New Battlestar Galactica tonight?

[digitalwanderer]

The premiere is tonight, right? I'm not getting my hopes up for nothing?

I DVRed the "Inside BSG" and was going to watch it later, but I just want to make sure the big show is tonight and figured it earned it's own thread for hyping.

 

[Natoma]

New Stargate SG-1, New Atlantis, New Battlestar Galactica.

Btw, I caught an episode or two in Season 1, and a few more in Season 2. I also caught the end bits with the torture of the 6 cylon (sp?), as well as the cylon (sp?) that was having the baby. And of course the fighting between the two big ships.

Looks like a quality show. I should probably get the DVDs to catch up. Anything SG-1 and Atlantis related, however, I can give you details like they were written on the back of my hand.

 

[kyleb]

"Resurrection Ship" is on tonight, "Valley of Darkness" is on UHD Sunday. Has anyone seen an episode in HD yet? I'm curious if it just upscaled or if it might be real HD video or respectable quality film transfers.

 

[Babel-17]

"Resurrection Ship" is on tonight, "Valley of Darkness" is on UHD Sunday. Has anyone seen an episode in HD yet? I'm curious if it just upscaled or if it might be real HD video or respectable quality film transfers.

Afaik all UHD episodes of BSG are broadcast at 1280 x 1080i and with a respectable bitrate.

E.g. Last Sunday's broadcast of Scattered, had one captured it, would take up app. 3.95 gigs of drive space for its almost 43 minute length.

Well, that's assuming your provider was similar to mine and didn't mess with what they were getting.

Edit: 1280 x 1088i actually.

 

[Mindriot]

do you mean 1920x1080 (1088)??

 

[kyleb]

I know some services downsample 1080i to 1280x1080, and then there is the extra 8 on there for multiples of 16 for mpg2 encoding, but I hadn't heard of channels like UHD actually broadcasting at that resolution. Regardless, I'm not so interested in what they are broadcasting at, but rather the quality of the source itself. I mean a lot of reruns and such on HDTV is just upscaled SDTV or basically DVD quality upscaled, and the scaling can be rather crappy on much of it as well. Beyond that there is the inherent quality of whatever was used to film the shows in the first place, and considering all that I am curious as to how good BSG in HD really looks.

 

[Babel-17]

do you mean 1920x1080 (1088)??

Nope, 1280 x 1080i (1088i) is sometimes referred to as "HD lite" but it's a valid resolution and can look great.

I'm no expert but I've read some gurus say that after a certain point the bitrate and encoding quality become more important than the resolution used. Lots of 1080i broadcasts really suffer from macroblocking in some scenes due to being bitrate starved. Worse than the DVD in some worst case scenes.

Some of MS's HD gurus sounded off on this once. Mmmm, it was something along the lines of that due to the quality of a lot of the source material diminishing returns start kicking in at 1280 x 1080i and after 1440 x 1080i most (older, film) sources offer little remaining quality to be gained by going higher. Lot of caveats to that naturally and a lot depends on the quality of the film that was used. I also imagine that the potential for todays films is much greater due to advances in film stock and digital cameras.

I think the bottom number (vertical lines of resolution?), 1080i, is supposed to be the more important one, to IQ, when encoding. I've read that the same applies to DVD's.

As to the 1080i vs. 1088i numbers, I think the bottom eight lines correspond to the overscanning of analog TV's. You see it as a grey bar on your desktop display when using some, but not all, software players.

I've read that the broadcaster can eliminate those lines from the flags if they choose to do so.

I'm no expert so take your grain of salt.

 

[Sazar]

Got everything setup for recording

Probably won't get a chance to see it since more likely than not, me and my lass are going to be doing some breaking up tonite.

 

[kyleb]

As to the 1080i vs. 1088i numbers, I think the bottom eight lines correspond to the overscanning of analog TV's. You see it as a grey bar on your desktop display when using some, but not all, software players.

I've read that the broadcaster can eliminate those lines from the flags if they choose to do so.

I'm no expert so take your grain of salt.

Again, the extra 8 is becuase 1080 isn't divisable by 16 and mpeg2 encodeding requires that the resolution is. And yeah, the compression in HDTV can look pretty bad at times so cutting off some of the horizontal resolution to save bitrate instead makes sense. Also, most 1080i CRT HDTVs don't have the dot pitch to really resolve more than 1280 columns of pixels anyway, and many digital HDTVs don't have more horizonal resolution than, or not much more anyway.

 

[Mindriot]

Nope, 1280 x 1080i (1088i) is sometimes referred to as "HD lite" but it's a valid resolution and can look great.

I'm no expert but I've read some gurus say that after a certain point the bitrate and encoding quality become more important than the resolution used. Lots of 1080i broadcasts really suffer from macroblocking in some scenes due to being bitrate starved. Worse than the DVD in some worst case scenes.

Some of MS's HD gurus sounded off on this once. Mmmm, it was something along the lines of that due to the quality of a lot of the source material diminishing returns start kicking in at 1280 x 1080i and after 1440 x 1080i most (older, film) sources offer little remaining quality to be gained by going higher. Lot of caveats to that naturally and a lot depends on the quality of the film that was used. I also imagine that the potential for todays films is much greater due to advances in film stock and digital cameras.

I think the bottom number (vertical lines of resolution?), 1080i, is supposed to be the more important one, to IQ, when encoding. I've read that the same applies to DVD's.

As to the 1080i vs. 1088i numbers, I think the bottom eight lines correspond to the overscanning of analog TV's. You see it as a grey bar on your desktop display when using some, but not all, software players.

I've read that the broadcaster can eliminate those lines from the flags if they choose to do so.

I'm no expert so take your grain of salt.

Interesting...

I definately need to brush up on my boadcast tech. Thanks for the clarification.

 

[RussSchultz]

I don't think 1280x1080i is a valid ATSC resolution.

 

[Babel-17]

I know some services downsample 1080i to 1280x1080, and then there is the extra 8 on there for multiples of 16 for mpg2 encoding, but I hadn't heard of channels like UHD actually broadcasting at that resolution. Regardless, I'm not so interested in what they are broadcasting at, but rather the quality of the source itself. I mean a lot of reruns and such on HDTV is just upscaled SDTV or basically DVD quality upscaled, and the scaling can be rather crappy on much of it as well. Beyond that there is the inherent quality of whatever was used to film the shows in the first place, and considering all that I am curious as to how good BSG in HD really looks.

Very good. It's not an upconvert. There are sites that will tell you which broadvasts are true HD. Even tvguide.com will do so if you click the "HDTV Only" javascript link that's on the same line as the start times. If you don't click that link and just scroll down to the HD broadcasts their is no labeling of the true HD broadcasts as being such.

Many channels, HBO, STARZ, etc., offer downloadable PDF's that will show the months listing of shows and they do differentiate between true HD and upconverts.

Ah, another site comes to mind.

http://www.hdtvgalaxy.com/whatson.php

http://www.hdtvgalaxy.com/whatson.php?day=2006-01-08&tab=tab3&time=

Complete Savages TV-PG (5:00pm, 1080i & DD5.1)
The Andromeda Strain G (5:30pm, 1080i & DD5.1)
Battlestar Galactica R (8:00pm, 1080i & DD5.1)
Army of Darkness PG13 (9:00pm, 1080i & DD5.1)
Battlestar Galactica TV-PG (11:00pm, 1080i & DD5.1)
The Andromeda Strain G (12:00am, 1080i & DD5.1)
Nightmares R (2:30am, 1080i & DD5.1)

I suppose, hypothetically, I could do some screenshots but I'm not sure that would be cool to post.

Btw, I pay for the channel and the program is not flagged that it shouldn't be recorded so I have every reason to think it's ok for me to have a (hypothetical) record of it.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

The premiere is tonight, right? I'm not getting my hopes up for nothing?

I DVRed the "Inside BSG" and was going to watch it later, but I just want to make sure the big show is tonight and figured it earned it's own thread for hyping.

Yes it's tonight. The best place for info on Stargate/Atlantis/BSG and those other sci-fi shows is probably Gateworld.

 

[Babel-17]

Again, the extra 8 is becuase 1080 isn't divisable by 16 and mpeg2 encodeding requires that the resolution is. And yeah, the compression in HDTV can look pretty bad at times so cutting off some of the horizontal resolution to save bitrate instead makes sense. Also, most 1080i CRT HDTVs don't have the dot pitch to really resolve more than 1280 columns of pixels anyway, and many digital HDTVs don't have more horizonal resolution than, or not much more anyway.

Thanks for clearing that up!

 

[kyleb]

Very good. It's not an upconvert. There are sites that will tell you which broadvasts are true HD. Even tvguide.com will do so if you click the "HDTV Only" javascript link that's on the same line as the start times. If you don't click that link and just scroll down to the HD broadcasts their is no labeling of the true HD broadcasts as being such.

Many channels, HBO, STARZ, etc., offer downloadable PDF's that will show the months listing of shows and they do differentiate between true HD and upconverts.

Ah, another site comes to mind.

http://www.hdtvgalaxy.com/whatson.php

http://www.hdtvgalaxy.com/whatson.php?day=2006-01-08&tab=tab3&time=




I suppose, hypothetically, I could do some screenshots but I'm not sure that would be cool to post.

Btw, I pay for the channel and the program is not flagged that it shouldn't be recorded so I have every reason to think it's ok for me to have a (hypothetical) record of it.

Huh, I see a few things labled as HDTV on the TV guide listings where you said, but not BSG. And that hdtvgalaxy.com even lists things all the reruns on TNT-HD as 1080i when I know for a fact that they are mostly poorly upscaled and stretched SDTV crap.

As for recording, as long as you aren't breaking any copy protection you are in the clear. There is no law to stop you from recording SD stuff to your VCR and the same holds true for capturing HD out the firewire port on your cable box or whatever. Heck, cable companies are even required by law to provide a functinal firewire port to customers who request them. And as much as I'm sure it would make the MPAA cringe, posting a few shots falls under fair use so they can't do anything about that. But its all good either way, I'm just glad to here that it should be worth watching as I was really dissapointed when my cable company picked up TNT-HD and I found out their showings of the X-Files actually look worse than what I get off the SD feed.

 

[Babel-17]

Interesting...

I definately need to brush up on my boadcast tech. Thanks for the clarification.

You and me both!

See kyleb's post for the correct answer regarding the question of why 1088i is used.

I did some googling and it looks like Russ is correct about the lack of strict standards compliance for the rez of 1280 x 1080i. I guess that explains in part the adoption of the slang phrase "HDTV lite".

Off Topic mini-rant: I'm a tad saddened when seeing many interesting older films not getting the loving care they deserve when being remastered for HD broadcast.

Just recently I viewed "Dummy" with Milla Jovovitch giving a startlingly good co-starring performance as a struggling punkish band member. But the source had evidently not been cleaned up to any great degree.

Ditto that for Jennifer Eight (Jennifer 8) starring Andy Garcia and with a quite young Uma Thurman honing her craft and clearly on her way to great things.

High definition versions of a film are great and by definition virtually guaranteed to be superior to their DVD counterparts but, I'm learning now, a lot of the IQ also depends on the quality of the film tranfer (and film source) to digital format.

I see Criterion being listed as an outfit that specializes in that.

I now sometimes look to see if they were involved in a film's transfer to DVD as it seems that also means their restoration of the print will be available for HD broadcast. I could be wrong about that.

Other companies also seem to do better than others, on average, when it comes to preparing a film for transfer to digital form.

Edit: spelling

 

[Babel-17]

Huh, I see a few things labled as HDTV on the TV guide listings where you said, but not BSG. And that hdtvgalaxy.com even lists things all the reruns on TNT-HD as 1080i when I know for a fact that they are mostly poorly upscaled and stretched SDTV crap.

As for recording, as long as you aren't breaking any copy protection you are in the clear. There is no law to stop you from recording SD stuff to your VCR and the same holds true for capturing HD out the firewire port on your cable box or whatever. Heck, cable companies are even required by law to provide a functinal firewire port to customers who request them. And as much as I'm sure it would make the MPAA cringe, posting a few shots falls under fair use so they can't do anything about that. But its all good either way, I'm just glad to here that it should be worth watching as I was really dissapointed when my cable company picked up TNT-HD and I found out their showings of the X-Files actually look worse than what I get off the SD feed.

Same here but I'm as sure as sure can be that it's not an upconvert. I think tvguide is glitching.

A link to screenies will be forthcoming ..... hopefully.

Heh, thanks again for your insights/information. Nice to know we have a knowlegeable person here whos brains I can pick.

 

[digitalwanderer]

OMG, my cable company stopped carrying Sci Fi channel!

I'm not kidding, it's just gone.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

OMG, my cable company stopped carrying Sci Fi channel!

I'm not kidding, it's just gone.

Might just be a screwup with your subscription. Have you called them to see if there's a problem, or have they actually told you they no longer offer the Sci-Fi Channel?

 

[Babel-17]

Screen shots.

Made from Media Player Classic using IrfanView as the capture utility. It captues bitmaps. The ones with "vlc" in their title were captured using The VLC Player's internal capturing feature. It uses .png format but everything was downsampled to jpeg's to meet the file size limits of ImageShack.

Also posted is a rar of all the files plus two repetitious ones that didn't make the cut along with a par2 recovery volume. You only need the rar which is 5.27 megs of uncompressed (by WinRAR) jpegs.

There's an issue here. Both sets of captures were resized, grrr. IrfanView was capturing at the desktop rez and that's at 1280 x 768. The VLC Player for some unknown reason resized to 1920 x 1088.

Just to be certain a capture using PowerDVD 6 was done.


It confirms that the resolution of the episode is 1280 x 1088. As does GSpot and DGIndex and other encoding software.

Stream_Type=2
MPEG2_Transport_PID=11,14
MPEG_Type=2
iDCT_Algorithm=5
YUVRGB_Scale=1
Luminance_Filter=0,0
Clipping=0,0,0,0
Aspect_Ratio=16:9
Picture_Size=1280x1088
Field_Operation=0
Frame_Rate=29970
Location=0,0,0,1FAD68
97.78% FILM


http://img286.imageshack.us/img286/2675/iviewcapturedate06012006time17.jpg

http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/2675/iviewcapturedate06012006time17.jpg

http://img286.imageshack.us/img286/3831/iviewcapturedate06012006time18.jpg

http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/3831/iviewcapturedate06012006time18.jpg

http://img306.imageshack.us/img306/3831/iviewcapturedate06012006time18.jpg

http://img367.imageshack.us/img367/737/vlcsnap1744806rp.jpg

http://img367.imageshack.us/img367/966/vlcsnap1768341ci.jpg

http://img218.imageshack.us/img218/5237/vlcsnap1772780jz.jpg

The rar
http://www9.rapidupload.com/d.php?file=dl&filepath=12122

The par2
http://www9.rapidupload.com/d.php?file=dl&filepath=12127


As the only question here is the IQ of the episode I'm tempted to leave this bad job as being done. Multi-tasking like mad here and I do have to run out for a bit but I'd be more than happy to post shots that were made using PowerDVD 6 if there's any keen interest.

Using rapidupload, uncompressed .bmp's are a possibility.

As with many TS files the seek function of PowerDVD 6 doesn't work, hence its not be using initially. ImageShack is generally reliable and has a nice user interface so that's why that tends to be used. rapidupload has a 300 meg upload limit but I've had issues with it not completing the upload cycle ..... it doesn't take you to the page that gives a download link.