This has already happened. Around here (one of the top five markets, and on the national 24/7 news channels, for that matter), they are constantly airing footage shot by viewers. Sure the quality is bad (technical issues like exposure, rolling shutter, etc), the composition is bad (not shot by someone who knows how to frame a shot or tell a story with video), and the overall experience is bad, but people love to see their name and video on TV so they'll even give it away for free. The station gets video for free that they otherwise wouldn't have access to, so they're thrilled as well. It's win-win or lose-lose, depending on your perspective.

Many stations send out one person, a reporter/camera person combo rather than the traditional two person camera operator and reporter team. I'm sure it's a bit awkward holding the mic and camera while asking questions, but it's significant savings (at the expense of, in my opinion, compromising content, something another poster mentioned from Thom Hogan's article about this). Similarly, a lot of newscasts are heavily automated. This leads to a lack of flexibility and occasional problems with on-air content, but stations have generally decided that those compromises are worth it in exchange for downsizing.

I can't say they're completely wrong; those are business decisions to save money at a time when there's little money going around anyway, but it's also cheapening the product and putting out substandard quality. I believe that content is king and that at some point, people will turn to the news that has actual reporters reporting along side compelling, quality video. But that's just me, and the past five or so years has worn hard on my theory.

Note that I work in TV, regularly edit material that airs nationally, worry about what my job will look like in ten years, but I don't do news.

Yeah, it's actually worse than that. There are legitimate companies that can't send mail at all to an address containing a plus sign. It's all bad (lazy? ignorant??) programming and doesn't conform to the standards, but there isn't a thing I can do about it. If I want to get mail from certain companies, I can't use the plus notation (most recently it was a small local computer shop of all things). Frustrating, but I've given up on fighting about it.

This seems like as good a place as any for me to relate my experience.

I had a Garmin GPS that was a few years old (perhaps a year or two out of warranty) and it was time for a map update. The Garmin-documented procedure involved running their "WebUpdater" to determine which software to order (particularly important because my device didn't have enough memory to store the brand new top-of-the-line map update and they offered a couple of different versions). I should have just ordered the map update CD from Amazon and skipped reading the official documentation...but since I wanted to make sure I did it right, I followed their process...and ended up with a bricked GPS. Most of their support team was worthless, but one guy really did try to send me a fix. Unfortunately, it didn't work. So there I was, ready to hand over around $100 for a map upgrade, possibly another $200 for a second GPS for Mrs. ibennetch, and instead gave up on Garmin entirely. Oh, and to top off the joy, their phone queue was at least 90 minutes long before reaching a real person. Ugh.

I think I prefer going backwards to what I once saw on (what I remember as) a Microsoft Office installation, probably 15 years ago. The progress bar ever so slowly crept upwards...98, 99, 100% done...then 101, and so on. It finally locked up somewhere after 140%.

Just because you have good reception straight out from the tower at 30km doesn't mean you'll have good service 11km in the air. The cell phone towers are tuned to have good horizontal coverage, not vertically. It's not a perfect sphere of coverage; these are directional arrays that are designed to provide coverage where most of their customers are...on the ground. The first link that came up in my Google search seems to have some more information about coverage patterns.

A TSA agent a few weeks ago told me they're sound waves. I have to question the science portion of their training program...

And yeah, I've had a few agents try to argue with me or try to convince me it's safe as well. I'm not really interested in explaining myself or arguing with them.

I've got to correct myself here -- I got an email from the gentleman who provides the x-mo systems and he informs me that they're indeed running extremely high framerates (4000 and 3000) for this particular show. I've worked with and met him before, and I'm pretty pleased that he spent some time in the comments of this article that's about his systems. I'm not sure how they're doing it, but without trying to sound crazy if anyone could figure it out, he's the guy. Anyway, I can admit that I was wrong about the framerates, and he tells me I am, so there you go. He's actually replied as an AC in sibling thread, so check that out for more information!

You're right on. I'm a tape guy and I've used all of the X-Mo systems; you're absolutely right that the lighting and camera noise affect the framerate. If you're able to pull the 600-1000fps you mention for night games, your ballpark is much better lit than ours. Adjusting for minimal flicker (grrrr), we usually run 350fps for night games, actually very similar for basketball and hockey (360 helps the flicker there a bit more). Besides, more than that and it becomes very difficult to tell a story around that one replay and the tape guy has to be cued really tight to the moment of action. Great for a freeze on a safe/out play, not so great for an outfield bobble. But you know all that already.

Look at the clips -- it looks to me like they're running a framerate around 500 and the clips are slowed down more (either by the EVS on playback or by the professor for posting). They all stutter quite a bit and I'd be shocked if it was near 1000fps, much less the 5000 he claims (note that the link he sources for the 5k fps comment says "up to" while he states that it is 5k).

I don't have much to add, but you've packed a lot of information in to your post and I support what you said.

I'm surprised this is even news, actually; with many or most RSNs having an X-Mo system now, seems most baseball fans would have seen something like this already. I know we talked about the way the bat wobbles, the bat breaks, the sweet spot, etc years ago.

My position on this is not very nuanced. I block ads simply because I can. I read free content simply because I can. I don't expect it nor do I feel entitled to it, but it's there so I read it. If it wasn't there I wouldn't read it and probably would go back to having a life outside of the internet. I definitely don't like being tracked (it's creepy ok?) and so will do anything to thwart attempts to do so, regardless of the detriment this may cause to some business models.

No business model has a god-given right to be sucessful. States may grant certain business models monopoly rights, but that doesn't always stop them from being gazumped by new disruptive technologies. We live in a time of change. The best business models are ones that "just work" because they provide a clear and well-understood benefit to all parties involved, making them attractive to both business and customers. Tracking is sneaky and erodes trust. Ads are annoying and and the precedent set by radio, TV and print says that media consumers cannot be forced to pay attention to them. Now media consumers are using computing devices on which to receive media, the avoidance of ads can be automated. Telling people not to block ads because it's the "wrong thing to do" sounds like the honor system to me. A nice idea but not a strong basis for a business model.

You're close, except:

is mostly incorrect, it wasn't the phpMyAdmin project, it wasn't that the source code was compromised; the problem is that one specific mirror was compromised and a modified copy of the phpMyAdmin source was distributed instead of the official files. It's a stretch to blame that on the phpMyAdmin project.

I'm thinking of some sort of mathematical function where you plug in an arbitrary number of bits, say an entire file, and get out a small representation that is very, very difficult to duplicate. We could call it a hash, I suppose. Then you post the hash to the main web page for each file you distribute, and when someone downloads a file, then compare the hash of the downloaded file to the hash on the web site. Since the mirrors only host the downloads, and not the website, a compromised mirror wouldn't be able to change the website's hash. I need to find a patent attorney, I could make millions on this idea!

(please note that paragraph probably sounds more snarky than it was intended)

Hi BB,

It's probably not appropriate for me to comment on SMPTE's paper approval process in this instance. I wasn't ever really told what the minimum standard for a paper was, but I did get it proofread by a number of my peers well before submitting it. Obviously I needed someone with a bit more expertise outside of outside broadcast engineering to look over it. All I will say is that your logic is sound.

Shortly after I submitted my last response I realised what you were getting at. Yes, there's more to a 100GbE switch than just the laser modules. I think the logic there was that I was starting my analyisis from a "cost per port" point of view. When I saw the price of the 100GbE laser modules I assumed (probably fatally) they were the bulk of the cost of the switch, and that the other parts were insignifigant from a cost perspective. I don't think the overall conclusion was wrong (timescale perhaps out by a few years), but yes, there are errors in my working it out. Looking back, and with the benefit of your criticisim, it would have been better to write it as an opinion article rather than as a research paper.

So - my opinion on another of your earlier comments - The nature of the outside broadcast business is fast turnaround, and that requires that many technical aspects be "plug and play". Another of the reasons I tend to favour Audio Video Bridging is that it presents itself as a "plug and play" approach to QoS, VLAN and other networking aspects. The promoters of the standard(s) specifically mention that very little networking knowledge is required to deploy an AVB-enabled network. I'm not aware of the particulars, but the 802.1ak standard hopefully should allow for things like multicast trees, spanning tree, VLANs, etc to be automated to a large degree by being established on an "as needed" basis. Indeed, a packet/frame-switched system is pretty-much useless to us outside broadcasters unless these things can be automated. Also, topologically speaking, a single outside broadcast facility resembles a single LAN. I would not expect anyone working at an OB to need or have knowledge of routing protocols at all. While we require expensive, high-bandwidth equipment, I don't see the need to make the network more complicated than it needs to be.

I do find the idea of a uni research program interesting. I will be attending the SMPTE meeting at CSIRO where I'm sure we'll discuss this further.

Cheers,

Dan

Yes, that's the general idea, based on my rather intense reading of the Star Trek The Next Generation: Technical Manual in my younger years. That being said, the reality of how it was presented in the show was different from the theory presented in the Manual, even though it was supposed to be the guide for writers to reference. It's just one of those things where we have to accept slightly different rules in each episode. By the way, I believe the technical manual specifically mentioned that at the end of a holodeck session, the replicated material would be turned back in to energy, essentially reversing the materialization process.

Hi danversj,

You make some good points.

To be clear, I'm not at all critical of anyone who brings discussion to the public sphere with the intention of simply advancing knowledge. You describe that as your intention and I think that is very noble. Your substantive knowledge of the subject matter is excellent and I believe the discussion is very well suited to forums like these.

The SMPTE submission changes things a little for me. From a commercial perspective, when I pay the significant costs to attend the seminars at SMPTE, I expect (I think reasonably) a certain level of quality in the information I'm paying for. I expect to receive information that is concrete, not rubbery; information above and beyond what is freely available on the internet; information that is properly synthesized; and a presentation free of terminology flubs. If you had paid over $1,000 for an audience seat to gather information that hopefully gives you a leading edge in the market, I think you would expect the same. For this reason, I am always very cautious about publishers and professional bodies that want to charge for access to my work. Attaching a price tag to information tends to imply a warranty for a certain level of quality. Your employer also endorsed the quality of your work by attaching their masthead and logo to the presentation. In my mind, both these things open up your work to a level of scrutiny and criticism beyond what would be fair in a healthy forum discussion. Do you agree?

You might have missed my point on the cost comparisons. At the outset, I indicated agreement that convergence into networking is almost certain. My point is that you're comparing the cost of an SDI router with a laser module. That module is like a backplane on a DA, it needs to fit into a network switch. A very, very fast one. To replace the signal distribution such as that used by your employer now (can I assume that HD1 has around 300 DA's and a 576-sq router?) you need an ethernet core switch capable of somewhere between 10-20 Tbps switching throughput. The cost of laser transceivers pales into insignifcance next to the costs for a core switch that big. They do exist though; the newest range of carrier-grade switches would be fast enough to fully replace the distribution infrastructure in a truck with 300 DA's and a 576-sq router. But the costs are wholly different to what's described in your paper, which is my point. When comparing costs, I think it's important to compare apples with apples. Would you agree? The items in table 2 are not interchangeable with the items in table 1 in your paper. Or am I missing something?

I take your point that there are still aspects (latency, QOS, etc) that need more teasing out. My personal opinion is that proper provisioning of bandwdith will overcome the need for QOS and queuing mechanisms. QOS is only useful in situations where the traffic exceeds the available bandwidth. I also think that SMPTE 2022-6 will answer a lot of the other problems. But that's just my own opinion. I give it to you for free - so it doesn't come with any warranties about quality.

Thanks for the feedback! Will you be at this months SMPTE meeting at CSIRO?

P.S. If you're serious about examining the topic in detail, have you considered enrolling in a uni research program? Having your research supervised by a uni guarantees the protection of information to some extent, so many organisations are quite happy to furnish you with sensitive information about equipment age, upgrade roadmaps, etc. Tutors will teach you how to tap into the research and resources you see as inaccessible at the moment. You'll also have access to vast library resources (think Google Scholar) and your paper will be scrutinised by professional examiners to ensure it is defensible and robust before being released to the public. Something to think about.