The Reality of Quality
Broadcasters for the most part have tried to maintain a quality standard for decades now, by spending hundreds of millions of dollars on professional equipment. It wasn’t until funniest home videos that Network TV started to realize that crappy picture and sound quality would be excepted if the content was compelling enough. Of course there is good and bad in that.
Let me just say that the reputation of a TV programme does not rest with the quality. Before you think I am defending bad quality, let me clarify, bad quality sucks and I will turn off the TV before watching some of the crap that’s put out. What I want to defend is just because a programme is well produced, looks and sounds good it’s not “slick” in the sense of being fake or over produced.
The Good: Accepting lower quality sparked a revolution in capturing everyday events on a massive scale. The spark also marked an opportunity for manufactures which pushed the evolution of technology by producing smaller, lighter, higher quality and higher capacity recorders. Now most every phone can produce a better quality picture than the highest priced consumer cameras of 10 years ago.
The Bad: The quality of broadcast TV dropped and has become acceptable so some have pushed the limits and gone for lower priced equipment and cheaper production values. All because they are losing the market share they once had in favour of lower budgets. “Off the Cuff” shaky cameras have become the norm as a technique. It works sometimes but is over used.
Listed below are categories for technical exemptions which I think are the only times to compromise the quality of programming.
Artistic interest: Innovative or experimental productions which are made, of necessity, by those who do not have access to equipment or facilities meeting broadcast quality standards. This is the loop hole exemption that many will try to convince you is the reason for lower quality.
Historic interest: News or programs of a documentary nature which show historic events taking place or whose subject matter requires the use of archive material.
Actuality material: News, features or documentaries of an actuality nature where better quality has not been possible because of limitations placed on the format or physical size of equipment used. Such limitations are those incurred as a result of shooting in difficult areas such as war zones, isolated locations, confined spaces or other difficult environments.
Early television and cinema: Excerpts from historical archives where low technical quality was due to the then current performance of equipment used in its creation or where quality is now lower than at the time of original showing because of film or video ageing.
Domestic equipment: Programs which employ excerpts made using domestic equipment in which the context requires that it is used.
Too further drive all of this is YouTube where the quality ranges from true broadcast to “what the hell is this”. But it can’t all be good otherwise we wouldn’t have a standard to shoot for.
Unfortunately the biggest loss is the sound portion of the new video revolution. Dolby 5.1 and 6.1 are used for a reason it enhances the viewing experience more than people understand. Just because there is a microphone somewhere in the room it doesn’t mean that the voices are clear. For those that want to make the effort and look at alternatives for picking up clear sound the difference is very apparent, very quickly.
