[4K50] 2002 Australian 1080i50 HDTV demo on VHF Channel 8

Accompanied by Geoff Harvey and the Humphrey B. Bear Brass Band
Presented in 4K50 to allow for investigation of the original picture quality
AC3 5.1 audio downmixed to Dolby Pro Logic II
This was a mixture of Rec.709 1080i50 footage filmed around Sydney and Melbourne in 2001, and some older Canadian 1080i60 footage with motion-compensated framerate conversion. This was the second version of the loop, where a marketing package was included from "The Quality Shows" promotion, and the logo was updated to spell out "HIGH DEFINITION" not "HDTV". The stream contains a small number of momentary breaks in the DVB-T transmission, from poor reception of the broadcast. The stream ends with a cut to the simulcast/triplecast of the live broadcast on the Nine network - being studio based, it was one of the few shows in native HD on 12 February 2004.
Please leave a comment if you want to guess why the Canadian footage was inlaid as 1920x1035i into a 1440x1088 stream - who created the 1035i (analogue HD) footage? The 1440 was due to the triplecasting reducing the available bitrate, and the 1088 was due to early generation MPEG-2 encoders requiring modulo 64 (though not as early as the WIN HD ones that had 4 separate encoding zones, and could not allocate variable bitrate demand across the entire frame).

[@bobbavet]

Gday. Thanks for the vid. I am looking for the 1080 HDTV demonstration that had it's own channel. All up it would be quite long. It had footage taken from towns and locations all around Australia. I remember I use to sit and watch it for hours.

[@whophd]

There were a number of them, and each network took turns. My memory is beginning to fade, but it was something like Ten 2001-2002, Nine 2003-2004, Seven 2005-2006. Win Network also did one after that, and Nine and Seven each took a brief second turn. The "HD multichannelling" began in 2007 and that was the end, because the networks were allowed to put real shows with real ads on, instead of just demos or an HD simulcast of the SD primary channel.

[@whophd]

Ten's one was mostly Sydney (ferries etc) and some Bathurst, I forget what else. Nine had what you see, also video, and they also had a more ad-like package in the loop with a few short clips of HD shows. Seven's was in a "modern" 1080pSF 25fps format and contained Melbourne helicopter shots, as well as Dubai and a few bits of their travel shows. Win's one was just a lot of country towns, giving some balance to all the city & international focus the others had.