Why does BBC tv sound so bad, why unlimited?

N

nononsense!

New member
Why does it sound so bad, at least here in The Netherlands. It's the only tv station that is almost unhearable. Turning back the lows doesn't help, turning up high doesn't help.
I once had a cd from the UK Subs (punk group) and it was a BBC production. I mastered it for my own use and the thing that was missing was a tube limiter then it sounded much better. The sound from the tv is missing much more.

Why don't they do something about it....or is it so that the ORIGINAL sound is sold to abroad, so that the sound in England is actually being mastered.
 
I don't know, sounds fine here :)

I notice that is the audio is generally not as loud or crushed as other channels, probably because they're not commercially funded and so don't have loud intrustive adverts or programs fighting for your attention.

Note that a 'BBC production' doesn't mean a lot, apart from maybe corporation-wide standards. The BBC has many centres, tv studios and offices all over the UK. A 'BBC production' CD may have been contracted out to another studio to produce and simply commissioned/labelled/managed/funded/distributed/marketed by the BBC.

I've helped out with 'BBC production' recordings at a local community theatre where they've come several times to use the space. They bought all their own gear, but it still shows how varying and widely distributed there operations are.
 
I cannot imagine that you can't hear the bad sound of BBC world. Take for example the program Click.
I cannot concentrate on what they are saying at all.
It can't be heard.

The speakers talk very alternating... one second they talk loud the other second they talk softly.
Turning up the volume won't work in this case.
I cannot imagine that you can't hear this.
There must be some difference between England and The Netherlands.
 
If you think the BBC is bad you should hear our independant channels such as ITV. I'll never understand why a broadcasting company of any type wouldn't want to compress their audio to ensure the best possible viewing enjoyment.

Night time tv is a 'no no' over here now. When I was a kid in the 70's and early 80's, I used to be fascinated with how when someone on tv whispers, you could hear them yet if someone was to shout, it would still be the same volume(give or take abit)...I used to love how this worked. But now if someone is talking only quietly, I have to miss what they say cause if I dare turn the volume up, I can guarantee a commercial will suddenly come on and blast my living room out at 1am. It's just not enjoyable to watch tv at night these days.

I could be wrong here but I think that when we used to recieve tv through radio waves via an antenna, the audio had to be compressed to fit the waveband. But now that we get it all down a cable...they just don't bother. I can't believe that they aren't making tv's these days with a compressor/limiter built into the circuitry.

The other explanation I hear is because just like the loudness war on music CD's, commercials are also competing with each other and believe that if their commercials are loud, we will take more notice of them but, I personally think that is rubbish. I think that the film makers just think that we will enjoy action films more when the gunshots sound like they're in the same room as the viewers. It's angered me for a long time...I'm always shouting out at the tv...'where the hell are all the audio technicians...I would sack/fire someone if my tv station was putting out audio like that' !

Mart.
 
Does someone have another explanation?
It seems that BBC 1 and 2 sound the same as BBC World. These are multimillion company's. They have enough to buy thousands of limiters and other stuff.
It's almost impossible to concentrate on the sound on what they are saying. It's a very distant sound with a lot of rumble, no highs in it, no presence.
Switch from BBC to a Dutch Belgian or German tv station and hear the difference.
 
Um....how about changng the channel then? You'll be less stressed out about it.
 
nononsense! said:
Does someone have another explanation?
It seems that BBC 1 and 2 sound the same as BBC World. These are multimillion company's. They have enough to buy thousands of limiters and other stuff.
It's almost impossible to concentrate on the sound on what they are saying. It's a very distant sound with a lot of rumble, no highs in it, no presence.
Switch from BBC to a Dutch Belgian or German tv station and hear the difference.
Click to expand...
How are you receiving these channels? Are you getting analog or digital, and are you getti8ng it broadcast, direct satellite or via cable provider?

I don't know how things are over there across the pond, but for a long time here in the New World we had real problems with many of our local cable TV providers, especially when cable TV was mostly analog. What would happen is they'd just grab the signals off of satellite, broadcast, or even other cable providers, and pretty much just dump them into their cables as-is with little to no effort on the local distributor's part to balance or otherwise adjust the various signals coming from the various sources and channels. This often resulted in very uneven volume and even picture brightness/color from channel to channel.

Things have improved quite a bit in the past couple of years, especially with most providers and sources switching over to digital signals, but even with that, there can still be some differences in quality between the various channels from local provider to local provider that is not necessarily the fault of the source network.

G.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
I don't know how things are over there across the pond, but for a long time here in the New World we had real problems with many of our local cable TV providers, especially when cable TV was mostly analog. What would happen is they'd just grab the signals off of satellite, broadcast, or even other cable providers, and pretty much just dump them into their cables as-is with little to no effort on the local distributor's part to balance or otherwise adjust the various signals coming from the various sources and channels. This often resulted in very uneven volume and even picture brightness/color from channel to channel.
G.
Click to expand...

I have analog cable tv with no disturbances at all also not in the pictures.

Interesting, but why would they just grab the signals off the satellite? They can get it from the BBC can't they?
I guess they paid for it.
 
Never had problems with BBC here. In fact, because it has no commercials, you don't have to deal with being blasted with stupidly loud overcompressed noise every 10 minutes.

That said, any TV show I watch these days I have to turn down a notch when music starts playing, and back up when it stops.
 
There is nothing wrong with BBC audio, I have always rated it very highly. I actually go to a lot of BBC show recordings, their studios are amazing. Try visiting this website:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcone/watchlive/

(although it may be limited to UK use)

That link is the same as the digital broadcast in the UK, just as a stream.
 
nononsense! said:
I have analog cable tv with no disturbances at all also not in the pictures.

Interesting, but why would they just grab the signals off the satellite? They can get it from the BBC can't they?
I guess they paid for it.
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Where else would they get it from? National and international television networks typically distribute their live programming to their affiliates and carriers via satellite.

I'd put a strong probability on your cable provider being the source of the problem for the very reasons I described. I'd call or write (or both) you local provider and describe the problem and ask them what they can do about it. Maybe their engineer at their downlink and distribution station can put down the deck of cards long enough to actually spin a couple of dials for you ;).

G.
 
nononsense! said:
Interesting, but why would they just grab the signals off the satellite? They can get it from the BBC can't they?
I guess they paid for it.
Click to expand...
That's how the signal is transmitted. The networks transmit the signal to the satellite and the local cable providers grab it from the satellite feed. It's easier than stringing coax across a ocean.

Most of the time, the processing is done at the local level. The cable company has the limiters. If they don't turn up the signal from the BBC enough to get into the limiters, you have this problem.


BTW, I have no such problem with the BBC channel here. I love Top Gear!
 
I tried that BBC live link......

"Not available in your area!"

Thank you BBC.
And I need a tv license too, I'm not gonna read all that.

I wrote an email to my cable provider UPC I hope they have an answer to this next week.
 
Unlike other broadcasters, the BBC is funded by the license paid by any household on the UK with a TV. No advertising. Limited commercial activities - it does make some income by selling programs to overseas and through magazines, CDs, DVDs, etc, however the majority of its income comes from the license fees. This is why it is generally restricted to UK license payers, apart from World Service and the radio stations.

The big US channels however, funded purely by advertising, also restrict online viewing. Aside from some red tape surrounding the broadcast rights they own for the content, why do they do this? Surely, with the right advertising (i.e. country-specific targeted ads), they can make the same amount of money from online viewers regardless of their geographic location.
 
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mattr said:
The big US channels however, funded purely by advertising, also restrict online viewing. Aside from some red tape surrounding the broadcast rights they own for the content, why do they do this? Surely, with the right advertising (i.e. country-specific targeted ads), they can make the same amount of money from online viewers regardless of their geographic location.
Click to expand...

It's not the US channels or TV companies. It's generally about contractual agreements made with the the TV companies in your country.

For example, over in the UK, we can't watch South Park online through their website or on xbox live like a lot of people can. That's not the South Park people or comedy central or whatever who decided that. The rights and licence to broadcast South Park will have been bought by channels that broadcast in Britain, in this case MTV (I think) and Channel 4. Because they have the broadcast rights, it means that the South Park guys would be in breach of the contract that gives them those rights if they were to broadcast it to us themselves.

It works the other way too. People in America can't watch BBC online because American broadcast companies may already have contracts on some of the shows.

That's my understanding of it anyway.
 
mattr said:
The big US channels however, funded purely by advertising, also restrict online viewing. Aside from some red tape surrounding the broadcast rights they own for the content, why do they do this? Surely, with the right advertising (i.e. country-specific targeted ads), they can make the same amount of money from online viewers regardless of their geographic location.
Click to expand...
Just to add to legionserial's response - which is good and true - there's also the fact that television broadcasters are still trying to figure a lot of this stuff out; it's not really as easy as it sounds.

First, their bread and butter income at this time is - and will remain for a while - their standard broadcast and cable-access revenues. They know they have to embrace Internet technology someway, but it's a tightrope walk trying to do that without eating into their broadcast revenues by stealing their own viewers away from themselves. It's not just a robbing Peter to pay Paul situation, because revenues for Internet streaming just are not as juicy as they are for broadcast. They can charge more per viewer capita for broadcast ads simple because they are more *effective*.

This is problem number two that they're still wrestling with; no one has yet figured out an advertising business plan for Internet content providers that actually makes a viable amount of money for them. The Internet is not only like one gigantic Tivo box with the digital technology that allows users to minimize the impact of embedded commercials, but the average Internet user is simply relatively non-responsive to standard types of advertising schemes. They want everything pure and unadulterated by ads, and they want it for free, because in their tiny little heads it has somehow become their God-given right to get anything they want whenever they want, and not have to pay a dime for it.

(Those who have been around this board for a couple of years will remember the HUGE dust up of complaints and defections that happened a couple of years ago simply because Dragon added one - ONE - static in-line ad in each thread display in an effort to actually make some money for running this board. People not only unreasonably got pissed off at Dragon for making such a small and understandable advertising move, but they actually actively promoted software hacks out there that allowed their browsers to simply ignore and not display those ads. Some actually just stopped coming here. This kind of mentality is all over the Internet.)

The number of content websites out there that actually make enough money off of advertising without having to be further subsidized by the parent company or their financiers could probably be counted on both of your hands, And they are doing it only because their content is exceptionally cheap to obtain or produce, like free user-submitted content or cheap-to-produce blog entries, and because they manage to attract hundreds of thousands or millions of visitors a day. Neither of those conditions applies to live streaming of television network content.

G.
 
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i find some of the adult channels are plagued with grunts and moans...would a deEsser help here?
 
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