What is Digg?58 Comments
- aywwts4, on 10/30/2007, -1/+29Actually what it really requires is a metric ***** load of very expensive television makeup and professionals who understand HD to apply them.
I find it very funny when you see television stations putting on SD levels of makeup, where you can see all the caking and wrinkles in HD - HeadBussa, on 10/10/2007, -0/+14I live in Tampa, and I remember that first night when I was flipping through the news channels and I saw this one in HD. It made all the other news channels look like crap. So ABC is the only 'Action' news station I've been watching since.
- Bricks, on 10/10/2007, -4/+16All it technically takes is a resolution 1280 x 720 or larger, and a framerate of around 24 frames per second or higher. The ass-ton of gear is what it takes to make it aesthetically professional by modern standards.
- Chordinator, on 10/10/2007, -0/+10Fortunately for me, producing HD content for DVD or web delivery is a LOT cheaper than switching and broadcasting it live as a news station would.
- zioxide, on 10/10/2007, -0/+8Yeah, you could produce a newscast that was taped and edited in HD for under $100,000. It's the going live part that costs so much money.
- highdef, on 10/10/2007, -1/+8@Bricks uhm... i doubt that they are going to show news at 24 frames per second - it would look like film. 60 frames per second or go home.
I think Ben Drawbaugh got it wrong - it looks like more than 3 million dollars of gear. Just the Panasonic D-5 decks are like $65K each. Plus the labor...
I find Ben annoying to listen to on the engadgetHD podcast. I like the content just not him. - bjdraw, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6Sorry you feel that way, come on the show sometime and we'll see how you do.
As for the price to upgrade, I didn't include the cost of the D5 tape machines cause they don't use them for the newscast.
Their broadcast is 60fps, btw. - edwartica, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4Umm, I actually work master control at a television station, and it costs a few million at the least.
- LeapFrog, on 10/10/2007, -2/+6"HD Newscast"? You've got to be kidding me. I live in Tampa Bay, and WFTS isn't doing anything close to "HD News".
Post an article when the station is broadcasting HD field video and HD inserts instead of just "HD Studio Head Shots". THEN you can call it an HD Newscast.
Buried as inaccurate. - fishbert, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Some of the earlier MacBreak video episodes (not the weekly audio show) went behind the scenes and showed how they do their production. They're called "The Road to 1080p", or something like that.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -2/+5ABC and FOX broadcast in 720p, CBS and NBC in 1080i. All of the video broadcasts are done at 29.97 frames/second.
- blorc, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Definitely a few million
- edwartica, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Do you guys have a VT4? Or even better, are you holding out for a VT5?
- cbreaker, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3No. 60i doesn't translate to 30FPS - it translates to 60 half-frames a second. It's the reason people don't like to work with interlaced video; to display a full frame, you combine both half-frames, but they don't always match up because you're taking 60 halfs a second, not 30 fulls. However, 1920x1080 @60i is still not nearly as bad as NTSC - the high resolution tends to make the interlacing a hell of a lot less noticable, and easier to blend out if you need to.
Not to mention the fact that 1080i isn't necessarily 29.97/59.94 or even 23.976/24. And don't even get me started on the ***** "sports are better on 720p" misconception I always see. Just because ESPN jumped the gun on 720p doesn't mean it's true. I'll take twice the resolution interlaced over 720p any day of the week. - jchalmer85, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Check out NEP - They do events like the Super Bowl, Boston's 4th of July celebration, and the Academy Awards. They take all that, and truck it out to where you are. Pretty bad ass.
http://guardian.nepinc.com/packages/HiDef/HDMain.php - mrx23, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Yes, the technology behind producing live HD for the air is pretty cool, but you should see how much gear it takes to produce live HD feed for the Super Bowl. Also, not a lot of people know that the real magic behind television or radio happens at the transmitter site, where the video/audio/digital signal gets converted into radio waves.
- slayerab, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2In 20 years it'll probably take hall a ***** ton of equipment. Our kids will look back at this and laugh
- davidhildreth, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2yea i'm also a MC operator and it costs many, many millions. there is a lot of equiment between network and a transmitter
- cbreaker, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Yes, I don't think it was just NY either. I'm over in Rhode Island and it used to happen all the time! Back from commercial, NO HD! Next commercial, HD! So stupid! It used to happen with ABC too; back from commercial and no LOST in HD.
But yea, they might have automated it now because I haven't seen it happen in awhile. - joessandwich, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2The show I work for may be headed to HD next season so I may be playing with all of that stuff. There's actually not THAT much more than we already have, just most of it is better equipment. The real issue at hand is the money.
- Jugalator, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I wonder how much equipment it'll take in just about 4-5 years. This good article really shows how relatively young this technology still is though.
- srg13, on 10/10/2007, -0/+160p or 60i? It makes a _really big_ difference
- diggitdawg, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Excellent posting, Ben, Very informative and entertaining.
- srg13, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I don't know why they kept interlacing and stupid frame rates in HD... They're really outdated, and make it irritating to create video for distribution in the USA (we have it lucky where I am - it's either 25p or 50i)
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -2/+3I guess this partly explains why so many of the "HD" channels broadcast virtually nothing in HD except during prime time. Pisses me off.
- bjdraw, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I incorrectly said they were producers, and someone corrected me, the cross out is how we do edits.
- massproductions, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I'm sorry but I don't get the producers vs. directors joke. Can someone please explain?
- ukthom, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Oh, to have a tech budget like that in my household...what joyous contraptions I could own!
- cbreaker, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I dunno - am I the only one that doesn't really see that as a lot of equipment? I'm pretty sure we have at least twice the amount of gear in our data center; and it's just the state penitentiary data center. Sure, there's a lot of specialized stuff there, and it's expensive I'm sure, but it looks like all the same stuff they used before, just newer/faster/better to handle HD content.
- ElRayQuieres, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1If TVs aren't receiving HD (or better) over wifi (or better) without external boxes in 20 yrs I'll be damn surprised. 20 yrs is a gross over estimate for VOD and IPTV.. look at where we were 20 yrs ago.
- blorc, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Snell & Wilcox Kahuna > Grass Valley Calypso
- macnerd, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Didn't you guys read the article, quoted from it? "Since much of the HD equipment needs to stay in sync (60Hz in the case of 720p) this is the sync-master that makes it happen." They are 720p @ 60Hz, so that's 60fps. Broadcasts that are 1080i are 29.97Hz or 60 fields per second which translates to 30fps.
- elliott203, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Are you sure about that? Why on earth would such a new video format use such a horrible frame rate of 29.97?
- edwartica, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Its not a joke. Its factually called a technical director.
- edwartica, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Thank you for doing that btw. I dabble in technical directing, so....
- davidhildreth, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1pfff, Sony 8000 series bitch
- davidhildreth, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1yea, if only
- sExl, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0I've actually always wondered a bit how HD material is produced. I'd think the equipment used for shooting a modern movie is even more expensive than the HDTV equipment for something like the news.
- edwartica, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0Its should take about the same amount of equipment. I mean, you'll have more servers and what not. The equipment itself might get smaller, but then again, if it gets too small, its a pain to work on when it fails.
- i208khonsu, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1You need one of these: http://www.newtek.com/tricaster/tricaster_studio.php And um....... people, and................... chipmunks. YES! Lots and lots of chipmunks.
- 4degrees, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1HD news would have to be the key ingredient.
- kernelhappy, on 10/10/2007, -2/+2That's because the "guy at the switch" is probably in the john taking a dump.
I personally don't understand the whole guy at the switch thing. I don't see how with millions of dollars of computer controlled equipment, they need a guy to manually say, oh let me switch over to the HD feed for the HD output.
I think NBC in New York may have finally automated it, but for a long time after the commercials were over, the shows would return in SD 4:3 form with black bars on the sides and then a couple seconds in, the screen would blip and you'd get a 16:9 HD image. It was really annoying, and occaisionally an entire show would be run on the HD channel with only one segment between commercials being shown in hd. - edwartica, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0What, no VT4? Cheapskates!
- yaddayaddayoda, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0A Newtek Tricaster will not handle HD. It will do NTSC and SDI-601 only... sorry.
- lex0429, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0VCR's, not DVD's for the old folks
- yaddayaddayoda, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0Precisely!
- joessandwich, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0Nope.
Our equipment isn't that great at all. I've only heard rumors of HD, I have no idea if we'll actually go through with it! - breakspirit, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1it's like you're making fun of both metric and imperial systems at the same time. I don't understand what you're trying to do. Oh god I think my head is going to explo......
- NormanNormal, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0Ross and Echolab make some good switchers too.
- maz2331, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0Screw HD. I want 3D!
-
Show 51 - 58 of 58 discussions
Check out the new & improved 
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is