General Forum

Re: PALplus

tournedos — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 10:10:16 GMT

I always wondered how most countries still keep analogue in cable (Finland is now exclusively DVB, even in cable): you would expect the cable operators to jump up in joy if they could replace each analogue channel with half a dozen crappy digital pay-TV channels with pirate-proof encryption But I suppose it is a political thing...

Actually it would be possible to get full resolution 16:9 in analogue regular PAL as well, just send it in anamorphic form - aspect ratio signalling has been standardized for a long time now, and I think most later 4:3 sets (and probably all 16:9 sets?) support it. The problem is those old sets that do not (and even newer sets in case of B&O - my MX6000 from 1997 can't even switch to 16:9 at all, something that most any Kikinoko TV from the mid-90s on could!).

I agree that watching a letterboxed wide-screen program on a 16:9 set is a terrible loss. On a 4:3 as well of course, but the problem isn't quite so apparent since the "resolution per surface area" is still the same as on a pure 4:3 transmission. PALplus is rather difficult to decode, though - I would expect the required processing power and cost be more than a DVB set top box has.

I bought an STB in 2003, and simply removed the RF cable from my TV. Some channels with too low bandwidth allocation have enough compression artifacts to be annoying, but still I haven't missed the noise, cross-colour problems and signal reflections of analogue TV a bit...

Re: PALplus

Seven — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 08:54:43 GMT

Thanks for the reply. Yeah I meant "vertical". German stations ARD and ZDF are supposed to still send this way.

It's a pity because all that analog bandwidth on cable is not going away anytime soon, and without PALPlus, 25% of it is just not used at all. Guess I'll get more resolution when I switch to digital, then.

Thanks :-)

Re: PALplus

tournedos — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 08:47:20 GMT

I'm surprised you can actually still receive PAL+ transmissions somewhere. Technically, it is all but dead and will disappear along with analogue transmissions as it has no use whatsoever in DVB. DVB will always use all the available TV lines in 4:3 and 16:9 both, and just signal the receiver to switch to the correct aspect ratio.

And no, I don't think any B&O set ever supported PAL+.

Edit: PAL/PAL+ won't affect horizontal resolution at all, but perhaps you did mean vertical?

PALplus?

Seven — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 08:40:39 GMT

Hi everybody,

short question: does B&O do PALplus?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PALplus
When receiving 16:9 images in PALplus, a non-complying TV will show you 432 lines, while a complying TV will give you back the full 576 visible lines of PAL.

I've got a BeoVision 6-26 and there is a very visible (EDIT) vertical resolution detoriation between regular PAL programmes and PALplus programmes, which wouldn't happen if the device had a PALplus decoder.

I googled for the combination of PALplus and B&O far-and wide, and didn't find any technical details on this.
- Does anybody here know more about it?
- Do some of the B&O TVs do PALplus? Which ones?

Thanks!