48 replies to this topic

[hidefdave]

Here's the official press release from WIN:

WIN GOLD set to launch on Channel 84

The WIN Network Australia is set to launch a new free to air channel WIN GOLD on Channel 84 from
May 1 for regional Australia.

WIN GOLD will feature programs across a range of categories from home shopping to education,
lifestyle and community programming.

“This unique channel is a further expansion of WIN’s sizeable Australian broadcast footprint and it
reaffirms our position as Australia’s largest television network. WIN GOLD adds to the network’s
viewer offer providing a point of difference and choice for viewers in regional areas,’ said Andrew
Lancaster, Chief Executive Officer, WIN Corporation.

WIN GOLD will be on Channel 84 across the WIN Network in regional Australia. For viewers wishing to
add the new channel it can be as simple as rescanning/updating their TV or set top box or referring to
the instruction manual.

“WIN GOLD is a further demonstration of the flexibility and opportunity digital television gives to
Australians. The WIN Network will continue to look for further opportunities to utilise new technologies
in meeting our viewers’ needs,” Mr Lancaster concluded.

Viewers with questions about Digital TV should refer to the digitalready.gov.au website.

"Meeting our viewers needs" indeed...I wonder if that includes removal of the God awful solidmarks on GEM and GO! I don't know whose need they're meeting, but it certainly ain't the viewers!

With a name like WIN GOLD, I thought for a fleeting momenty we might be treated to reruns of the Crawfords back catalogue of programs! I'd love to see repeats of 'Bluey'!

D.

Edited by hidefdave, 30 April 2012 - 11:43 PM.

[Amraks]

watching it now, well its may 1st 12:02 and no go.

lol.

I was bored.

Where did u find the press release?

[hrh]

nbound, on 30 April 2012 - 04:57 PM, said:

So rebadged eXtra? Or anyone heard anything else...

I would be amazed if it were anything more than just a simple onpassing of Nine's Extra.

[Amraks]

Wondering if 7 will do the same.

[hrh]

Amraks, on 01 May 2012 - 12:12 AM, said:

Wondering if 7 will do the same.

As what?
They already have 74. The more pertinent question would be if/when Ten come out with 14.

[Amraks]

we don't get it down here yet lol.

GOLD watermark is big and ugly.

its twice the size of gems logo.

At the moment they display it in the right top corner.

I think that is because of the so important banners down the bottom.

Ahh this channel makes me sick.

[Amraks]

Screen captures.

[DrP]

Out of curiosity I took a look at WIN GOLD just now.  It is the most shockingly bad general picture quality I've ever seen go to air in Australian digital telelvision.  Ever.  ABC2's dire video quality some time ago, before ABC readjusted its bit allocations, while at times extremely blocky doesn't even come close to this.  Youtube clips are far superior.  There are so many compression related defects that it's hard to know where to start.  A still picture simply doesn't do it justice.

7's TV4ME picture quality is miles ahead of WIN GOLD.

Edited by DrP, 01 May 2012 - 07:54 AM.

[digitalj]

any screen caps DrP?

[DrP]

Frame grabs don't do the horror justice, the only way to truly appreciate how bad it is is to see it in action via say a .mpg file.  Here's one though.  Anytime there's any sort of motion the picture turns into a blocky mess like that.  When there isn't much motion JPEG compression artifacts - ringing etc - abound.  Right now there's an ad for cookware on and it's really really grim.

Edited by DrP, 01 May 2012 - 04:52 PM.

[DX Fan]

Not sure if this shows how poor the picture quality is. This was the start of transmission this morning.
There's a bit more action in this one.

Edited by DX Fan, 01 May 2012 - 05:06 PM.

[miagi]

Any body checked out the bitrate?
Looks like 1 or 2 MBit?
Tv is all just crap these days, more rubbish.
Thank god for Channel BT.

[DrP]

About 1.3Mbit/sec average here.

[DrP]

DX Fan, on 01 May 2012 - 05:02 PM, said:

Not sure if this shows how poor the picture quality is. This was the start of transmission this morning.
There's a bit more action in this one.

youtube's pre-processing actually improves it.

[nbound]

So is this the same feed as eXtra, or is WIN doing their own thing.... or at least basing off eXtra, with some Win tweaks. From the few times ive switched today, seems a little less home shoppy than TV4ME

EDIT: Mediaspy Forums say its completely WIN's own... interesting

Edited by nbound, 01 May 2012 - 06:08 PM.

[pc9]

DrP, on 01 May 2012 - 05:21 PM, said:

About 1.3Mbit/sec average here.

I don't give a damn about the bitrate of a shopping/info channel, so long as they don't touch GEMs bitrate.  At long last we are starting to get at least a little bit of native HD stuff on GEM.  Watched the Frozen Planet re-run the other night and it was pretty good.

[BamBBBam]

I've uploaded a sample of the shocking shopping channel telecast in Perth

[hrh]

BamBBBam, on 02 May 2012 - 08:30 AM, said:

I've uploaded a sample of the shocking shopping channel telecast in Perth

That sample actually looks better than a lot of what I've seen.
Given that both 74 and 94 (WIN Gold) in Perth come in at about the same bitrate deduced from recording each service for an exact timed five minutes and getting files of 81 and 80 megabytes each respectively, there is a very noticeable difference between them with 94 being far worse. Obviously Seven is making better use of their equipment than WIN. While the quality of 74 is poor, the quality of 94 is crap.

Edited by hrh, 03 May 2012 - 09:55 AM.

[ckent]

Surely the fact that it has the worst PQ and lowest bitrate ever seen, is a *good* thing, right?  

[DrP]

hrh, on 03 May 2012 - 09:54 AM, said:

Given that both 74 and 94 (WIN Gold) in Perth come in at about the same bitrate deduced from recording each service for an exact timed five minutes and getting files of 81 and 80 megabytes each respectively, there is a very noticeable difference between them with 94 being far worse. Obviously Seven is making better use of their equipment than WIN. While the quality of 74 is poor, the quality of 94 is crap.

There's more to it than meets the eye.

WIN GOLD: 480 x 576, ~1.3Mbit/sec, peaks are clamped tightly.  I suspect this service is not stat muxed in with the other WIN services instead running CBR and being fitted into a deliberately created gap.
TV4ME: 720 x 576, ~1.9Mbit/sec, peaks vary quite a bit, likely stat muxed with the rest of the 7 services in a given area.

[hrh]

DrP, on 03 May 2012 - 03:11 PM, said:

There's more to it than meets the eye.

WIN GOLD: 480 x 576, ~1.3Mbit/sec, peaks are clamped tightly.  I suspect this service is not stat muxed in with the other WIN services instead running CBR and being fitted into a deliberately created gap.
TV4ME: 720 x 576, ~1.9Mbit/sec, peaks vary quite a bit, likely stat muxed with the rest of the 7 services in a given area.

I think it may depend on the area being served too as to how it is being muxed into the stream. STWs is being stat muxed but there is still a fair bit of nulls going on, and if it is only 480 x 576 then that explains a bit too.

[DrP]

People may have noticed that I perform quite a few recordings to gather EPG accuracy data.  Some of the content is from WIN.  For some reason today my brain took a step to the left and I decided to watch a recent episode of The Mentalist as screened on WIN SD.

I thought I'd never be able to say this of general programming on Australian FTA digital but...  an analogue recording of the SVIDEO output of my crappy old Austar box looked better.

The WIN screening had audio issues, the picture would occasionally stutter back and forth (transport stream is clean, MPEG-2 video stream is clean, it was actually encoded like that) there were occasional black frames at random locations throughout the broadcast and most amazingly there was a fair degree of compression related noise - ringing and oddness with the edges of moving objects and a fair degree of DC noise where macroblocks rapidly changed brightness (think palletisation).

The analogue recording of The Mentalist via my Austar box (using a Canopus DV bridge) while a bit softer was overall far more enjoyable.  The audio was good.  The picture had no visible compression induced defects (ringing, blocking).  There was certainly no back / forth stutter and no random black frames and even DC noise was far less than via WIN (considering the Canopus uses 10+ year old video decoder designs and the level DV the Canopus uses itself tends to cause DC noise that's really saying something).

Edited by DrP, 11 May 2012 - 05:28 PM.

[hidefdave]

Clearly WIN have spent far too much money over the journey acquiring TV stations to become "Australia's largest regional network", and not enough on the stuff that actually delivers the content to said stations!

GEM is their only channel that can look half decent at times, and they've destroyed that with their solid hot pink watermarks!

D.

[DrP]

How do you put up with that insanely large now running banner on GEM that wipes out 1/3 of the picture when its present?  Its such an eye sore that even when skipping through a recording to determine the start and end of a program I can see it.