Sportxxx - Chat & Discussion

The "new" chanels are uniformly unwatchable a total joke. Bailey moved and was rendered a blur.

What does intensively disappoint me is this grainy picture, HD it fuckin ain't. for example, Babestation, Elite and Bangbabes all have superb crystal clear picture so Sportxxx has to get its finger out and sort this fuckin mess out promptly. In this new 21st century digital era there is simply no excuse for these poor production values and unfortunately it won't matter how good a show the models put on tonight because at the end of the day no viewer or caller will want to watch this low definition grainy like looking through a filthy stained glass window of a picture. Sportxxx get it fuckin sorted!

(18-11-2010 22:31 )mikeboob Wrote:  Bailey moved and was rendered a blur.

There's still some hope for squeezing more usable picture out of the uplink, if the producers could do one or more of the following...
(note: this has turned into a bit of a rant, but it's intended to be helpful advice, based on my years of varied experience with assorted photographic, cabling, and computer imaging work*)

* Get rid of animated logos:
They look distracting at the best of times, and it's more moving image info that is just wasting capacity.

* Cut down the number and size of scrolling text areas:
For the same reasons as the logos.
The smaller the text, the less impact it has on the rest of the picture.

* Simplify the background and/or set:
Do we really need to see constantly rippling curtains, moving blinds, or a big chalkboard?
Or an impressively kitted-out bar counter, or something more visually complex than that?
Sure, if you have the luxury of higher picture bandwidth (and the budget or items for a neat set design) then by all means go for it, but the channels running at lower bitrates can not afford this.

* Less clothes!
Apart from the obvious reason, MPEG encoding is really good at doing continuous grades of tone, such as flesh. You need to be at really low bitrates to get "chessboard" or other compression artifacts on skin, but facial features will suffer first.
One time while flipping between 955 and 954, I could make out a small necklace on one channel but not on the other. Subtle facial gestures are going to be lost before anything else, but feck it, subtlety isn't important here, right?

* Less tattoos:
There's not much that can be done about this, but anyone with 4 magazine pages worth of text and picture inked onto their body is going to look worse on a low bitrate TV picture than someone with no ink. Piercings make relatively little impact on picture quality.
I'm not anti-tattoo: there are some really talented artists needling art into flesh these days, but all art has its price! If you can't up the bitrates on your uplink, don't feature as much talent with tattoos. Or, if you have a well-decorated body, move to a channel that can display it without the picture breaking up.

* Lights, camera...
Unless your channel is called "Fake Tan Babes" or "Tango'd Totty", please please please find, and then use, the White Balance settings on all cameras. This used to be a big problem, but isn't so bad now.
If your camera has auto-focus, either adjust it so that it doesn't constantly seek the best focus, or turn it off and employ a camera operator who is able to keep the subject in focus manually. It's an old-school skill, but really it's like riding a bike. And auto-focus is the stabilisers.
Lighting should have the presenter lit well enough to give a larger depth of field; that will do away with a lot of focus problems no matter what.

* Do better pre-processing:
Don't leave it to the uplink to re-encode an already-encoded feed with more compression, when you could be doing it yourself in one process. It may be necessary to consult with whoever your feed is feeding to (and whoever their feed is feeding to, and so on), and fine-tune for different sets/models, to get this right.

* Monitor outside, for the people inside:
Monitoring from a Sky digibox instead of (or ideally, aswell as) from the local camera feed will give a better idea of what the viewers are seeing.

Although going by the inability of most babe channels to even get the mic audible, I don't hold out much hope for much of this to happen...

By pure chance, earlier today I saw a presenter apologise to a caller because the battery on her phone had run down, and as she was apologising (using a wireless mic) she was checking the battery level on the mic (taking the mic out of audible range) every few seconds, and sure enough the mic died before she could finish.

This is what the technical crew are supposed to be looking after!!!
Fresh batteries, spares on chargers, and keep an eye on all power and signal levels all the time. And have spares in easy reach of the on-screen talent, incase the crew are busy chasing some other technical problem (like incoming phone lines) when the battery runs out.
Phones and mics with wires don't look as good, but one of each just out of sight, on the floor directly between the camera and the bed/sofa should be easy to maintain.

OK, rant over...

*note 2: I admit I have no experience with live satellite TV production or transmission, but the above points should all apply where needed.
I have worked on a few low-budget short films over the years, and I learnt that the most important technical skill is being able to react calmly whenever things go wrong, and restore normal service while causing the minimum of panic to the talent. Because the talent is why the rest of us are here!

Dunno whether it's a technical glitch or if Sport are reconfiguring again; everything was set up & running as per my earlier posts but a short while ago Serena & the 40+ show on SKY967, has appeared on it's original channel, SKY955 + Gilly & the Escort Girls show on SKY955 has appeared on SKY967..........EPGs for both channels unaltered.

^^^^After the shuffling about last night & during today, 40+ ReadersWives has opened up tonight on it's original channel SKY955 featuring a very large jolly lady by name of Dylan & EscortGirls is now on SKY967 featuring 40+ regular Patty, who has been on since this afternoon............EPG still showing original new programming.

EDIT @ 04:55 At some stage during the night the EPGs were altered, channels are now:

SKY950 AsianBabes
SKY954 SportXXX1
SKY955 40+ReadersWives
SKY967 EscortGirlsXXX

bailey must have stayed at the studio as she's on for the 2nd night in a row

(20-11-2010 21:16 )Rammyrascal Wrote:  bailey must have stayed at the studio as she's on for the 2nd night in a row

I don't think they should ever let her leave the studio

bailey's finally got a night off as its ex bw babe tj on tonight. also vixen is on 967

I've watch Sportxxx of & on for a while now & from what I’ve seen I'm not that Impressed. Don't get me wrong i think the girls do an amazing job! I'm getting at the fact that it looks like Sportxxx don't give a damn about their callers because every night they block the bottom have of the girls body with those stupid big graphics.

I think the cam guys should be more considerate in what their doing after all we don't have the same view they do as we have graphics at the bottom of our screens. It’s because of the crap camera work (graphics constantly blocking the view) I wont waste my time or my money calling the show…

It looks like Sports are having major transmission problems as all 3 off their channels have stopped broadcasting, as well as their Asian Babes show.