Network Feeds

Dave Buckley

Does anyone know how the network feeds work nowadays, particularly BBC2?

I came in partway through “Dad’s Army” on Saturday night on BBC2 Scotland (via Sky) which was being shown in the correct aspect ratio. I had to switch to BBC2 England to check something and there the picture was wide screen.

Also, I have noticed that BBC2 Scotland seem to opt-in/out of the network feed before junctions as there is a distinct sound break before and after junctions, but there are no picture disturbances when the sound breaks occur.

Very odd.

Peter Neill

I can’t comment on the aspect ratio issue but it may be a combination of factors –

  • flag sent by transmitter
  • settings on your TV

etc. (‘Automatic’ doesn’t always give the required results).

As regards the opting, it is normal practice to opt actually a little early, with the incoming network on the desk so there is more control over the actual junction e.g. a vision or sound mix rather than a cut. The same procedure on the opt back.

This may all change in the future, particularly if regional HD gets the go-ahead. Network will no longer be fed out to the Nations/Regions. Instead, everything will be fed to a central point, all opting will be done there and the outgoing feeds multiplexed for distribution to satellite channels, DTT etc. The region would have to enable a “ready“ switch. If they didn’t, the sustaining feed would be substituted.

Ian Hillson

Sounds like a recipe for disaster – do they not learn from certain local radio stations being deprived of music recently due to someone pulling out a plug in Oxford? 

All this "using the cloud" only works if you have some redundancy built into how you access it. 

Similar thing happened as soon as local radio went over to IP telephony a few years ago and they had to give up their copper conductor phone lines from the local exchange.  It crashed, needless to say.

And that was long before W1A’s Syncopatico software was perfected.

Mike Jordan

Isn’t most of the distribution already now done via a pair of Coding and MUX sites somewhere in the UK – hopefully backing up each other?

No further details allowed to be published.

Peter Neill

Yes, but network has to go to each nation/region for local opt then back again for distribution.

 

ianfootersmall