn\'t there be some message about
privatisation here?
Secondly, thanks to all these brilliantly produced ads, I am now a workplace
reform convert. It\'s clear to me now that if Labor were to be reelected:
* The scary music will come on and the BIG MUSCLED UNION guys will come
and turn off the LIGHT SWITCH.
* No-one will be around to make sure I\'m being paid enough. That\'s right,
workplace reform introduced minimum wage, award rates and the ombudsman.
Oh, and giving companies fines for doing naughty things.
* People will lose jobs. The thousands of hard-working workplace reform
office people, visible behind the speaker in the three interior office
ads. Watch what these background extras do! They walk from one side of
the camera shot to the other. S.l.o.w.l.y. Sometimes they\'re holding
paper.
Self: programming tomorrow, yesterday
2007-08-28 16:29:00
So I\'ve been getting quite deep into the Self programming language because of
its interesting object model and optimising compiler. All along I\'ve been
reading that it\'s accompanied by a revolutionary user interface, which I\'d
never seen because it crashes and burns on modern Solaris (needless to say, it
doesn\'t even build on x86).
Today I found this
Sun promotional video [200 MB] from 1995. It focuses almost
entirely on the UI, which is like nothing else I\'ve seen (I hear that Squeak has
something similar, but haven\'t looked).
Besides the programming side, there\'s a lot of neat ideas which GUI and drawing
tools in general could steal.
* The \"core sampler\" tool, which shows a list of all objects
currently under
the mouse. Each menu item is a proxy for the real object, so dragging that
away removes the object from its current composition (much nicer than the
\"ungroup\" tool we get in drawing programs).
* In(tro)spect properties on objects, then drag them out of the view to make
them stand-alone buttons linked to that object. Because you can do this
on the UI tool itself (and its own menus), you can customise your working
environment in the same way you work within it.
* The networking side of it, near the end of the video. (I guess because
Sun and PARC were so into networking, the guys presenting it didn\'t really
consider it worth mentioning especially---this is the first I\'d even
heard of it in Self).
Ye olde bloggery
2007-08-25 11:57:40
This update fixes many bugs from previous and works in more browsers (i.e., no
more JavaScript). Other features:
* Amazing WYSIWYG comment and post editor!
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* permalinks
Hope you like your monospace :-)