"Roderick Stewart" <
rj...@escapetime.myzen.co.uk> wrote in message
news:mclmki5gtrpqn0em5...@4ax.com...
As recently as 2000 when I bought a widescreen CRT TV, it had a relay inside
it which gave a very loud clonk when it switched between 25 fps UK signals
and "pseudo NTSC" from a US-recorded VHS tape (525/29.97 NTSC, but with the
colour transcoded to PAL by my VHS machine).
I'm gobsmacked at how good that standards conversion is these days. I
noticed at the time of Trump's inauguration there were interviews with
supporters and "anti-supporters" in bars where US news programmes were being
shown, so there were US TVs visible in the background. Given that those
pictures did not have even the remotest hint of 25/30 frame beating, I
wonder whether the *UK* news crews were using 1080i/29.97 equipment to avoid
the frame bars, and then standards-converting that to 1080i / 25 fps for
showing on UK news, whereas normally they'd shoot in 1080i/25 even in the
US.
A far cry from the days of very unsubtle conversion in the 1970s-90s. At the
time of Princess Diana's funeral in1997, I happened to be flitting between
BBC, ITV and CNN coverage. CNN were taking BBC and ITN feeds, together with
their own (US-standards) cameras for their own reporters' contribution. They
were converting UK-sourced video from 25 fps to 30 fps for feeding to the US
audience, along side their 30 fps cameras, but where the channel was being
shown in the UK , there was a 30-to-25 conversion. 25-to-30, followed by
30-to-25 was not pretty especially if the camera panned, using the
technology that was available in the late 1990s :-(