Can anyone tell me the standard of video quality cable stations use to broadcast shows in HD

Question

I work for a company that is involved in some high profile engineering projects and we would like to document some of the work that is being preformed with video that is up to industry standards so that it can be used by cable outlets like discovery or history HD if it is requested in the future. Does anyone know what type of quality would be prefered or what would be the minimun requirement?

Answer 1

Impossible to tell. They use multiplexing to save on bandwidth it can vary hugely. The only standards they have to adhere to is that the broadcast is   the minimum HD pixel quantity. As long as your equipment records at at least 720P or 1080i then it's technically HD even if the bitrate is low. Different companies have different policies but those are internal and not standard. Cable companies in particular have little regulation for HD video quality so no matter how good the quality of your video is there's no guarantee that's how it will look once it's broadcast.

Answer 2

The minimum quality is just a standard digital format with a resolution of 480i or 480p, called SDTV.  Enhanced definition (EDTV) is a higher quality and true High Def. (HDTV) starts at 720P.  A TV that is just an SDTV will not truely be able to display ED or HD in all their glory.  Many consumers may not know what resolution their TVs are capable of displaying.

http://www.dtv.gov/whatisdtv.html  differentiates the levels of digital television

Personally,  I have been spoiled by HD for the past 5 years and I look at an analog TV  (current regular tvs) and immediately notice how nasty they look.  

Answer 3

the reason for the confusion is there has never been an FCC standard for videotape. there are standards for transmission only. The most popular broadcast tape formats used in the analog TV era, Umatic and Betacam, neither meets requirements of NTSC. MII was only analog tape format capable of field recording that met regulation. The FCC has always placed a blind eye to tape use, their opinion being that the public is best served by coverage of events rather than blind adherence to technical standards that the public would never notice.

even DV is not broadcast "legal" although DV, DVcam and DVCpro variants are widely used for broadcast news. the reason is DV uses 411 sampling instead of 422 specified by transmission standards.

cable is not technically transmission, so the few FCC standards that do exist, don't apply. in-fact, cable "digital" channels are not the ATSC used by licensed broadcasters, and require a different receiver.

The most widespread HD tape format is HDV. HDV capable equipment is made by the same manufacterers that provide models to broadcasters. True uncompressed HD is 1.4 Gbps SDI, but no recorder can handle that bandwidth.  HDV uses the same mpeg2 compression used for DTV transmission and has about the same bit rate, 25 Mbps. Broadcasters prefer tape formats that work at 100 Mbps HD or 50 Mbps for widescreen SD.

The problem is HD video production is in a state of flux both for professional and consumer products. The most practical solution for the near term remains to shoot widescreen on SD media, ie miniDV.

I would carefully evaluate the engineering requirements for you video and not produce for entertainment purposes.  all HD systems available to consumers employ temporal compression, so if you are doing critical slo-motion evaluations, miniDV may be better suited as it produces an actual frame of video, not an interpolated guess. miniDV shot in widescreen and progressive modes offers good engineering value.

Answer 4

If you already know what companies you will be distributing through, they will tell you the specific HD and SD formats and resolutions they accept.  TV and cable companies prefer certain formats and resolutions depending upon what equipment they use and how it is set up - as well as what televisions and other devices their consumers use.  You may need to provide several copies of your media in various formats because some Television networks broadcasts in other forms such as internet and media downloads for cell phones and other media devices in addition to cable and satellite.