Obama looks like Blanka on European TV's. Is he black or green?

[Blanka]

Last days a lot of Obama on the television. He is mentioned the first afro-american president. 
But I wonder is he really black?
On our televisions he's always kind of green (no my TV is not bad, I see the same on all TV's here)
Are those americans still filming in NeverTheSameColour standard def cam's? And is it so hard to convert it to a decent PAL signal?
Please colour-manage your video Americans. It's not the Hulk you voted for I guess.

[MonMotha]

Chances are this was all recorded in HD since it's network originated content in almost all cases.  In the USA, that means 1920x1080@60Hz interlace or 1280x720@60Hz progressive depending on the network.  It would likely be YCbCr colorspace (since the final destination is MPEG2), but it'll be kept digital and likely losslessly compressed until it's actually broadcast.  i.e. no opportunity for tint shift.  We do have a digital TV standard here, you know.  In fact, as of Feb. 17, that's all there will be OTA.

Now, many TV stations in the USA aren't fully digital yet.  In fact, most are still 100% NTSC-M until the very end where they hook a composite video line up to an encoder, but they can bypass all the studio stuff to show HD network content.  No, I'm not kidding.  Yes, it looks awful.  In fact, my analog signal (while it lasts) usually looks better than my digital signal on local (non-network) content since I can apply all the filters that have been developed over the years to work around NTSC's shortcomings.  I can't do that on the digital side since it's already been upconverted for me.  Many stations have to switch to SD (and very obviously NTSC composite at one point) in order to do station logos, weather alert bugs, or crawls.

Chances are, the issues are the people converting it to PAL (assuming you're still using that archaic system) on your side of the pond.  They're likely taking NTSC-M composite video (since it's readily available and means they don't have to mess with digital or HD video - they're probably still set up the same way they were 20 years ago for handling North American content) and mashing it into whatever they are broadcasting.  NTSC-M to PAL-"whatever the hell letter you guys happen to use there" is a somewhat complicated process as it involves a field rate conversion, a resolution conversion, and then you have to change the NTSC color to PAL color (which is actually the easiest part since you're already doing everything else).  It's a complicated process, and I've found that most TV people gave up on being "correct" years ago because 99.9% of their viewers don't even notice when they're grossly wrong.

Of course, the advantages of PAL kinda went away some time in the late-80's to early-90s anyway.  PLLs got so stable and oscillators got so accurate even at cheap prices that the phase drift across a line of the color subcarrier was no longer a problem.  That's all PAL really addresses.  Modern analog TVs in the USA (since about the early 90s) tend to bury their tint control in a menu since it's no longer a major issue.

To actually answer your question rather than rail on you for railing on the ancient US TV standard, he's black or a dark shade of brown.  You know, a skin color that you'd typically expect of individuals of African descent.  He looks pretty much the same on all the TVs I've seen him on, and he's not green.

[Blanka]

Just checked the inauguration speech on Youtube, and there the colour is right. Webconversion is better than trans-atlantic TV conversion.

[protokatie]

On a similar note (although not really related to Mr. CiC) there is a "green" shift in many digital encoding methods that cause noisy dark colors to appear with a slight greenish tinge. I've seen this in many web streams, but before that it was common in 16 bit color mode (either in the GFX card or the compression bit depth). This was due to the fact that 16 bit color usually used a 5 bit Red 6 bit Green and 5 bit Blue, which could cause rounding error when converted to another bit depth (EG 15 bit 555 or 24 bit 888). 16 bit 565 was still better than 15 bit 555 since it placed emphasis on green bit depth (as our eyes can see green better than red, and much better than blue).

[danny_galaga]

he seems the right colour on PAL in australia...

[richms]

The green shift comes from using different colourspaces for the component to RGB and back again processes. Colourmanagement is an art, and most software for making web stuff has defaults that work well enough for most people, even tho they are often wrong for the source material.

hell, look how much stuff out there has black at 16 when played on a computer - not even changing the black levels between DV and computer...

[Level42]

I watched it live yesterday. I recently changed to digital here and it looked absolutely perfect.

You gotta love digital TV decoding with a good old 16:9 CRT
(Trust me, black is black at my TV, not grey).

O, and I _was_ pretty surprised to see it was 16:9 format since that is still pretty uncommon in the US ?

It's a good thing to finally see we are leaving these system differences behind us.

My guess is that the "regular" news items we see here are (poorly) converted NTSC recordings and then the  colors look pretty bad. However, the inauguration transmission was absolutely perfect picture quality.

I wonder how they did the subtitling though.  You'd think they don't hand out the text of the speech beforehand, but small parts were not translated and then there were sentences already shown translated that Obama hadn't said yet    .....

[shardian]

O, and I _was_ pretty surprised to see it was 16:9 format since that is still pretty uncommon in the US ?

That's because this country is full of rednecks that say:

" I don't want no black bars on my TV! I'm gettin' ripped off of half the picture. DEY TUK AR JERBS!"

I should know...I used to be one. I shamefully (proudly back then) ordered my Star Wars box set VHS in full screen 'so I didn't have those damn black bars'.

[Level42]

 

Well at least one redneck is back home now to enjoy his 4:3 set

Over-here all transmissions are 16:9 now but not all European countries have switched (mainly Spain, Italy etc.)

[Blanka]

Guess the subtitles were added live. Maybe they can delay the picture 5 seconds in the studio, so a live translator can do it on the fly, but seriously, I thought the translation was really crap. Especially in the end when Obama started to use college English there were big black spots in the translation.

[orion]

"Chances are, the issues are the people converting it to PAL (assuming you're still using that archaic system) on your side of the pond."

I thought they were using DVB-T with COFDM modulation. Apparently COFDM is better than 8-VSB (which is what we use here in the US) particularly in dealing with multipath interference. I am not sure however what advantages/ disadvantages DVB-T offers vs ATSC. I only have a rudimentary understanding of all this, and am curious about it.

[Level42]

Terrestrial PAL was phased out here at least a year ago.

There is DVB-T now, but it sucks IMHO. Very blocky and only 25 channels....and it's not free to get the commercial stations here !!?!?!?

The Netherlands is one of the most densely cabled countries in the world, so the vast majority of people have cable here. Yes most of them still receive analogue PAL through that, but lots or switching to digital now.

[shmokes]

In fact, as of Feb. 17, that's all there will be OTA.

Don't be so sure.

[Blanka]

I love DVB-T free to air. The 3 public channels are more TV then is bearable anyway.

There is DVB-T now, but it sucks IMHO. Very blocky

Who talks about blocky on THIS forum? I love blocky. Hey I play 8-bit pixelcrap all the time!
Only thing funny is that soccer looks like indoor fussball. The grass is too many little contrasty bits for the MPEG compression, so it gets a solid green area on DVB-T.

[Dartful Dodger]

Is he black or green?

Now Senator McCain suggests that somehow, you know, I'm green behind the ears.

[shardian]

Who talks about blocky on THIS forum? I love blocky. Hey I play 8-bit pixelcrap all the time!
Only thing funny is that soccer looks like indoor fussball. The grass is too many little contrasty bits for the MPEG compression, so it gets a solid green area on DVB-T.

I've noticed on NFL games that the field turf crap looks odd in HD.

[MonMotha]

"Chances are, the issues are the people converting it to PAL (assuming you're still using that archaic system) on your side of the pond."

I thought they were using DVB-T with COFDM modulation. Apparently COFDM is better than 8-VSB (which is what we use here in the US) particularly in dealing with multipath interference. I am not sure however what advantages/ disadvantages DVB-T offers vs ATSC. I only have a rudimentary understanding of all this, and am curious about it.

The following is rather technical babble.  If you don't care, skip to the double space.

Yes, most European countries are now using DVB-T, though not all have gone exclusively digital yet, so the OP could be using PAL, and the OP specifically mentioned PAL.

DVB-T allows a couple different modulations.  It seems that the europeans simply cannot agree on a TV standard (look at how many kinds of PAL there were).  COFDM is by far the most common, and yes, it handles multipath better than 8-VSB.  Some countries (Sweden comes to mind for some reason, but I could be totally off-base) use 16-QAM (similar to 256-QAM used by OpenCable in the USA, but with a less dense constellation) just to be different.  16-QAM doesn't really offer any advantages over COFDM.

I believe DVB-C (the DVB cable standard; USA uses OpenCable or one of numerous competing IPTV standards) uses 64-QAM or 256-QAM (provider's choice) with smaller QAM constellations also allowed but not commonly used due to throughput concerns, and DVB-S (satellite standard, used globally including by many major sat providers in the USA) uses QPSK or 8-PSK (again, provider's choice) with some more complicated PSK mechanisms allowed but not commonly used due to the cost of the required receiver.  The modulation methods were chosen to maximize data rate on a given media while attempting to manage any shortcomings as effectively as possible.

There is also a DVB-H standard which is designed for mobile/handheld devices.  They play some tricks with time division multiplexing to allow portables to shut their receiver off during much of the time to save battery.

The USA chose to use 8-VSB for its ATSC DTV standard because it covers rural areas slightly more effectively for a givne transmitter power.  Of course, they managed to screw over all the city dwellers in the process with multipath and made it impossible to demod if the antenna is in motion, but by golly it covers the sticks better.  The data format is roughly based on DVB which is itself based on MPEG2-TS.

ATSC also defines a 16-VSB standard, and I think all ATSC tuners are required to support it.  16-VSB gives you roughly double the data rate, but requires better SNR to demod.  The use of 16-VSB would allow OTA 1080p60 broadcasts, but I'm guessing they'll just amend the standard to use h.264 or whatever the "codec du jour" is when they want to do it and continue using 8-VSB.

There is also an ATSC-M/H standard that is in early stages of development (and appears to have fizzled) to allow ATSC compatible transmissions which are capable of reception by a receiver in motion.  I'm not aware of any implementations or even a complete working draft, but supposedly somthing exists and as of Dec. 1, 2008 is an official standard of the ATSC.

Yes, I know way too much about this stuff.

Techno-babble ends


Regarding image quality, the digital stuff in the USA universally looks better when it's done right (so basically anything but hooking composite NTSC up to an upconverting encoder).  Football (talking American here, but the field is similar to Soccer) looks absolutely stunning.  On Fox (720p), I can usually see blades of grass/turf.  On CBS and NBC (1080i), the grass blades are visible during still scenes, but motion tends to macroblock and lose that level of detail.  1080i is just a little too much for ~19Mbps MPEG2 (and of course most stations run at least one more SD channel).

If you want to see simply stunning picture, find somebody who has a DigiCipher box and can pull the main CBS network feed.  It's "megastream" MPEG2 (or was last time I checked), which is ~45Mbps.  1080i at 45Mbps looks really, really good (like Blu-Ray good just with interlacing artifacts).


For those europeans wondering since it came up, most US TV stations transmit 16:9 HD (either 720p60 or 1080i), but most stations still have 4:3 SD locally originated content.  They just upconvert it to their HD frame and either "barn-door" (correct) or stretch (not correct) it.  Those with 4:3 TVs either letterbox the picture or crop off the edges to "zoom" it to full-frame.  Almost all TVs sold now are 16:9.  Most stations run their main channel in HD (which will show network content and the local news and such) as well as one, two, or, rarely, three SD "subchannels".  Common subchannels are 24-hour news, 24-hour weather, 24-hour weather radar, or sometimes a "lesser" network.  While the standard allows for it, pretty much nobody runs two or more HD channels as the bitrates required to do it make the video look terrible with compression artifacts that are more objectionable than just running lower resolution video.


Regarding the original question, I suspect richms is at least partially right.  There are like 10 common colorspaces in TV-style video land.  All are similar, but most represent "tint shifts" of each other.  Hence, if you treat values from one colorspace like they're from a different but similar one, people could look green (or purple).  This would have likely been done by the people going from US video to European video (your field rate and resolution are still different even in digital land, so some "massaging" is necessary).

[orion]

"I believe DVB-C (the DVB cable standard; USA uses OpenCable or one of numerous competing IPTV standards) uses 64-QAM or 256-QAM (provider's choice) with smaller QAM constellations also allowed but not commonly used due to throughput concerns, and DVB-S (satellite standard, used globally including by many major sat providers in the USA) uses QPSK or 8-PSK (again, provider's choice) with some more complicated PSK mechanisms allowed but not commonly used due to the cost of the required receiver.  The modulation methods were chosen to maximize data rate on a given media while attempting to manage any shortcomings as effectively as possible."

So let me ask you, since I am obviously dealing with an engineer here... is this the reason why SD video looks like TOTAL crap on a high def set coming in from a satellite provider, while on the other had SD content only looks like crap on an HDTV coming in though cable? I think I have effectively ruled out (at least I'm not buying it) the whole "cheap built in upconverter" in the TV notion as to what causes that horrible graininess of SD signals on HD sets. I have tried a few stand alone upconverters and tried running a signal though a PC video capture card back to the set via DVI (trying different resolutions) to no avail... which leads me to suspect crappy compression techniques employed by the carriers. (Also DVD's.... even the non unconverted ones look pretty good on an HDTV)

"If you want to see simply stunning picture, find somebody who has a DigiCipher box and can pull the main CBS network feed.  It's "megastream" MPEG2 (or was last time I checked), which is ~45Mbps.  1080i at 45Mbps looks really, really good (like Blu-Ray good just with interlacing artifacts)."

I used to work for a PBS station back in 99 and we had an HD demo set that we would set up at malls ect... to educate the public on this new HDTV phenomenon. Anyway the set was fed though some kind of HDTV VTR (the tape looked like a regular VHS tape) The picture on that looked absolutely stunning, almost 3-D, certainly better than anything I get over Sat. today.

[MonMotha]

"I believe DVB-C (the DVB cable standard; USA uses OpenCable or one of numerous competing IPTV standards) uses 64-QAM or 256-QAM (provider's choice) with smaller QAM constellations also allowed but not commonly used due to throughput concerns, and DVB-S (satellite standard, used globally including by many major sat providers in the USA) uses QPSK or 8-PSK (again, provider's choice) with some more complicated PSK mechanisms allowed but not commonly used due to the cost of the required receiver.  The modulation methods were chosen to maximize data rate on a given media while attempting to manage any shortcomings as effectively as possible."

So let me ask you, since I am obviously dealing with an engineer here... is this the reason why SD video looks like TOTAL crap on a high def set coming in from a satellite provider, while on the other had SD content only looks like crap on an HDTV coming in though cable? I think I have effectively ruled out (at least I'm not buying it) the whole "cheap built in upconverter" in the TV notion as to what causes that horrible graininess of SD signals on HD sets. I have tried a few stand alone upconverters and tried running a signal though a PC video capture card back to the set via DVI (trying different resolutions) to no avail... which leads me to suspect crappy compression techniques employed by the carriers. (Also DVD's.... even the non unconverted ones look pretty good on an HDTV)

Not directly.  The various mediums do now provide varying data rates, whereas with analog transmission, one channel was 6MHz worth of analog bandwidth for one channel.  Due to the varying data rates, the providers will compress things more or less to cram what they want in.

Of course, quality of the encoders used also varies highly, and many cable/sat providers overcompress their SD channels in order to cram more channels in without having to upgrade their systems.  Many sat providers also downres their 1080i HD to 1440x1080, but this isn't really noticeable to most viewers.

If you're talking about the locals in SD via sat, those are usually woefully overcompressed.  They cram basically every single local channel from every market into the US onto a few sat transponders.  At least your cable co only has to carry the stuff from your market.

Cable and satellite also often use different video codecs for HD, so you may be noticing the different types of compression artifacts.

That said, most TVs do have pretty terrible upscalers.

I used to work for a PBS station back in 99 and we had an HD demo set that we would set up at malls ect... to educate the public on this new HDTV phenomenon. Anyway the set was fed though some kind of HDTV VTR (the tape looked like a regular VHS tape) The picture on that looked absolutely stunning, almost 3-D, certainly better than anything I get over Sat. today.

That would likely be D-VHS.  It was popular around that time as it was the only standard "consumer grade" mechanism for putting HD video onto some form of portable media.  DVHS used standard VHS tapes (although they were tagged in a similar manner to SVHS and were usually rather high quality media) to carry an MPEG2 stream similar to OTA broadcast.  Bitrates were fairly high, so the picture was pretty good.

[stace]

Last days a lot of Obama on the television. He is mentioned the first afro-american president. 
But I wonder is he really black?
On our televisions he's always kind of green (no my TV is not bad, I see the same on all TV's here)
Are those americans still filming in NeverTheSameColour standard def cam's? And is it so hard to convert it to a decent PAL signal?
Please colour-manage your video Americans. It's not the Hulk you voted for I guess.

 

Never had issues with PAL?  Obama looked good here yesterday.  But then I'm not in Europe, I'm in England !!!   

[richms]

Over here all the big free stations are 16:9 - either SD on sat or HD for most on dvb-t

US sourced content is just pillarboxed for the 4:3 stuff like the crap talk shows and stuff, so that means that I end up with it with 3" of black all around it on the bedroom 4:3 CRT unless I go into the menus and change it to centre cut. Seems stupid that they still are either making shows in 4:3 or sending it overseas like that. Even BBC world has finally moved to 16:9 for their stuff.

Sky is another matter - loads of channels are still 4:3 and showing letterboxed stuff, luckily they are tagged as 4:3 so if you set your box to letterbox then those channels will go fullscreen, but quality is so bad because bitrates are so low. I gave up on it since I only really watched the channels like discovery and CI where the shows look better out of a 350 meg divx and I get to see them sooner that way too

[danny_galaga]

Is he black or green?

Now Senator McCain suggests that somehow, you know, I'm green behind the ears.

 

your quote fu is mighty

[danny_galaga]

Guess the subtitles were added live. Maybe they can delay the picture 5 seconds in the studio, so a live translator can do it on the fly, but seriously, I thought the translation was really crap. Especially in the end when Obama started to use college English there were big black spots in the translation.

well, i suppose they do something like that in diplomatic circles, like the UN. they have to translate on the fly. incidentally, our prime minister was a translator (of chinese) at the UN at one stage...

[daywane]

I think he is green

[Level42]

I don't care what color he is, I want Bush back ! Since Obama's inauguration the dollar has risen .........booohhhhh !!!!

[scriptfactory]

I don't care what color he is, I want Bush back ! Since Obama's inauguration the dollar has risen .........booohhhhh !!!!

I know! I was just telling my wife that. Bush was driving the dollar into the ground and I was reaping the benefits! hahaha!

[daywane]

 
like I said he is green