back to article Inside the BBC's R&D Labs

Whatever your views on its programming, it is hard to deny that the BBC’s research labs have produced some pretty clever things over the years. Teletext, RDS and Nicam stereo are just some of the more well known ones, but the R&D Lab is also responsible for much of the work on the DVB-T2 standard that makes Freeview HD possible …

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  1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

    Re: Sorry

    Then that's even worse. They have had cheap technology for putting low data rate sideband info in audio streams for years, now the solution is for a toy to connect to your wifi (how do you enter a WPA password on a Dalek?) and then to the BBC servers and hope the latency isn't too bad.

    Good job subtitles have already been invented or they would be using twitter - or sending you SMS texts !

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      IIRC from the demo....

      IIRC from the demo, the clever bit was the frame-accurate synchronisation between the broadcast and the alternative audio. The tech is really designed to allow an alternative audio track (like in another language, or with audio description) to be sent to a secondary device (moby/fondleslab etc) while keeping the lip-sync exact. The Dalek was just a fun example. Since they don't have externally visible lips. Daleks that is, not BBC employees.

  2. Mike Flex

    "The BBC’s working with students from Lancaster’s Beaumont College to create interfaces that can be controlled with just a single switch, for example."

    Might be handy, given that I've just been dragged away from reading this article to turn the TV on for my better half.

    It doesn't help that our Sony TV defaults to the last selected input, even if the relevant device is switched off. Which is somewhat sloppy when it has a HDMI connection and is also a Sony box.

    1. Grease Monkey Silver badge

      Interesting. My Sony TV doesn't do that at all. Have you read the manual?

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    have the prog without the incidental music?

    Gets a massive thumbs up from me! "I wish someone would shut that f$cking orchestra up" became something of a catchphrase in our house, I think it was around the time crime dramas were becoming more prevalent...

  4. Phil Endecott

    As well as Bath

    Other places that might get disproportionately more mentions than their populations would suggest:

    Crook

    Stoke

    Stone

    Barry

    Wells

    Street

    Wool

    Battle

    Sandwich

    Reading

    Sandy

    and most importantly.....

    BEER !!!

  5. Lamont Cranston
    Joke

    Dubbing Polish audio over the live broadcast of Doctor Who?

    Typical of the left-leaning BBC to want to support all the lazy immigrants who want to come over here, to steal our jobs and abuse our benefits system.

    The sooner the BBC has it's funding slashed (it's a tax - I don't even watch Cbeebies, so why should I be forced to fund it?), and is sold off to Rupert Murdoch, the better.

  6. MrCheese
    Thumb Up

    Almost Happy

    Save for the following:

    "With the UK’s creaking broadband infrastructure, broadcast will still be doing the ‘heavy lifting’ of delivering content to many consumers for a long time to come, with the internet enhancing it through hybrid services.

    One of those is RadioTAG, which can use the internet to deliver additional data alongside a broadcast"

    Non sequitur as far I can tell, any further use of the "internet" will add load to the "UK’s creaking broadband infrastructure". Is there an element of semantics here I'm missing?

    "By capturing all the subtitle information from the DVB streams – the last four years’ of broadcasts are included so far – it’s possible to search a huge amount of material to find any mentions of a subject, then view the relevant clip and, eventually, producers will be able to use the system to include it in their own programme"

    Surely this guarantees the exact same clip will be used by all shows more often not less, especially when the sample size covers a period during which they know this to be a problem?

    "Another project aims to help classify archive material based on the moods evoked by the music"

    Again, you wouldn't be classifying the clip just the music, the person who puts the music to a clip is dictating the mood it is trying to confer upon the viewer/listener long before other interpretations can be made.

    I'm sure I can probably be enlightened and like all research, primary investigations generally promote discovery rather than making discoveries. Nice to know there's some British boffinry still doing what they do best though, license money well spent!

    1. Nigel Whitfield.

      What I was getting at is that while some people fondly believe that in just a few years we'll all be receiving everything via the internet, that's pretty unlikely (at least until multi-cast is more widely available); but by using hybrid systems like this you can still do some of that clever stuff, using both system together; instead of clogging up the internet with a video broadcast, and multiple soundtracks, for example, extra soundtracks can be delivered via the the net, with the video still delivered using traditional broadcast.

      There's slightly less benefit when it comes to radio, which uses less capacity, but it's still more efficient to use FM broadcast and a small amount of additional data than to have all the radio listening delivered down people's broadband, even when they are listening live. Systems like RadioTAG mean you can pretty seamlessly move between the two, as well.

      How well the indexing works will remain to be seen; but typing in search words during the demos turned up a lot of mentions of the various terms, and plenty of clips - if a topic's been mentioned, it'll be found.

      I would imagine you'll find more mentions of something - especially given the way some discussions can change topic subtly - by effectively searching full transcripts than by searching the notes that might have been made beforehand. And, of course, over time the amount of material included is likely to increase. The four years is, I think, pretty much what's readily to hand to test out the system.

  7. John 62
    Flame

    fonts

    Surely Coolvetica and Arial should be the ones for the chop

  8. John 62

    sports

    hopefully they'll discover a way to get rid of background music when they put up full-screen graphics like league tables

  9. John 62
    Flame

    wideangle panning shots

    In the future we'll have cameras that give electric jolts to directors who want panning shots when the camera's on wide angle

  10. Danny 4

    incidental music volume control

    If the Beeb should happen to come by here looking for ideas, here's one, what with all this talk of multiple audio channels and that.

    How about transmitting the dialogue and music in separate channels. On the TV we can manually set the volume of each channel before it is mixed and fed to the speakers. Then *we* can decide how loud the music should be and it might actually be possible to hear what the characters are saying. This is something my Mum is always complaining about.

    Or for that matter when documentary makers decide to go with an over-inflated and continuous soundtrack we can switch the annoying thing off and enjoy the uninterrupted dialogue. I remember a David Attenborough doc a few years back just like this. I could only endure about 10 minutes before switching over.

    1. Tony Smith, Editor, Reg Hardware (Written by Reg staff)

      Re: incidental music volume control

      Hear, hear.

      (Pun not intended)

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