NASA’s Greatest Missions commemorates NASA’s fiftieth anniversary and presents potted highlights of the organisation’s finest hours.  The series of six programmes broadcast on Discovery and Discovery HD in the UK from 28th September onwards, charts the progress of early American space exploration from the Mercury program and X-Planes of the 1950’s, through to the first moon landings in the 1960’s, complete with re-mastered archive footage and interviews with the likes of John Glenn, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.  The later episodes will focus on the Space Shuttle, first flown by John Young, NASA’s missions to Mars and scientific tools such as the Hubble Space Telescope. The series was shown as When we Left Earth: The NASA Missions in the US and that’s also the packaged DVD/Blu-Ray title.

The series provides an excellent – if somewhat hurried – insight into NASA’s achievements, but benefits greatly from the use of restored archive footage, a lot of which presented here in high definition for the first time.  Apart from the occasional pristine clip of President Kennedy, earlier programmes aren’t particularly exciting from a visual standpoint given the age of the source material, but as the series progresses, some of the footage is quite jaw-dropping and could certainly qualify as demonstration material.

Unfortunately, like a bad smell you just can’t escape from, each episode is blighted by some of the most intrusive and overbearing music you’re ever likely to hear.  Composed by Richard Blair-Oliphant and presented far louder in the mix than it should be, it gives the whole programme a “hurry up, get on with it, we’re all about to die” atmosphere that’s both distracting and downright annoying.  The unrelenting breakneck soundtrack that in some instances hasn’t even been edited to match the video, is completely out of place.  This isn’t a forty-minute trailer for a Vin Diesel movie but a considered appreciation of the beauty of space and of man’s ingenuity and bravery, something Oliphant appears to be hell-bent on trampling all over.

However, we have come up with a partial cure for viewers of Discovery HD, and that is to engage the 5.1 Dolby Digital mix and turn down, turn off or unplug your front left and right loudspeakers.  Doing so creates an anti-Oliphant mix that eliminates most of the music while retaining the dialogue and effects.

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Don’t let Richard Blair-Oliphant’s dreadful score distract you from the glorious imagery on show in NASA’s Greatest Missions, currently airing on Discovery and Discovery HD.

All Sky receivers, including Sky Plus and Sky HD boxes have, under their picture settings menu, a contrast adjustment.  There’s some confusion about which is the best Sky contrast setting but if you have a Thomson-manufactured HD box, I always tell people that “Low” is definitely the one to go for, regardless of whether you’re viewing on an LCD, plasma or in a dark or light room.

The goal is to feed your display the best possible picture, then adjust it to your taste or accurate, ISF calibrated levels.  No amount of fiddling with the controls on your TV will restore image information already discarded by an incorrect contrast setting in the receiver itself.

Contrast Low (562.77kb)

Contrast Medium (606.53kb)

Contrast High (599.97kb)

Once you get past the fact that Emily Deschanel’s complexion doesn’t hold up to HD scrutiny (Clearasil anyone?) you’ll notice that the Thomson's “High” setting makes noise in the image more apparent, but also ‘clips’ the highlights in the windows behind her.

‘Clipping’ is the term used to describe when the lightest areas of an image become too bright and lose detail.  Imagine looking at the bulb of a torch, when it’s turned on you can no longer see the filament – it’s still there but it’s too bright to see.

The “Medium” setting also has slight clipping, but the “Low” setting preserves all the highlight detail and produces a more neutral image, exactly what your display deserves.  It also produces results that are almost identical to that of the raw transport stream (the broadcast itself).

Contrast Low (674.31kb)

Contrast Medium (676.21kb)

Contrast High (710.63kb)

Our second example uses a frame from the new BBC HD channel ident sequence, and we’ve included a histogram to make it a little easier to see what is going on, useful if your computer monitor hasn’t been calibrated.  If it has, then it’ll be easy to spot that a large amount of detail in the waves just above and to the right of the logo has been completely lost with the Thomson Sky HD receiver set to a “High” contrast setting.  Notice also how the histogram is unnaturally flat.

Visually the “Medium” setting looks much better, but again, the histogram shows that the brightest parts of the image are clipped.  With the Sky box set to “Low” however, none of the highlight detail is lost.  You might feel that “Low” makes images a little dull, but as you can see from the histogram there is available latitude to add a little more contrast to the image using the controls on your display, without sacrificing any detail.

It's worth mentioning that the contrast control on Pace-manufactured Sky HD boxes appears to be broken in the current software version, both the “Low” and “High” settings are dreadful, so stick with the default “Medium” setting for best results if you own a Pace.  Amstrad boxes are also problematic in this area, they're all stuck on “High” and the output does not change regardless of the setting in the menus.

Oh, and in case you're wondering who manufactured your Sky HD box, that information can be found via "Services" -> [4] "System Setup" -> [5] "System Details".

Ross Kemp Kenya Special: Meeting the Mungiki was a harrowing, shocking and deeply moving insight into Kenya’s Mungiki organisation and their relationship with the country’s impoverished people, the Kwekwe secret police and the Kenyan Government led by President Mwai Kibaki.  The Mungiki, a politico-religious sect accused of torture, murder and extortion – preying particularly upon those who live in Kenya’s slums – are in direct opposition with Kenya’s leaders, who in turn have been accused of killing thousands of the group in both reprisals against rioting and attempts to quash their political aspirations.

It was against this backdrop of abject poverty and extreme violence that Ross Kemp’s ninety-minute documentary for Sky 1 and the third in the series of superb ‘On Gangs’ programmes was set.

All three programmes have been empathetic and free from any hint of over-dramatisation, instead Kemp has left those involved to describe and explain their shocking situations, at times putting himself in grave danger whilst doing so.  Facing, then calming an angry mob in order to hear their grievances was surely beyond the bounds – or even the conception – of many a qualified journalist, regardless of whether some elements may or may not have been stage-managed.  Gunmen killed one of the programme’s interviewees, Mungiki leader Charles Ndungu, just a day after Kemp’s departure and many other contributors gave their opinions on the nation’s poverty at great personal risk.

Filmed and broadcast in high definition, the imagery alone rendered this viewer speechless on more than one occasion.  From the endless sea of tents at Eldoret Showground which is home to fifteen thousand displaced Kikuyu people, to the destitute picking through the Dandora landfill site near Nairobi (one of the most toxic places on earth) for scraps of waste material, one could almost smell the poverty and desperation.  However, the most harrowing scene was that of the country’s glue addicts, some of whom were just babes in arms, a sight that almost reduced Kemp to tears.  Orphaned children, left to fend for themselves on the streets, told how their dreams were to kick the habit and perhaps some day, be able to go to school to learn art.  Another special dedicated just to this subject, will premiere next Monday, September 27th, on Sky 1 and Sky 1 HD.

Scenes such as these made me feel ashamed.  How can the west ignore such poverty and humanitarian injustice?  Is it ignorance or unforgivable apathy on the part of our leaders, some of whom are so misguided when it comes to priorities that they’re willing to squander in excess of nine billion pounds on a glorified sports day.

Hopefully Ross Kemp’s documentary will redress the balance by making more people aware of the horrendous plight of people living in Kenya and other third world countries, where poverty, violence and corruption are rife.  It is the type of brave, unforgettable and deeply moving program-making that should be shown to every man, woman and teenager living in this country.

Yes, it was that good.  Both Kemp and his production team are to be highly commended.

Sky have teamed up with Save the Children to raise funds for, and raise awareness of the plight of Kenya’s street children.  Details of the appeal and how to donate can be found on the Save the Children website.

“This will be a fully HD facility with an IT-based workflow and we are targeting 1080p as the main production format,” said Troy Smith, director of Technology Platforms at BSkyB, about the company’s new broadcasting facility in Osterley, West London.  The building is set for completion in 2010 and will support all of Sky’s play-out and distribution requirements, include eight studios and the most of the broadcaster's postproduction and edit suites – with the exception of Sky News – when the facility goes live in 2011.

Stanhope, Arup Associates and Bovis Lend Lease are working together on the construction of the 25,000m², £130 million “green” building, and BSkyB have appointed Sony as lead systems integrator to support the £77 million technical fit-out, a mandate that will include the building’s flexible HD capable multi-platform content production facilities and support their “strategic multi platform play-out and distribution requirements.”

The project represents one of the largest infrastructure builds in the UK broadcast industry to-date. As lead integrator, Sony will support the end-to-end technical fit out but that does not necessarily mean the deployment of Sony hardware.  “We haven’t made any decisions on specific technology, which is one of the strong points of going with Sony,” Smith said. “There may be Sony kit in the final design but we’ve done SI deals with Sony before which haven’t included Sony products. We’ve chosen Sony for their design capability and systems integration capability.”

Whether 1080p at 50fps makes it as far as our televisions remains to be seen, not only would it require new hardware but also a huge bandwidth increase.  Films do not benefit whatsoever from 1080p/50 so converting Sky’s movie channels would be a complete waste of time – Sky already broadcast films at 1080p/25, converted to 1080i by the HD receiver – but it’s a different story where light entertainment, documentaries and especially sport are concerned.  Technology progresses at a frightening pace, so who knows what another three years will bring...

Cristina Buccino has reached the final of Veline, the long-running contest on Italy’s Canale 5 to find hostesses for Striscia la notizia, the popular evening programme that parodies Italian news stories.  The veline perform stacchetti (short, sexy dance routines) in addition to introducing presenter Ezio Greggio and his co-hosts.

Why are we telling you this?  Way back in June when the show first started, our own TV critic wrote about Veline and Striscia la notizia, and it just so happened that the clip we decided to use featured none other than Cristina Buccino.  Was that just coincidence or divine inspiration?

Either way, we’re now backing Cristina to become the next veline, regardless of what our critic says about political correctness and the exploitation of gorgeous Italian models.  So there.

Cristina Buccino alle finali di Veline roughly translates as “Cristina Buccino in the final of Veline” in case you were wondering, or at least we hope it does!

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Friday Night with Jonathan Ross made its high definition debut last week with guests that included Kelly Brook and The Mighty Boosh.  Ross, a self-confessed technology junkie, opened the show by telling viewers that they can see everything in HD...

...and that would include everything that is currently wrong with the BBC’s HD output.  Viewed at 1080i, throughout the entire programme there were invasive levels of video noise (similar in appearance to film grain) and as a result, clearly visible macroblocking whenever there was camera movement or a shot comprised large areas of the red studio set.  While the video noise is the result of sub-standard production values, the macroblocking can be attributed to the BBC’s aged encoders, which once stood tall but are now patently struggling, especially in the face of such poor source material.  Our WMV HD clip from the Kelly Brook interview has been resized to 720p in order to make the download more manageable, and yet the noise and compression artefacts are still fairly obvious.

Friday Night with Jonathan Ross is a studio-based show and as such shouldn’t pose anything of a challenge; the controlled environment should allow the BBC to produce pristine HD images and if they can’t, which is clearly the case, then that simply isn’t good enough.

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Kelly Brook in HD on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, complete with video noise and macroblocking, unfortunately.