Posts by Nigel Whitfield. 1049 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Jun 2009
They may well not be spending as much as some would like, but they manage to achieve an awful lot, in my view. Stuff like DVB-T2 is pretty clever (regardless of your view of the content distributed with it), and the accessibility work is pretty important too, in my view.
I'd love to know how much Google has spent on GoogleTV; it's very likely far more than the whole of the BBC Labs. And what have they got to show for it?
If you've got time, pop along to http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00tt3qv/The_Reunion_Play_School/ for a an episode of The Reunion with some of the presenters. A lovely listen for those of a certain age.
It features Toni Arthur, Jonathan Cohen, Floella Benjamin and Brian Cant
Perhaps some of the RegHardware readers can answer the questions I've posed at gonedigital.net on this topic...
Essentially, I want well integrated SIP.
And I want good call handling that can do what I do on Symbian: callers are in groups, each group with a different ring tone, so I know if it's friends, family, VIP, etc. And by using 'profiles' I can select which groups I'll be alerted to, either with a couple of button presses, or by time of day - for example, at night, I only want noises for calls from 'family' and 'VIP' and not from texts.
These - and great email - are to me far more important than apps or games. They're the bread and butter of using a phone, and I want the same functionality in a new phone, even if it's achieved in a slightly different way - but it has to be straightforward to change profile.
I use it a fair bit; only a couple of weeks ago, I was entertaining a gentleman caller and the simplest way to get the photos he'd taken was to send them via Bluetooth from his HTC to my Nokia; quick, very easy, no need to wait for slugging spam filters and internet connections to do their work. And no chance of anyone else seeing the pictures, either.
If I take snaps when out and about on my phone, again, it's simple and quick to just send them by BT to the laptop.
Sometimes I don't want to fiddle around uploading to a website, setting privacy options, and so on. I just want to get a picture or pictures from one device to another, easily and quickly. And Bluetooth, on many devices, is actually jolly good for doing that.
A cynic might suggest that there's not much in it for keyboard manufacturers in making a Bluetooth desktop set, which would enable one part of it to be replaced easily with someone else's it, though there are certainly some out there that use Bluetooth.
The manufacturers would doubtless say that their systems are more robust than Bluetooth, which is better in such a popular and congested bit of airspace.
RS-232 adaptors? Cor blimey mate, don't get much call for those round here... as the serial port has largely withered away, at least outside specialist applications, perhaps no one sees a need to make these adaptors in the quantities that will be necessary to drive down prices.
As for X10, I think the pairing and range issues perhaps counted against Bluetooth there, and earlier versions could be considered a bit over-engineered - you don't really need the bandwidth that's offered.
In the control space, systems like Zigbee and Z-Wave have been trying to establish themselves as replacements for something like X10, though without a massive amount of impact so far - there are still depressingly few Z-Wave bits and bobs for the UK, for instance.
The faster set up time and low power capabilities of Bluetooth Low Energy could make it ideal for that sort of thing, but it'll be competing with all the other standards, and they'll have to create profiles, then get them into kit. Yep, it could be potentially great, if you could buy a new lightswitch and know it'll be compatible with your mobile phone. It could happen - but it's going to take a fair bit of time, I think.
And in the meantime, you might end up with a smart meter that has Zigbee, or a set top box that has Z-Wave; for a while at least, there's going to be plenty of scope for consumers to get thoroughly confused about which bits of kit will work together.
AZW is not a 'compiled ePub' by any stretch of the imagination.
AZW is Amazon's tweaked version of the MobiPocket book format, which long predates ePub, and has its roots in the old PalmDoc format.
ePub is based on XHTML, with various XML files describing the content, all wrapped up in a zip file and renamed.
There are indeed tools that can convert from ePub to Mobi/AZW, but that is not at all the same as claiming that one is just a 'compiled' version of another; that's a bit like claiming that Japanese is just a compiled version of English.
There's a wealth of information about both formats in at wiki.mobileread.com
There are sets that have modular designs, but not many - a few of the Loewe models, I think still have them, for instance.
A lot of this seems much worse, of course, given that there have been quite a few changes recently, after a relatively stable decade or so in digital TV; in the last couple of years we've seen DVB-T2, and MHEG-IC, plus the introduction of H.264 and multi-channel surround in tandem with HD services, and growing interactivity.
But even so, remember that making tuners modular and easy for users to replace is going to introduce more connectors, and potentially increase cost while decreasing reliability, even if only slightly in each case. And for what? So that a few people will be able to swap out a tuner module for a slightly better one.
Honestly, while the readers here may agonise about that, it's going to be a pretty small minority of people. Sad fact is that, when it comes to AV gear, "good enough" is all that most people want. That's why they put up with VHS, why hardly anyone buys hifi separates, why Sony's Profeel didn't take over the world, etc etc.
Many people won't be spending £2500 on a TV. They'll spend a lot less than that, and many of them will happily buy last year's model if it's going for a song, just so they can watch Eastenders in HD. A lot of them do have tuners that are separate too - in a Sky or Virgin box, for instance.
In some cases too, it may not just be the tuner - swapping tuners might get you an upgrade from DVB-T to T2, but it's not necessarily going to conjure up an audio processor with Dolby transcoding, an H.264 decoder, or a processor that can handle YouView's graphics, or a DRM chip for some internet TV services. To avoid replacing the set, you'd need everything modular, not just the tuner.
Most people are just going to settle for "good enough." Again.
There are potential exploits or ways of fiddling things, but there are quite a few hoops to jump through. Typically, a brand's TV service will connect to a server specific in the firmware and fetch specific files for the home screen; for instance, in VieraCast, it's at vieracast.eu.
So you'd either have to subvert the server that holds all the data for a specific brand, and get your own scripts in there, or hope that a particular vendor doesn't check things you upload to their marketplace, or you would have to subvert the DNS on the home user's network, redirecting and requests to the various TV portals to alternative addresses (and hoping there's no additional checking going on).
And then, what could you possibly achieve if you do that? Display some porn instead of the video the user wants? It's not likely they'll have all their banking credentials stored on the TV, after all. Even services like LoveFilm don't require you to enter anything more than a linking ID code on the TV set.
So, while HbbTV may give a common platform with which to code mischievously, you still have to get your application onto someone's TV, which is still probably going to require brand-specific techniques.
You can read a bit more about how VieraCast works at http://customvieracast.blogspot.com/ and I also talked about the security issue on my blog a while back at http://gonedigital.net/2011/04/27/security-in-a-connected-tv-world/
The HbbTV spec does include a section on security, and it's possible for applications to be considered trusted or untrusted, and for TLS/SSL to be used.
At least part of what YouView is planning is the 'backwards' EPG, which should integrate catch-up and broadcast in the same interface, from that point of view it's more unified in terms of presenting the main TV platform, which is what I was getting at.
So, for the content from the main channels that appears in the EPG and as catch-up by scrolling backwards, YouView will be defining a platform in a much stronger way - if you scroll back to last Tuesday's EastEnders, my understanding is that that's what you'll get when you select it, rather than a sudden jump into an iPlayer UI.
Yes, there will still be individual VoD deployed through YouView, but it will also have that unifying wrapper around the main free to air channels and their catch-up services, which isn't something that you'll be getting from HbbTV.
I wonder what you mean by ' paid "reviews" ' ?
I've written four reviews of robot cleaners for RegHardware. The only person who's paid me any money to do it is RegHardware, and they certainly don't tell me what to write, nor do the PRs ply me with gifts, freebies or anything else.
Looking at those four reviews, I would hardly class them as hype, and indeed they all manage to find some sort of fault with the various models on test.
You may not have been happy with your purchases, or regret your decision, but please don't go around making allegations of impropriety without being able to back them up.
If it's very long hair you may find, as I did with large clumps of pet hair and the Neato at one stage, that it sort of wraps it around the rollers in large clumps, neatly preparing for you to start the conversion into a lovely bit of yarn with which to make a jump that will enchant and surprise people when they receive it as a gift.
It will pick up some of those - it managed to gobble up assorted receipts, the cellophane wrapping from some of my (fairly large) cigars, and a few two inch screws. Those last, of course, wouldn't have made it into the bin of the recently reviewed Neato, thanks to the sharp bends that junk has to go round.
But yes, for a lot of people, you're still going to need to do stuff yourself. Or wait until you have a guest who's so disgusted with the state of your place that they'll do it for you.
For a little more on the book, and the original furore around S28, it's worth reading this piece by Ian McKellen, which also points out that, contrary to popular belief, the book wasn't placed in school libraries. And it reveals many of the sort of instances of self censorship that the vile clause caused.
http://www.mckellen.com/writings/activism/8807section28.htm
It's heartening to see so many of the commenters here agreeing that the whole notion of "promoting" homosexuality was a nonsense; a shame there are clearly still a few who manage to equate "it's something that happens, no big deal" with "you simply must try it; last one to buggery's a sissy"
You're probably thinking of the book "Jenny lives with Eric and Martin" which did indeed cause a big fuss in some of the papers, who seemed to suggest that this was being made available in school libraries and children would be forced to read it.
In fact - after all, the tabloids never exaggerate, do they? - there was a copy, or possibly more than one, placed in a teachers' resource library, with the intention that, if a teach felt it might be necessary, it would be available, and might help some kids understand that the home they came from, or that other people came from, wasn't the only one of its kind.
Now, some people may find that disgusting, but honestly, I still don't think it's propagandising to tell people that, no, they're not the only person who has a background like that.
I remember when I started school in the early 70s, my brother and I had a fab new word that none of the other kids in class did - "divorce." That wasn't, thankfully, the sort of thing you got teased about at school but children can be very cruel, especially when they see some of the vile hateful rubbish that used to appear routinely in the media.
I mean, you wouldn't believe the sheer amount of time it takes fitting in the gym, the hairdressers, the shopping for designer clothes, the manicures.
And that's even before you make a start on the sex; apparently, we have an average of 106 partners a year, according to some christian web sites.
I try to do my bit, as much as the next man. But I went on holiday for a couple of weeks, and then work was busy, and now I have a massive backlog to get through; I had to have sex seven times in my lunch hour, just to keep up!
I'm telling you, it's a chore. A glamorous one, but still a chore
Section 28 was a vile, and badly drawn piece of education, that forbade the suggesting in state maintained schools that a 'pretend family relationship' was acceptable. Honestly, I don't understand why it should be so shocking to say to people that, you know, it's ok if little Johnny has two mummies, so you shouldn't beat the crap out of him for it.
Worse, being so vaguely drawn, it ushered in an era of horrendous self censorship, and people using the vague "promoting homosexuality" notion as an excuse to refuse to do things, because no one wanted to be a test case (no prosecutions were ever brought). It lead to such nonsenses as Lothian Regional Transport refusing to allow a simple advert on their buses for the local gay switchboard - as a council run service, they worried it might be "promoting" homosexuality.
As others have pointed out, the idea of "promotion" is risible. Could you honestly suddenly become gay if I tell you it's really wonderful, and you'll have a great time? I rather doubt it, any more than telling me how great it is to be married to a woman is likely to turn me from a big fat poof into an adoring husband eager to make babies with a wife.
Oddly, these ideas about promotion seem to go with two somewhat incompatible world views; firstly, that homosexuality is so horrible and disgusting that everyone must be protected from it, while secondly also believing it to be so fabulous that the merest mention of it in anything other than the most disapproving tones will have all the local teenage boys banging away at each others' arses like steam hammers.
Needless to say, the real world's not quite like that. Telling people it's ok to be gay, or for someone to have gay parents, isn't going to suddenly turn the whole classroom queer. But refusing to acknowledge it, or to allow people to say it's ok, can and does have real consequences in terms of bullying and upset.
Mr Souter has free speech; his witless blathering (or rather, that of his PR) that this is against free speech is just a feeble minded attempt to wrap a big sulk up in some sort of matter of principle.
Google has not blocked his website; it has not taken it off line, and it has not censored him in any way. His website, with whatever self aggrandising piffle it contains is still in the same place, with the same content as it's probably always had, and just as accessible as ever. No one is preventing people from reading it, or locking them up if they do, or installing web filters to protect the innocent from viewing it.
The concept of "free speech" does not extend to "I demand that Google's algorithms determine that I'm the expert on a topic," even where that topic may be himself; indeed, you might argue that very often a person's own account is the least objective place to go for information about them.
It's hardly a massive leap of imagination for those who desire to hear words from the man himself to realise that BrianSouter.com may be the address to type; nor should it be particularly surprising, given his views and the amount that has been written about them, and the number of times other people may have linked to those sites, that Google's algorithms rate some of those accounts higher than his own PR puffery.
I'm sure many people are annoyed that their own sites don't rank higher on Google; that the search engine, in effect, says "you know, that's not very interesting, here are some better sources of information about X."
Most of them, however, are not quite stupid enough to equate that with censorship, and to decide that they need to sulk to a government department.
The BBC is rolling out their service, and working with manufacturers to test, and certify kit, to ensure a consistent experience, and to help make sure kinks are ironed out.
Vision's service won't actually work with every Freeview HD box, because there are some out there that, despite it now being in the spec, don't have the MHEG-IC that's needed for these services.
It became mandatory in version 6.2.1 of the D-Book spec, and the first box certified to pass that was a Sony model, earlier this year. Freeview HD kit that predates that may not fully support MHEG-IC, or in some cases that I know of, probably won't support it at all.
I suspect that if you look at the small print, Vision will qualify the claim to work on all Freeview HD kit somewhere. Given that it won't work on absolutely all kit, and the relative profiles of the BBC and Vision, I think the Beeb are probably right to be cautious - I can just imagine the shit-storm if they were to say "every Freeview HD box can get iPlayer" if that weren't actually true.
There are other changes in 6.2.1, which I wrote about here: http://gonedigital.net/2011/04/18/the-magic-number-6-2-1/
On OS X, open Keychain Access, type DigiNotar into the search box and you can find the root certificate that way.
Double click on it, and click the arrow next to 'Trust' if that section's not expanded. Change the drop down next to 'When using this certificate' from 'System default' to 'Never trust' and close the window. You'll be prompted for an admin password.
As I've blogged over on GoneDigital.net, I think this map is pretty useless.
One figure for the Highlands? Even though around a quarter of the inhabitants are in Inverness, which must surely skew the results somewhat.
Down in the south, you can break out Portsmouth and Southampton, but if you want to know how broadband fares in Winchester or Basingstoke, you have to make do with figures that include all the rural areas of the county instead - similarly over in Cambridgeshire.
Not breaking London down is daft too.
Not only does it not serve punters well, as they can't really tell if they'll get Edinburgh's "fastest" broadband in the New Town or at Turnhouse, it also doesn't serve much of a public policy purpose, as without more detailed breakdowns, you can't see if investment is evenly spread, or if it needs to be beefed up in certain areas. Will high tech industries be able to revitalise old industrial or mining areas for instance, or is the broadband there too rubbish? This tells us nothing about that.
It does, however, make it look like someone at Ofcom's been doing something. Which is a nice tick in the productivity box.
... but the restrictions on pseudo photographs and manipulated photographs actually came in well before 1997.
I can't remember the date of the Act, but I do recall that that was one of the points we specifically addressed in our evidence. So, while the Labour governments certainly had their own nasty draconian tendencies, especially with the 'Extreme Porn' legislation, this sort of thing is not solely the preserve of one party.
No politician is likely to be brave enough to go with this, no matter how much "evidence based policy" is talked about. Don't like the evidence? Ignore it or sack your advisors.
As far as I recall, evidence regarding porn and sexual crime has always been a bit sketchy; back in the 1990s, I was one of a group of people who put together submission to a parliamentary committee on the topic (even got to debate with a ghastly Tory on Radio 4!)
We pointed out then that there was no clear link, and there was also a good argument that porn might serve to sate some desires, rather than enhance them. And, if that were true, then you can make a subsequent case for allowing pseudo-porn, as an outlet for certain tendencies. If someone is going to look at images of children (and I don't think anyone's really found a way to actually stop that), then far better that they are created images, where no children have been abused.
But, of course, many have in the past, and always will, decided for themselves that there MUST be a link between porn and sex crime, and so therefore porn is bad. They feel this is "self evident" and it's hard to get them to pay any attention to real evidence as a result.
I must try and dig out the evidence we submitted back then; last time I found a copy, it was in WP 5.1 format.
It's not exactly to imitate the wear received by a physical book. It's to prop up the profits of publishing houses that are scared witless by the move to digital. We covered this back in March at
http://www.reghardware.com/2011/03/02/library_e_books_get_time_limit/
and there's also more on my own blog at http://gonedigital.net/tag/ebooks/
Security is an issue I'd love to cover in detail, but there's a limit to how long each article published tends to be. Given that, we could quite easily do a whole piece on IPv6 security for each platform that readers are likely to be using, including Windows variants.
And I'd rather do it in detail than have to try and cram a brief bit of information about three or four different platforms into one piece.
Making the devices secure isn't really any more difficult that doing so for IPv4. The issue at the moment is simply that if you do set up a tunnel because you don't want to wait for your ISP, then you will very likely be bypassing whatever firewall you have in your router, and NAT too, if that's what you were relying on.
By the time customer DSL equipment is rolled out, the software in that should have firewalls that you can configure for IPv6 just as easily as for IPv4.
And, of course, the simple thing (well, if you're running something like OpenBSD) is not to have anything running that you don't want people to connect to. So, that may mean revisiting config files for different services and checking they don't automatically listen for IPv6 if you don't want them on.
Since I'm mostly just testing outbound connectivity, and can't see any reason why, for instance, I should have SMTP over IPv6 available for emailing me right now, I have a simple filter on my gateway, which is "pass IPv6 out, don't allow any incoming connections via the tunnel"
But everyone's situation and software is going to be different.
That's one reason why we went as far as showing how to get your tunnel set up, and didn't provide explicit instructions for routing to your whole network, ending with a security warning instead.
I think we'd have been a touch irresponsible to show people exactly how to open up their whole network to the IPv6 world without any mention of security. But we included a security warning at the start of the walk-though on page 2 and ended the article by reiterating that you'll need to consider security.
I really don't think that's an irresponsible way to approach this; we don't have space to cover every security issue, for every platform, and if we just pretended IPv6 wasn't happening, that would be a bit odd too.
We've not hidden the security aspects from people; I hope we've gone some way to ensure that if readers do try this, they'll at least have thought about them.
I've done a couple of IPv6 setups here - one on Windows XP to see how fiddly it was for this article, and the other using my OpenBSD box when I was writing the original WTF is IPv6 piece.
On the latter, it was easy - I run Postfix as the mail server and all you need to do is change on line in the main.cf file, typically.
By default, it binds to only IPv4, but add (or uncomment) a line in main.cf that says
inet_protocols = all
then retstart, and you're away; I didn't need to do any other tinkering, and was able to connect to the IPv6 address. I have postgrey and amavisd also running, doing front-end filtering, and didn't need to tinker with those at all; the system accepted the connection via IPv6, and passed it to the amavisd filter using IPv4.
You'll spot the IPv6 spam because the address will be in the headers; this is how the Received lines logged my IPv6 incoming mail:
Received: from macbook (unknown [IPv6:2001:470:1f09:1890:21f:f3ff:fe51:43f8]) by gate.nigelwhitfield.com (Postfix) with SMTP for
Perhaps surprising was the wrong word to use; but I wanted to convey that, though most people will think something like OpenBSD scary and tricky to configure, it's actually very straightforward.
It's because of that network functionality (and the sane approach to security) that it's been sitting on my main gateway server here for quite a few years now; I really would recommend it to anyone who want to tinker with any aspects of networking.
I think there are a couple of likely reasons for this sort of lock-down being desired by platform makers, including Freesat. As for the reverse engineering issue, that's not really a big one - Myth already has a plug-in for the Freesat EPG, so it's possible to get the programme data, and they've not been taken out back and shot.
Freesat's intended to be a self funding system, with an advanced EPG (ie series link, rescheduling, and so forth). And for that to work, it has to charge channels to go on the guide.
There's also a viewpoint (which depends on your exact interpretation of EU law, and applies more to Sky in any case, I think) that satellite receivers must not block the reception of other broadcasts that are in the clear, hence the addition of the 'non freesat' scan mode. (Annex IV, Framework Directive 2002/21/EC, itself a rewording of Art 4, Directive 95/47). But I digress...
Once you've got a function to scan for those other channels, then what do you do with them? On a box like the old Humax HDCI-2000, no problem, because there is no common EPG. They just go in the channel list.
But I suspect the reasoning for not doing that here (and indeed on Sky) is that it potentially harms your sales of EPG slots, if people know that it's pretty simple for users to add an extra channel and then view it. If you could simple scan and store in the same channel list, might not some smaller channels decide, rather than pay the EPG fees, that they'll simply explain on their website how to scan and store themselves?
There's also then the issue of the platform services, which is the enhancements like series links, auto rescheduling, and trailer booking, which are offered over and above the capabilities of the standard programme information.
Some of those thing, to work, will require that at least one of the tuners on the box is monitoring a transponder that has Freesat data streams on it, otherwise you won't get things like the accurate recording flags, or notice of rescheduled events. That, potentially, could mean either things like recording failing, or missing start or ends.
I'm not going to say this sort of issue isn't surmountable, but it requires thought, and it's still going to be confusing to some of the non-techy punters at whom platform-based services like these are aimed. You can end up with situation where end users have recording issues not because of any failing in Freesat itself, but because, for example, they happen to be watching a non--platform channel at the time when a recording was meant to start.
Readers of sites like RegHardware will probably understand why there might be issues; but many people will just see that a box has failed to record a particular thing and their view will be "Freesat is crap, because the box didn't record Doctor Who properly while I was watching XYZ", even if XYZ is on a non-Freesat transponder.
So, from a technical support/reputational point of view, I'm not saying this is the right thing to do, but I can quite see why Freesat and the makers of compatible equipment adopt the approach that they do.
And yes, you'll get much better quality than when using it remotely; eminently watchable, and without the restrictions on image quality that I referred to in the review. I did use test it that way, but there are only so many words in a review, and the remote quality was something worth commenting on.
Whether you'd want to use it like this, of course, depends; it's probably easier than putting in a separate LNB feed to a bedroom, say, but if that's the main use case, you might be better off in the long run, especially when in-home sharing of recordings in added to products from other manufacturers.
What's the right choice is going to depend on where you're starting, and what equipment you're prepared to spend money on.
... then you're not really looking for a Freesat one.
It's a platform-based service, and as such, I don't think we're ever going to see receivers for it that offer all the flexibility people will expect from a more enthusiast receiver.
Do say exactly what detail you want to know, and I'll do my best to help.
The technical reasons why you won't tend to get a multi-sat box that combines Freesat and other channels are pretty straightforward; if you're tuned to another satellite, you're not going to be able to pick up the Freesat streams with their EIT p/f info, which is used to trigger accurate recording. You'd be falling back to time based recording instead, and consequently have issues with rescheduled recordings.
For stuff on 28.2E, my suspicion is that they're never going to make it really easy for people to mix both on the same EPG or channel list, because if they do allow receivers to do that, what's the incentive for people to pay to go on the Freesat EPG.
With regard to channels with MHEG on other services, no, sorry, I didn't test that. Soarsat isn't launched (and will anyway be at a different orbital position) and likewise any German channels with MHEG will be on a different satellite, and without any apparent support for Diseqc, it would be a bit of an odd move to buy a Freesat box with the intention of tuning in to those.
As I mentioned in the review, there's not even a blind search.
A box designed for a specific platform is never, I think, going to offer all the bells and whistles that satellite enthusiasts want.
Alongside the lack of Unicable support (which would make life so much simpler), there are no options for advanced config, such as Diseqc, so you'll have to rely on the port one trick.
If there is anything, it's hidden very well (as, of course, is the option on the Humax to access things like Unicable).
I lost count of button presses; you have to go into the settings, installation, manual scan, and then enter the frequencies one by one - no blind scan here - to store the channels.
And you have to go back into the menu to change between freesat and non-freesat modes; although non-freesat channels are saved from 5000 onwards, you can't access both lists at the same time.
Broadcasting a film that's already made in 3D would be easy. What's the point, really?
Doing stuff live is much more of a challenge; if 3D is to become mainstream (regardless of whether you think that's a good thing or not) then sooner or later, people in production are going to need to know how to make things look good in real time, rather than when given hours to plan and set up shots.
I think, actually, that tennis will work much better than some of the other sports (like football) that have been used for broadcast so far, because it's a relatively small area, and you won't notice some of the more annoying effects that can be seen with long shots down a football field.
With fewer people involved in a match, it should also be much easier to get cameras to where they're needed for the best effect.
All that said, it's the subject matter that counts; a boring tennis match will be just as boring in 3D. Let's hope it's an exciting one.
I wonder if 3D will entice any streakers...
Certainly on ePubs, some do. But equally, an awful lot of eBooks don't, and just have a pretty generic publisher's logo with the author and title. I suspect it's because someone's forgotten to acquire the necessary rights to the image in some cases, rather than sheer laziness. Though you can't rule that out where some companies are concerned
I was mildly annoyed that after an update to the firmware on my Panasonic TV, it wasn't responding correctly to some of the WSS signalling from my Toppy, and 4:3 material was being stretched to fill the screen ("VulgarVision")
It's been resolved in the end by replacing some of my other AV gear, so the Toppy is now running through a Yahama AV amp which upscales everything, and has control over black bars, so 4:3 material is correctly pillarboxed once more.
Acutally getting the Toppy to respond correctly to all the various AFD formats was one of the most tedious and long winded updates we went through a few years back.
The BBC white paper we linked to goes into considerable detail about the methodology.
The main purpose was to determine the level at which the eye can perceive detail, so static images were used, with an un-manipulated one, and one to which various filters had been applied, noting the point at which the test subjects were able to discern the effect of the filters.
The result was, as we say, broadly in line with the accepted acuity, 1 minute of arc, which is the figure I used in working out the rest of the maths.
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