Re: UKNM: Re: UKNM Digest V1 #770

[Ray Taylor]

Tom <

tomtui [dot] co [dot] uk

> said


> >I think what Ray is saying is that Web broadcasts are at a lower

resolution

> >than TV - so you can film it with a digital camera and post production

can

> >be done on a desktop, not in a studio @ �1K an hour plus all the cocaine

> you

> >can carry.

>

> Just because it is "the web" doesn't mean you can lower your production

> values. Crap always looks and sounds like crap. Which part of "the web"

> allows for low-quality production?


Don't remember Tim talking about lowering production values. And if you read

the point you quoted above, Tom, he stated clearly that "web BROADCASTS are

at lower resolution than TV."  He was talking about the practice of

compressing video images for web broadcast - the fact that monitors produce

higher resolution images than 625-line TV screens makes no difference to

low-res, compressed web broadcast.


Why, oh why, do so many members of this list have to be so painfully

smart-arsed about technology? Why not contribute to the discussion instead

of just slagging other people off?


The reason (my view, not necessarily Tim's) that you can produce and

distribute more and better quality and more creative commercial content for

web than tv is that the distribution cost using the web (open system owned

by hundreds of thousands) is minimal in comparison to TV (closed system

monopolised by the few) and production costs are much smaller, too, for the

equivalent level of quaility (differences in technology allowing).


And no, Tim, it's not about using the web to produce poor-man's TV, it's

about making the best use of web tools and benefits to make sparkling and

super-creative content that would not be possible on TV. I am not saying

this _is_ done, I am saying it _can be_ done, and I hope will be done, just

as soon as the web production business progresses beyond hanging from its

mother's breast.


Let's get this point straight. If there was no TV and no Web and you had to

invent a broadcast system for live action, sound, graphics, text, etc., who

in their right mind in this day and age would specify a system that required

huge great iron monstrosities to be constructed every hundred kilometers to

distribute it, that had a maximum vertical resolution of 625 dots

(regardless of screen size), that could produce only a few k bytes of text

information, that sent it one way only, and which gave you a choice from

only five content suppliers?


If there is any justice in the world the web ought to be able to do a better

job of it. And before any other smart-arse tells me that the "bandwidth" of

the net is too narrow to be useful as a video broadcast system, bear this

one thing in mind. I have just had a bunch of telephone (invented c.100

years ago) lines put in to a new office. The heavily protected state

monopoly that provided this service chose to scrabble around in muddy holes

in the ground in order to place heavy copper (rare, expensive and

environmentally destructive to produce) cabling on a circuitous route into

the building, rather than use the glass (cheap, abundant,

environment-benign) fibre (practically unlimited bandwidth) that was

previously installed in the building by the said same bunch of protected

species. The point? We have the technology, but unfortunately it is in the

hands of a bunch of monkeys.


So, the choice is yours. Twenty-first century or twentieth.


I sometimes think this list should be renamed the UKTVA discussion group -

UK TV Apologists' discussion group.


Anyone got anything good to say about the web today, or is _everyone_

reeling from investor uncertainty?


Ray Taylor



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