Rapid TV News

BBC HDTV boss admits confusion

Chris Forrester ©RapidTVNews | 06-12-2009

For some time now Rapid TV News, and your contributor Chris Forrester, have followed the debate over the BBC's high-definition image quality. Forrester says he is now massively confused by the BBC's responses to viewer complaints.

"I have long been an enthusiastic supporter of HDTV," writes Forrester. " Together with colleagues we mounted Europe's first-ever HDTV ‘Summits' back in 2003, and re-mounted for the following 3 years. I chaired the official European HDTV Conference, under Luxembourg's EU presidency in 2005. I wanted high-def.

And Andy Quested, the acknowledged BBC high-def guru, was involved in many of these events. While the managerial top brass at the BBC are widely acknowledged to be clueless as far as the technical demands of HDTV are concerned, one would hope that Quested and his colleagues are up to speed. The BBC's HD broadcasts are officially two year's old this past weekend. I say ‘officially' because they also had the best part of a half-year's pre-launch test transmissions ahead of launch.

Recent comments have confirmed that the BBC has trimmed its HD broadcast bit-rate by at least 40%, from 16Mb/s to about 9.7Mb/s, leading to immense viewer satisfaction.

Quested issued a response* to the current slew of HDTV criticisms on the BBC's Internet Blog on Dec 4 ("The Hitchhiker's Guide to Encoding"), stressing that the BBC's output represented one of the widest ranges of programming found anywhere in a single HD package. The publicity blurb done, Quested then admits to more than a few SNAFU's in audio, and it was audio that was the focus of the blog (Andy is promising near-daily updates over the next few days on other aspects of HD).

Quested says that despite the training, the skills, the efforts, the care, the investment and technical briefings of contractors, there are still problems. He cited one in particular during a recent transmission of the BBC's flagship Strictly Come Dancing (‘Dancing with the Stars, to non-UK readers) live telecast from the world-famous Blackpool Tower Ballroom.

Let Andy tell the story: "Back to Strictly and a live OB from Blackpool, not the sort of show you want to mix from the back end of an OB truck no matter how big! Due to running around all day and several accidents in front of me on the [motorway], I didn't get to a TV in time for the start and then it was BBC One only. It didn't take long for me to find out there were serious audio level problems on the HD Channel but what was worrying was no one in the broadcast chain could hear it, to me that shouts metadata!"

We at Rapid TV News are worried about this story. If Andy Quested is the only one at the BBC who can recognise these sorts of problems then what are the other engineers and technicians doing? He says that 4 days later he viewed and listened to the show's tapes. "It was quite amazing hearing the difference when I switched between the two metadata settings. We have now gone through the metadata requirements for the programme and made sure they are fully implemented."

Again, where were the earlier instructions? ‘Strictly' has been shown in HDTV for at least two full seasons. Why no clear guidelines? Why this closing the audio door after the horse has bolted? Why is human failure permitted to be endlessly repeated? Why is Quested seemingly the only staffer who much cares about high-definition and image and audio quality?

To Quested's full credit he is most candid about the BBC's numerous HDTV failings, which seem mostly to occur during Outside Broadcasts, but also during pre-recorded episodes of Doctor Who. But why, why, why? We have no idea what salary Quested draws down from the BBC's bucket of cash, but his HDTV boss Danielle Nagler is one of the BBC's highly-paid fat cats, and she should be doing a little more than putting out her own blog of the upcoming BBC HD Christmas schedule (mostly old repeats) and doing a bit of yelling and screaming herself at these juvenile technical failures.

Quested promises a fresh blog today (Monday) on encoding. We'll report tomorrow.

*Read Quested's response in full at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/

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